honcol102final

HC 102H, Honors College World Literature

Changing the landscape of literature: the High Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

Bishop, Winter 2000 | 314 Chapman | (541) 346-0733 | lmbishop@oregon.uoregon.edu

Final exam, Due Tuesday, March 14, by 10:00 a.m.
The literary enterprise | Women and love | Religion, reason, and science | Honor

If you've completed the exam BEFORE that time, please bring it to the Honors College office and put it in my mailbox. I'll be in 314 Chapman from 9 a.m. Tuesday for hand-delivery of exams.

Let me remind you of the syllabus's plan for this term:

. . . this class will work to read the literary imagination of the past with sensitivity to history (the past), society (class), individuation (the self), and to evaluate the centrality of narrative to culture. We will assess the invention of love, consider how changes in Early Modern governance, religion, and publication affect the composition, production, and even the definition of literary works, and think about the legacy of Troy, the definition of self, and the changing place of faith. We'll conclude with an analysis of the colonial enterprise and the advent of scientific and economic inquiry, assessing the Enlightenment's message of hope.

Take a two-hour block of time and answer either TWO questions (one hour per essay) or ONE question (two hours total). Specify by topic which essay(s) you've chosen. Maximum length: two blue books or four word-processed pages, typed double-space (approximately 500 words per essay). You may think about your essays ahead of time. Please keep in mind that the essays' purpose is to have you assess the interrelationships among our texts and themes. Be as specific and complete as you can. Back to top of page

The literary enterprise What are the benefits and dangers of the literary enterprise? How are those benefits and/or dangers historically constructed? What is the value of authorship, especially as it relates to history and to other texts? What modes do our texts suggest for making judgments about literary worth?

Thus, if it shall please Him by whom all things live that my life continue for a few years, I hope to compose concerning her what has never been written in rhyme of any woman. (La Vita Nuova, Chapter 42, p. 99)

Then the Count said: "We can also rest assured that those who were copied were superior to their imitators; and it would be too astonishing for words if their names and reputations, if these were good, had been utterly forgotten so soon. For myself, I believe that their true teacher was their own instinctive judgement and genius; and no one should be surprised by this, since in every sphere one can almost always reach the height of perfection in various ways. Nor is there anything which does not contain elements which are related but dissimilar, and all of which merit equal praise. (Courtier, Book 1, pp. 81-2)

Therefore I wish for neither thanks nor blame
In all this work; meekly, I beg you try
To overlook it if a word be lame,
For just as said my author, so say I. . .
And then, you know, the forms of language change
Within a thousand years, and long ago
Some words were valued that will now seem strange,
Affected, even; yet they spoke them so,
And fared as well in love, for all I know,
As we do now; in various lands and ages
Various are the ways to win love's wages. (Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, stanzas 3, 4)

I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators . . . I knew and could distinguish those two heroes at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before. . . . (Gulliver's Travels, Book 3, Chapter 8, p. 242)

"It [Homer's poetry] has so such effect [delight] on me," said Pococurante coldly. "I was once under the delusion that reading gave me pleasure. But that endless series of battles that are all alike, those gods who are always intervening without doing anything decisive, that Helen who is the cause of the war and who hardly plays a role in the story, that Troy which is forever besieged and never captured--all of this bores me to death. I have had opportunities to ask scholars if reading it bores them as much as it does me. All the sincere ones confessed that the book puts them to sleep but added that one must always have it in one's library as a monument to antiquity, like those rusty coins that cannot be spent. . . I read only for myself; I like only what I can use." (Candide, Chapter 25, pp. 104-5)

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Women and love Who speaks for love in our texts? How is love historically constructed? How are love and women connected? What places do women and love inhabit in our narrative?

After the vision which I have described, when I had composed the rhymes which Love had commanded me, a number of conflicting thoughts began to contend and strive one with the other, all of them, it seemed, unanswerably. . . the fourth thought was this: ‘The Lady for whom Love holds you so enthralled is not like other women whose hearts are easily moved.' (La Vita Nuova, Chapter 13, pp. 45-6)

I cannot find it in my heart to chide
This hapless woman, more than the story will;
Her name, alas, is punished far and wide,
And that should be sufficient for the ill
She did; I would excuse her for it still,
She was so sorry for her great untruth;
Indeed I would excuse her yet, for ruth. (Troilus and Criseyde, Book 5, stanza 157, p. 282)

Moreover, I shall attribute woman's enduring love for the man with whom she has first been, and the man's detestation for the first woman he posses, not to what is alleged by your philosopher in his Problems but to the resolution and constancy of women and the inconstancy of men. (Courtier, Book 3, p. 221)

I have a kind of self resides with you [Troilus],
But an unkind self that itself will leave
To be another's fool. I would be gone.
Where is my wit? I know not what I speak. (Troilus and Cressida, 3.2.138-41)

The old woman said to Cunégonde, "My Lady, you have seventy-two generations of nobility, and not a penny. You now have a chance to be the wife of a man who is the greatest lord in South America and who has a very handsome mustache. Is this a time for you to pretend to be absolutely faithful? You were raped by the Bulgars. A Jew and an Inquisitor enjoyed your favors. Suffering bestows privileges. If I were in your place, I assure you, I would have no qualms about marry the Governor and securing the welfare of Captain Candide." (Candide, Chapter 13, p. 67) Back to top of page

Religion, reason, and science How have our authors treated religion and reason--as antithetical? Related? Hierarchical? How has history affected the relationship among, as well as the definitions of, religion, reason, and science?

His [Troilus's] light soul rose and rapturously went
Towards the concavity of the eighth sphere,
Leaving conversely every element
And, as he passed, he saw with wonderment
The wandering stars and heard the harmony,
Whose sound is full of heavenly melody.

As he looked down, there came before his eyes,
This little spot of earth, that with the sea
Lies all embraced, and found he could despise
This wretched world, and hold it vanity,
Measured against the full felicity
That is in Heaven above. . . . (Troilus and Criseyde, Book 5, stanzas 259, 260)

They're divided into two sects, of which one believes in celibacy. Its members are total abstainers, not only from sexual intercourse, but also from meat, and in some cases from every form of animal food. . . The other sect, though equally keen on hard work, approves of marriage, on the grounds that its comforts are not to be despised, and that procreation is a duty which one owes to both nature and to one's country. . . They're generally considered more sensible than the others, though the others are thought more devout. Of course, if the members of the first sect tried to justify their behavior on logical grounds, they'd be merely laughed at. But as they admit that their motives are religious rather than rational, they're regarded with great reverence--for Utopians are always extremely careful to avoid rash judgements in the matter of religion. (Utopia, Book 2, pp. 122-3)

These effects are very striking. One of them is the manifestation of the Lord's mighty power: as we are unable to resist His Majesty's will, either in soul or in body, and are not our own masters, we realize that, however irksome this truth may be, there is One stronger than ourselves, and that these favours are bestowed by Him and that we, or ourselves, can do absolutely nothing. This imprints in us great humility. (The Life of St. Teresa, Chapter 20)

. . . I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are all very bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is seldom the case. Imagination, fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their language by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up with the two aforementioned sciences [music and mathematics]. (Gulliver's Travels, Book 3, Chapter 2, pp 205-6)

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Honor Western culture often uses Troy as its model for honor. How do authors contest that inheritance? Why would they contest it? What's at stake in a definition of honor?

Well, fighting is a thing they [the Utopians] absolutely loathe. They say it's a quite subhuman form of activity, although human beings are more addicted to it than any of the lower animals. (Utopia, Book 2, p. 109)

If Helen then be wife to Sparta's king,
As it is known she is, these moral laws
Of nature and of nations speak aloud
To have her back returned. Thus to persist
In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,
But makes it much more heavy. Hector's opinion
Is this in way of truth. Yet ne'ertheless,
My sprightly brethren, I propend to you
In resolution to keep Helen still;
For ‘tis a cause that hath no mean dependence
Upon our joint and several dignities. (Troilus and Cressida, 2.2.182-92)

. . . it [the soul] is in a prison, nothing less--and it realizes that it is nothing less--that the soul has itself been living. It is weary of the time when it paid heed to niceties concerning its own honour, and of the mistaken belief which it had that what the world calls honour is really so. It now knows that to be a sheer lie and a lie in which we are all living. It realizes that genuine honour is not deceptive, but true; that it values what has worth and despises what has none; for what passes away, and is not pleasing to God, is worth nothing and less than nothing. (The Life of St. Teresa, Chapter 20)

It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he hath driven our the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish the prince he came to relieve. . . For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others: because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. (Gulliver's Travels, Book 4, Chapter 5, p. 293)