Experiments in Criticism

Robinson Crusoe Part 1

In this post, I begin a series of notes on Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719).

PLOT

Against his father’s wishes, Robinson goes to sea.
Robinson refuses a safe plantation position to take part in a slave-ship.
A storm hits the ship and Crusoe is washed onto a deserted island.
He contemplates his life and after a” bout of illness, commits his life to God.
Now his aim is to get off the island.

QUOTATIONS

“Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse…”

“[W]ithout asking God’s blessing or my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London.”

“My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea.”

“I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father’s house.”

“I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of all hope of recovery. But I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship’s company were.”

SYMBOLS

Rain (the storms of heaven)
A ship (with its hierarchy)
Crusoe’s cave on the island
Crusoe’s garden on the island
The sea

Anatomy of Criticism: Literary Modes

I’m working my way through Northrop Frye’s seminal work Anatomy of Criticism (1957). The books first essay has the title HISTORICAL CRITICISM and charts the change of literary modes over time. I’ll provide five takeaways from Frye’s scheme for tragic and comic modes then give five possible applications.

TAKEAWAYS

Frye begins with Aristotle’s Poetics.
The key difference among modes? Character capability, in both degree and kind.
There are fives modes that, Frye implies, progress in a circle: myth, romance, high mimetic, low mimetic, and ironic.
We should never offer an evaluation of any given mode because to do so would be to smuggle in a moral judgment disguised as a critical one.
We are currently in the ironic mode, but literature is not at an end. First, literature written in the ironic mode begins to assume mythical aspects. Second, all great literature features modal counterpoint.

Critical Terms: Author

This is the third of a series of weekly posts on the book Critical Terms for Literary Study.

Donald Pease begins his overview of this crucial term with five questions that he argues are connected to the term’s definition.

Is an individual self-determined or determined by material and historical circumstances?
Is the human self infinite or finite?
Can an individual ground political authority on individual creativity?
What is the basis for human freedom?
Can any artist claim absolute originality?

These questions are profoundly religious. The first touches on divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The second deals with the connection between humanity and divinity. The third is about corporate life. In dealing with freedom and originality in the last two, Pease asks questions that will have different answers if approached with a Christian worldview.

Yet God is oddly missing from this article.

BIBLICAL PRESUPPOSITION: Symbolism Matters

I’m reading through James Jordan’s excellent study Through New Eyes. Jordan begins the book by stressing the importance of symbolism.

Everything, he argues from scripture, symbolizes God. Humanity, the Word, and Sacraments are special symbols, but the entire creation testifies to the God who made it.

This leads to Jordan’s assertion that ESSENCE precedes EXISTENCE. When God makes a SYMBOL, He is creating reality. Consequently, everything in creation has meaning. Creation testifies to God’s existence and character. Why the diverse universe? Because the infinite God is profoundly diverse. When He speaks to us through people, His Word, and baptism and communication, He communicates His special characteristics.

People use symbols to STRUCTURE reality. We take the symbols God has already imbued with meaning and give Him glory or wrest them our own destruction.

This is crucial to literature in the following ways.

Every story about people is also a story about God.
Humanity’s special symbols include WORDS, and one way of evaluating literature is seeing how those words complement the privileged Word of God or attempt to replace it.
Another of humanity’s special symbols is a ROLE or vocation, and AUTHOR is one of the most privileged roles a person can have. This is because the role hearkens back to God’s role as AUTHOR of creation.

If symbolism matters to the Bible, it matters to readers of literature. We should read accordingly.

The Miller’s Tale – A Covenantal Outline

This is the third in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s).

PLOT

Transcendence: A clerk claims he knows God plans to destroy the world by flood.
Hierarchy: The clerk is living with a miller and sleeping with the miller’s young wife. The scholarly clerk (Nicholas) is able to woo the wife more effectively than the local church clerk (Absolon).
Ethics: The clerk says the trio can avoid the fated flood if they hide in a bathtub.
Sanctions: The wife has Absolon kiss her bottom. Absolon returns to punish her, and Nicholas flatulates in his face. Absolon scalds Nicholas with a hot poker. The miller hears the cry and falls from his high-rise tub and breaks his arm.
Succession: The townspeople consider the miller crazy.

Julius Caesar: A Covenantal Outline

In a previous post, I gave the covenantal plot for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599). Here I complete an outline of that work using the biblical covenant as a model.

QUOTATIONS

Transcendence: “[K]iss dead Caesar’s wounds / And dip their napkins in his sacred blood” – Marc Antony (3.2); Antony turns Caesar into a sacrificial god.
Hierarchy: “I had as lief not be as live to be / In awe of such a thing as I myself.” – Cassius (1.2); Cassius testifies to his inability to subordinate himself to anyone.
Ethics: “Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself, I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life: arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.” – Brutus (5.1); Brutus gives voice to the Stoic view of suicide, one which he eventually breaks.
Sanctions: “A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war.” – Marc Antony (3.1); Antony pledges punishment for the men who murdered Caesar.
Succession: “How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!” – Cassius (3.1); this prophecy literally becomes true through this play.

RHETORIC

Transcendence: Words in the form of speeches carry the day in this play. At the center of the play’s third act are two speeches, one from Brutus and another from Antony. The better speech wins the day and the play.
Hierarchy: Behind Shakespeare’s play is the account of Caesar and Brutus in Plutarch’s Lives. Many people have noted the tension in the play’s title and its focus. By sheer number of lines. BRUTUS is the play’s protagonist, yet it is Caesar who gives the play its title. This is precisely a question of authority.
Also worth noting is the verbal hijinks that start the play. The two patricians ridicule the people for praising Caesar so soon after praising the man Caesar killed. The cobbler makes jokes about mending men’s soles and souls. We only get enough of the plebians in this play to know that they’re highly emotional and capable of manufactured consent.
Ethics: More than any other single Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar ties identifiable philosophies to the its characters. You have Cicero the skeptic, Brutus the Stoic, and Cassius the Epicurean. These different religions have different codes, and none of them perfectly match the demands of Roman politics. That is, the play shows the way in which personal and political ethics can be at odds.
Generically, Shakespeare breaks protocol by having his titular character die halfway through the play. This is certainly unique in Shakespeare’s tragedies, though not necessarily in his plays (Cymbeline is a side-character in the romance named after him).
Sanctions: Shakespeare does not hide the violence of Rome in this play. Caesar is killed on stage. Cinna the poet is torn to pieces on stage. Cassius and Brutus commit suicide on stage. None of these deaths are particularly noble. Given the emphasis on honor in Roman oath-making (which is all over the play), these scenes undercut the dignified rhetoric that characters use to describe Roman action.
Succession: Shakespeare more or less gives the play a “To Be Continued…” marker at the end with the play’s final lines going to Octavius. We will see Marc Antony and Octavius when they return in Antony and Cleopatra.

Pride and Prejudice: A Covenantal Outline

This is the third in a series of posts about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Below I outline the points I would cover in discussing the novel with an eye towards implementing the covenantal model.

PLOT

TRANSCENDENCE: Marriage is on everyone’s minds, especially the Bennets, who boast five daughters
HIERARCHY: The two oldest Bennets attract suitors, but fail to find a match for various reasons ranging from temperament to social standing.
ETHICS: Elizabeth and Darcy must confront their own shortcomings: prejudice and pride respectively.
SANCTIONS: Mr. Darcy earns Elizabeth’s love by saving the youngest Bennet daughter from personal disgrace which would have also affected the family.
SUCCESSION: Three of the five Bennet sisters are married with the second oldest, Elizabeth, getting the best of the bunch. The feared entailment of the Bennet property is no longer a problem.

Julius Caesar: The Covenantal Plot

I am working on a Shakespeare e-course that connects the biblical covenant to Shakespeare’s famous tragedies. My first play is Julius Caesar. Below, I show how the play’s five acts mirror the five elements of the covenant.

Transcendence: Caesar has become a god, and Brutus and Cassius lament the republic’s dissolution.

Hierarchy: Rome has a choice: the republic of the conspirators or the empire of the Caesars.

Law: Roman law is in upheaval. The act begins and ends with the murder of a king and poet respectively.

Sanctions: The conspirators receive their judgment and are chased out of Rome.

Succession: The conspirators die. Octavius, the soon to be Emperor Augustus, gets the final lines of the play.

Critical Terms: Representation

This is the second of a series of weekly posts on the book Critical Terms for Literary Study.

W.J.T. Mitchell begins his survey of the term “representation” by observing the truism that literature represents life. As such, the concept of representation has long been a problem IN literature and a problem FOR the study of literature.

Question: what does representation involve? A fourfold process whereby SOMEONE represents SOMETHING (i.e. a message) BY SOMETHING (I.e. a medium like words or pictures) to SOMEONE. One axis is about SYMBOLISM. The other axis is about COMMUNICATION. Sometimes, these axes can create miscommunication, for instance when the symbols we’ve chosen to communicate with actually garble the message.

Mitchell explains that there are three kinds of symbols: iconic, symbolic, and indexical. The ICON resembles what it stands for. The SYMBOLIC is an arbitrarily appointed stand in. The INDEX has some existential connection to what it stands for. Theories of art favor or disapprove of particular kinds of representation. Mimesis celebrates it. So does the expressivist theory of art which champion the way in which a work of art represents the mind of its creator. Plato thought that art was representative but for that same reason condemned it. On the other hand, formalist or abstract approaches to art disconnect the obvious modes of representation.

Let’s end, then, with some theological correctives to Mitchell’s analysis…

Biblical Presuppositions: Transcendence

I began working through Ray Sutton’s That You May Prosper today. Sutton articulates the biblical vision of the covenant, the way which God has chosen to interact with humanity. The covenant has five points: Transcendence, Hierarchy, Ethics, Sanctions, and Succession. I am building a Shakespeare e-course around these five points and will be working with his tragedy Julius Caesar (1599) over the next three weeks as the play that most overtly deals with the subject of transcendence.

What are the key points from Sutton’s chapter on Transcendence and how do they apply to literature and the play Julius Caesar specifically?

God demonstrates His transcendence through creation.
He interacts with His creation through a personal covenant.
He is both transcendent over creation (i.e. His works are NOT of the same being as He is) and immanent through His personal covenant with humanity.
His covenant is both LEGAL and ETHICAL.
Humanity has continually substituted counterfeit forms of transcendence. One is DEISM, a transcendent god who is not personal. Another is PANTHEISM, an immanent god who is not transcendent.
The alternative to COVENANTAL religion is METAPHYSICAL religion that assumes a continuity of being between humanity and divinity, either vertical or horizontal.
God’s transcendence affects the human institutions of FAMILY, STATE, and CHURCH.

Now for the takeaways for literature in general and Julius Caesar in particular…