His Paper Pale Despair
Though I honestly sat down with the intent of devoting this blog entry solely to Milton's sonnets, I have to confess: I was not only distracted but ensnared by Sidney, Wyatt, Donne, Shakespeare (I generally dislike the Bard and often find him--gasp!--rather overrated), and Petrarch. This last poet will probably receive far less of my attention than he rightfully deserves, but there's only so much I'm-such-a-tortured-Italian-lover one can take. Granted, it should be noted and appreciated that Petrarch occupies an extremely prominent role in literary history, but...tortured...Italian...lover....
As my experience with Wyatt is, well, scanty at best, you'll have to forgive any glaring offenses this post might offer to his person and writings. I find it fitting to begin with him, however, as I think he is credited with actually bringing the sonnet into English (as a direct response to/borrowing from Petrarch). Though I wish to concentrate primarily on "Whoso list to hunt"--with particular attention paid to representations of women and female/feminized sexuality within this specific text--one can see just by glancing at the other Wyatt selections that love and desire are often conceptualized as bitter and often physically painful experiences for the speaker. In "Farewell, Love," for example, Love is equipped with "baited hooks" and "darts" (55), and when it is not ripping flesh from bone, Love submerges the speaker in disappointment and impotence.
This last sense, that of impotence in the moment of conquest, appears to be the heart of "Whoso list to hunt," the emotion around which the entire scene is organized and conveyed. The notion of conquest, with its sexual and colonial connotations, is aptly deployed in the intrepretation of Wyatt's work, for we immediately see the highly problematic (and fascinating) construction of woman as hunted deer, as a de-rationalized, wild creature whose flesh is quite literally inscribed with the name of her master. In Wyatt's image of the woman/deer we not only find an intimate linking of death and sex, but we as readers are also allowed and/or exhorted to take over the hunt. This potential exhortation I find to be a fair example of what contemporary feminist theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has termed "homosociality." The bloody conquests to be had in hunting--a hyper-masculine sport almost entirely associated with men and male-bonding--and those to be had in sexual relationships (another hyper-masculine sport almost entirely associated with men and male-bonding) are really not all that different, and Wyatt's speaker simultaneously commiserates with and hands over the reigns to both activities to his audience.
Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" and dark, irrational, diseased desires of sonnet 147 are constructed in a similar fashion as those of Sin and her son/lover Death in Milton's Paradise Lost. Desire in Paradise Lost is experienced very bodily, whether centered on the overthrow of heaven or, in the case of Death, sexual want of his mother. Desire, or lust, is the first characteristic of Death, resulting in the rape of his mother immediately after he was born: “I fled, but he pursued (though more, it seems, / Inflamed with lust than rage) and swifter far, / Me overtook his mother all dismayed, / And in embraces forcible and foul...” (759). In this passage, it is not difficult to see the links established between sexuality, desire, women, and death, nor is it to see similar articulation in Shakespeare’s sonnet 147, in which the speaker frankly declares “Desire is death” (61). Indeed, the object of desire, one would assume a woman, is described in the same manner as Milton’s Death: “black as hell, as dark as night” (61), and the speaker’s want of her is described as a “fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease” (61). Death and Shakespeare’s lust also share a famished appetite that consumes everything and yet is never satiated.
The specifically feminized corporeality of desire is also expressed in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, in which the speaker beseeches God to “Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you / As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; / That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend / Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new” (62). In the speaker’s request, there is some slippage between spirit and body, as one is not sure whether God is being asked to break the speaker’s will or his bones.
Holy Sonnet 14 is, as we see, founded on bodies and bodily images, and much, if not all, of these images are highly sexualized, as it is doubtful that bodies can be imagined entirely absent of sex, sexuality, and sensuality. Donne thoroughly enjoyed mixing sexual and religious images, connecting somewhat dichotomous conceptualizations and constructing a more intimate relationship with God through flesh. In 14, this relationship is best represented through sex, with the speaker taking the “feminized” or submissive, penetrated position in relation to God’s penetrating, beating masculinity. The beginning line, “Batter my heart” (62), can not only be read as a spiritually violent request, but as a sexual one, and the forceful repetition of “break, blow, burn” (62) act as damaging thrusts into the very core of the speaker. Indeed, reading these lines as images of “sacred” rape are not inappropriate here, for at the end of the sonnet, the speaker proclaims that he shall never be “chaste, except you ravish me” (62).
I would like to write some about Sidney, but I feel that those thoughts are best saved for another post. Perhaps tomorrow.
As my experience with Wyatt is, well, scanty at best, you'll have to forgive any glaring offenses this post might offer to his person and writings. I find it fitting to begin with him, however, as I think he is credited with actually bringing the sonnet into English (as a direct response to/borrowing from Petrarch). Though I wish to concentrate primarily on "Whoso list to hunt"--with particular attention paid to representations of women and female/feminized sexuality within this specific text--one can see just by glancing at the other Wyatt selections that love and desire are often conceptualized as bitter and often physically painful experiences for the speaker. In "Farewell, Love," for example, Love is equipped with "baited hooks" and "darts" (55), and when it is not ripping flesh from bone, Love submerges the speaker in disappointment and impotence.
This last sense, that of impotence in the moment of conquest, appears to be the heart of "Whoso list to hunt," the emotion around which the entire scene is organized and conveyed. The notion of conquest, with its sexual and colonial connotations, is aptly deployed in the intrepretation of Wyatt's work, for we immediately see the highly problematic (and fascinating) construction of woman as hunted deer, as a de-rationalized, wild creature whose flesh is quite literally inscribed with the name of her master. In Wyatt's image of the woman/deer we not only find an intimate linking of death and sex, but we as readers are also allowed and/or exhorted to take over the hunt. This potential exhortation I find to be a fair example of what contemporary feminist theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has termed "homosociality." The bloody conquests to be had in hunting--a hyper-masculine sport almost entirely associated with men and male-bonding--and those to be had in sexual relationships (another hyper-masculine sport almost entirely associated with men and male-bonding) are really not all that different, and Wyatt's speaker simultaneously commiserates with and hands over the reigns to both activities to his audience.
Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" and dark, irrational, diseased desires of sonnet 147 are constructed in a similar fashion as those of Sin and her son/lover Death in Milton's Paradise Lost. Desire in Paradise Lost is experienced very bodily, whether centered on the overthrow of heaven or, in the case of Death, sexual want of his mother. Desire, or lust, is the first characteristic of Death, resulting in the rape of his mother immediately after he was born: “I fled, but he pursued (though more, it seems, / Inflamed with lust than rage) and swifter far, / Me overtook his mother all dismayed, / And in embraces forcible and foul...” (759). In this passage, it is not difficult to see the links established between sexuality, desire, women, and death, nor is it to see similar articulation in Shakespeare’s sonnet 147, in which the speaker frankly declares “Desire is death” (61). Indeed, the object of desire, one would assume a woman, is described in the same manner as Milton’s Death: “black as hell, as dark as night” (61), and the speaker’s want of her is described as a “fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease” (61). Death and Shakespeare’s lust also share a famished appetite that consumes everything and yet is never satiated.
The specifically feminized corporeality of desire is also expressed in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, in which the speaker beseeches God to “Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you / As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; / That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend / Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new” (62). In the speaker’s request, there is some slippage between spirit and body, as one is not sure whether God is being asked to break the speaker’s will or his bones.
Holy Sonnet 14 is, as we see, founded on bodies and bodily images, and much, if not all, of these images are highly sexualized, as it is doubtful that bodies can be imagined entirely absent of sex, sexuality, and sensuality. Donne thoroughly enjoyed mixing sexual and religious images, connecting somewhat dichotomous conceptualizations and constructing a more intimate relationship with God through flesh. In 14, this relationship is best represented through sex, with the speaker taking the “feminized” or submissive, penetrated position in relation to God’s penetrating, beating masculinity. The beginning line, “Batter my heart” (62), can not only be read as a spiritually violent request, but as a sexual one, and the forceful repetition of “break, blow, burn” (62) act as damaging thrusts into the very core of the speaker. Indeed, reading these lines as images of “sacred” rape are not inappropriate here, for at the end of the sonnet, the speaker proclaims that he shall never be “chaste, except you ravish me” (62).
I would like to write some about Sidney, but I feel that those thoughts are best saved for another post. Perhaps tomorrow.
posted by alh at 11:11 PM
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