2014.2 journal of literature and art studies

Journal of Literature

and Art Studies

Volume 4, Number 2, February 2014 (Serial Number 27)

David Publishing Company

www.davidpublishing.com

PublishingDavid

Publication Information: Journal of Literature and Art Studies is published monthly in hard copy (ISSN 2159-5836) and online (ISSN 2159-5844) by David Publishing Company located at 240 Nagle Avenue #15C, New York, NY 10034, USA.

Aims and Scope: Journal of Literature and Art Studies, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of researches on literature studies, art theory, appreciation of arts, culture and history of arts and other latest findings and achievements from experts and scholars all over the world.

Editorial Board Members: Eric J. Abbey, Oakland Community College, USA Andrea Greenbaum, Barry University, USA Carolina Conte, Jacksonville University, USA Maya Zalbidea Paniagua, Universidad La Salle, Madrid, Spain Mary Harden, Western Oregon University, USA Lisa Socrates, University of London, United Kingdom Herman Jiesamfoek, City University of New York, USA Maria O’Connell, Texas Tech University, USA Soo Y. Kang, Chicago State University, USA Uju Clara Umo, University of Nigeria, Nigeria

Manuscripts and correspondence are invited for publication. You can submit your papers via Web Submission, or E-mail to [email protected], [email protected]. Submission guidelines and Web Submission system are available at http://www.davidpublishing.org, www.davidpublishing.com.

Editorial Office: 240 Nagle Avenue #15C, New York, NY 10034, USA Tel: 1-323-984-7526, 323-410-1082 Fax: 1-323-984-7374, 323-908-0457 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Copyright©2014 by David Publishing Company and individual contributors. All rights reserved. David Publishing Company holds the exclusive copyright of all the contents of this journal. In accordance with the international convention, no part of this journal may be reproduced or transmitted by any media or publishing organs (including various websites) without the written permission of the copyright holder. Otherwise, any conduct would be considered as the violation of the copyright. The contents of this journal are available for any citation, however, all the citations should be clearly indicated with the title of this journal, serial number and the name of the author.

Abstracted/Indexed in: Database of EBSCO, Massachusetts, USA Chinese Database of CEPS, Airiti Inc. & OCLC Chinese Scientific Journals Database, VIP Corporation, Chongqing, P.R.C. Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory LLBA Database of ProQuest Summon Serials Solutions Google Scholar J-GATE

Subscription Information: Price (per year): Print $520 Online $320 Print and Online $560

David Publishing Company 240 Nagle Avenue #15C, New York, NY 10034, USA Tel: 1-323-984-7526, 323-410-1082. Fax: 1-323-984-7374, 323-908-0457 E-mail: [email protected] Digital Cooperative: Company:www.bookan.com.cn

David Publishing Company www.davidpublishing.com

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

Journal of Literature and Art Studies

Volume 4, Number 2, February 2014 (Serial Number 27)

Contents Literature Studies

Trapped in the Quagmire of Misery: Exorcizing Neurosis of Violence in Mia Couto’s Voices Made Night and Bessie Head’s Tales of Tenderness and Power 75

Niyi Akingbe

Causes of Pecola’s Tragedy in The Bluest Eye 85 WANG Xiao-yan, LIU Xi

Spatial Representations in Charles Dickens’s New York and London 90 Tzu Yu Allison Lin

Subversive Ambiguity in the Poetry of Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, and Giovanna Pollarolo 98

Sara Villa

Inescapable Choices in Runaway 106 LIU Jun-min

Art Studies

Infamous Fame: Shaffer’s Tactic in Amadeus 111 Shu-Yu Yang

The Importance of Being on Screen: A Comparative Approach to Cinematographic Versions of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 118

Maria Isabel dos Santos Sampaio Vieira Barbudo

Special Research

Utilization Frequency and Distributions of Drama Language Body Standard 123 WANG Jing-dan

Lêxis in Dionysius the Areopagite 129 José María Nieva

Modern Pedagogy and the Ratio Studiorum 137 Ziba Ahmadian

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 February 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2, 75-84

Trapped in the Quagmire of Misery: Exorcizing Neurosis of

Violence in Mia Couto’s Voices Made Night and Bessie Head’s

Tales of Tenderness and Power

Niyi Akingbe Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria

Arguably, Africa comparatively remains a huge repository of misery and violence in the 21st-century, an attempt to

account for narratives within the context of political development has posed an irresistible challenge and a

disturbing necessity for Mia Couto in Voices Made Night (1990) and Bessie Head in Tales of Tenderness and

Power (1989). The position of Couto as a white Mozambican writer and Head as an exiled coloured South African

writer, living in her adopted country of Botswana, provides them with privileged neutrality from which to view the

effect of the admixture of grinding poverty and violence as they ravage the landscapes of these countries. While

Couto does not fail to incorporate the significance of power struggle between FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation

of Mozambique) and RENAMO (Mozambique National Resistance) in the Voices Made Night, Head’s articulation

of the complex manipulation of power becomes a resource for constructing a discourse of nationalism in Tales of

Tenderness and Power. The paper intends to focus on the correlation between power and economic development in

these anthologies. The paper will further examine how political power impacts on the socio-economic well being of

the local folks in the Couto’s Mozambique and Head’s South Africa.

Keywords: quagmire of misery, neurosis of violence, Mozambique, South Africa, poverty, Mia Couto, Bessie Head

Introduction Mia Couto’s Voices Made Night (1990) and Bessie Head’s Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989) are

anthologies of short stories grounded in the relics of the Mozambican and South African past. Although, the power of the present to unearth the past strewn with misery and violence is problematized by the mismanagement of political power in post-colonial Mozambique and apartheid South Africa. It is a past mediated by the memory which tasks both Couto and Head’s imaginative conception of the dark periods in the Mozambican and South African histories. Faced with the indisputable recognition of the effect of mismanagement of power on the downtrodden masses of these two countries during these periods, Couto and Head are of the realisation that memory abhors the romanticism of amnesia in whatever disguise, most especially when it beckons on the re-telling in details of a political violence which threatened and almost destroyed their nations in the recent past. In this regard, Soyinka’s (1999) examination of the role of memory seems apt here “[t]he role of memory, of ancient precedents of current criminality, obviously governs our

Niyi Akingbe, Ph.D., associate professor of Comparative Literature, Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal

University Oye-Ekiti.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

TRAPPED IN THE QUAGMIRE OF MISERY

76

responses to the immediate and often more savage assaults on our humanity, and to the strategies for remedial action” (p. 20). Couto employs in his anthology of stories, the framework of memory which is deeply shaped by the surrealistic symbolic forms in navigating the RENAMO’s backlash against the FRELIMO’s political domination and policies which degenerated into the civil war and its effect on the rural folks in the postcolonial Mozambique. The history of postcolonial Mozambique is privileged as the discursive arena in the anthology for evaluating the relationship between economic development and political community. The deployment of memory and mythology for the narration of the Mozambican social and political history in Couto’s literary oeuvre has been explained in the words of Goncalves (2009):

Couto’s work draws heavily on the speech patterns of Mozambicans and on themes of traditional oral story telling. His narrative subjects and traditional myths join everyday life events of post war life in Mozambique. Couto blurs boundaries between the living and the dead, the individual and the community, and men and women. (p. 1)

If memory plays a significant role in the contextualisation of the Mozambican political tension and violence in Voices Made Night, its significance is effusively appropriated as a narrative trope in engaging the complex social relations among the black folks in the apartheid South Africa. In Tales of Tenderness and power, Head dwells on the longstanding poverty exacerbated by racial tension between the black and white in the apartheid South Africa to articulate a poignant thematic preoccupation. Violence as the resultant effect of this tension is much felt in the black townships adjourning Johannesburg and Soweto which witnessed a concomitant increase in blood-letting during the apartheid. Commenting on what usually necessitate the justification for the perpetration of violence by a group against the other, Brennan (1993) posits that the narrativization of identity is grounded in spatial terms:

The need to separate subject from object, us from them—and in this case, to turn “them” into “objects”. In order to accomplish this, a “foundation fantasy” must be constructed in such a way as to reinforce the needs of the ego to comprehend itself as the “locus of active agency”. (p. 11)

More striking is Head’s unabashed depiction of violence in her Tales of Tenderness and Power, it is demonised as the most debilitating factor militating against human development in the postcolonial Africa. By taken up the intersection of misery and violence in their anthologies, Couto and Head have utilised literature according to Edward (1990) Said, to articulate:

A crucial role in the establishment of a national cultural heritage, in the reinstatement of native idioms, in the re-imagining and re-figuring of local histories, geographies, communities. As such… literature not only mobilized active resistance to incursions from the outside, but also contributed massively as the shaper, creator, agent of illumination within the realm of the colonised. (pp. 1-2)

Head’s assessment of the balance of power between the races dramatizes the black township’s violence within the ambit of narrative fiction. But blending art and politics in her description of the uncanny circumstances generated by this social tension between the two races, Head constantly avoids a racial identification in these stories. Perhaps this distance is anchored on her racial status which is neither white nor black but coloured. Mosieleng (2004) contends that Head’s racial ambivalence is orchestrated by her fragmented personal background “which was fundamentally non-African in many respects, three of which may be singled out: language, companionship, and art” (p. 57).

Historical consciousness grounded in memory has been identified in this paper as an important factor in the shaping of the reactions of both Couto and Head to the socio-political situations in Mozambique and South


77

Africa. The import of history is particularly amplified in this paper by these writers whose commitment to the emergence of new geopolitical realities is directed toward the tasks of nation-building, emancipation and the enhancement of national consciousness. The socio-political consciousness of literature in African society is inevitable for several reasons: It is ingrained in the “traditional literatures” of the countries in the continent; Africa’s peculiar history has made the delineation of social issues crucial to the proper working of any profession or discipline; many writers espouse ideologies such as Marxism or socialism which make the advocacy of social change an article of faith; Africa’s contemporary predicament is such that arguably, no one with the sensitivity and insight of a “true” artist can be immune to engaging with it in his work. As Agovi (1995) claims, literature or artistic forms become the nerve centre of a network of complementary institutions which are “integrated into the state machinery by virtue of their pursuit of similar or related goals and ideals” (p. 10). Such institutions are made to pay allegiance to a common body of ideas and values that give rise to a sense of humanism in African society.

The paper is focused on these three planks: Firstly, it revolves around the crucial issues of society, literature, and memory. It suggests that there are certain identifiable interconnections between art, politics, and economic well-being of a particular state; Secondly, in focusing on the interconnection between economic and violence in the two anthologies over a particular period of time, the paper raises questions regarding how contending social forces arise as a result of socio-economic and political difficulties, and seeks to discover the precise nature of the literary depiction of social problems within the context of other forms of social intervention; Finally, the paper will conclusively aim at assessing the significance of literary insight in delineating social issues and the efficacy of the manner in which it proposes solutions to them in the anthologies.

Foregrounding the Intersection of Misery and Violence on New Historicism Given its status as a critical mode which emphasises “the relationship between a text and the society” that

produces it, the literary theory known as New Historicism has been chosen as the framework for this paper. It is a theory which interrogates the assumptions and attitudes governing how events are seen differently by the author and individual readers of a literary text. It relates a text to other texts produced at the same period in a given society; thus, literary and political connections can be drawn between the aesthetic elements embedded in the text, and the cultural realities that obtain in such a society (Tyson, 1999, p. 288). Within the ambit of New Historicism, the subject matter and thematic concerns of the texts under focus will be analysed with a view to drawing out these connections and discussing their significance within the analytical concerns of the paper. New Historicism is pre-occupied with the examination of literary texts from the perspective of their being embedded within the social and economic circumstances in which they are produced and consumed. For New Historicists, these circumstances are not stable in themselves and are susceptible to be re-written and transformed; from this perspective, literary texts are part of a larger circulation of social energies, both products of and influences on a particular culture or ideology.

New Historicism proffers an eclectic approach to literary study, as such, it incorporates many aspects of other critical viewpoints, even if it does not agree with them in totality. For example, it obtains from New Criticism the approach of seeking the interconnectedness that underlies any work of art (Selden, 1989, p. 192). It shares with Reader-Response theory, the view that a work of literature can impart different meanings to different readers (Booker, 1996, p. 137). From Postmodernism, New Historicism appropriates the critical doctrines of discontinuity, eclecticism, heterogeneity, and decentred authority in narratives. It rejects Derrida’s


78

notions of the interface of language and text, but puts forward its own concept of the interconnection between culture and society. Like psychoanalysis, the theory explores the notion of power struggles and similarly advocates that power produces individual subjects. New Historicism shares with Marxism the notion that literature tells the story of the past. However, while Marxism advocates the complete liberation of the oppressed as a critical objective, New Historicism returns to the stories in the texts to find out how they affect society. These extensive borrowings from other theories have given it a flexibility that enables it to adapt the analytical tools and perspectives of other theories to suit its own purposes.

The overt concern of “New Historicism with power relations” among social classes in a given society makes it particularly appropriate to this study. Influenced by Michel Foucault, new historicist critics are interested in “concerns of power, authority and subversion at work in texts” (Carlson, 1993, p. 526). Selden (1989) also emphasises this pursuit when he states that “the New Historicists believe that Foucault’s work opens the way to new and non-truth oriented forms of historicist study of texts” (p. 161). New Historicism’s concept of history is diametrically at variance with those of the old historicists of earlier periods. For these predecessors, “History is a homogenous and stable pattern of facts and events which can be used as background to the literature of an era” (Abrams, 1981, p. 184). For the New Historicists, however, history is actually: A dynamic, unstable interplay among discourses, the meanings of which the historian can try to analyse, though the analysis will always be incomplete, accounting for only a part of the historical picture (Tyson, 1999, p. 287).

As is typical of New Historicism, Voices Made Night and Tales of Tenderness and Power’s interpenetration of Mozambican and South African political histories is patently relative and involves a negotiation of meanings between competing groups rather than its imposition by a dominant group. In conformity with New Historicism, Couto and Head recognise in their anthologies that history is the history of the present, always in the making, and radically open to transformation and rewriting, rather than being monumental and closed. Just like New Historicists, the writers argue that any “knowledge” of the past is necessarily mediated by texts of different kinds. Hence, there can be no knowledge of the past without interpretation; the “facts” of history need to be read just like any other text. White (1978) suggests that knowledge of the past is determined by particular narrative configurations or stories as he states:

Histories ought never to be read as unambiguous signs of the events they report, but rather as symbolic structures, extended metaphors, that ‘liken’ events reported in them to some form with which we have already become familiar, in our literary culture… By the very constitution of a set of events in such a way as to make a comprehensive story out of them, the historian charges those events with the symbolic significance of a comprehensive plot structure. (pp. 91-92)

Since Couto and Head are imbued with the conviction that social conflict is inescapable, as such, they focus their anthologies upon the intersection of misery and violence in Mozambique during the civil war and South Africa during the apartheid regime. They perceive their societies as being made up of many different social classes and interest groups with differing and often competing interests. Given the unequal distribution of power in most human societies however, many of these groups are unable to properly articulate their concerns or have them incorporated into the grand narratives (including literature) that societies create about themselves in order to project a distinct identity. Indeed, it is the class that is dominant at any one time in a given society that is able to impose its perspectives upon the others in such a way that it is normalized and accepted as the worldview of everyone, even when it is only representative of only a group. Thus, most societies have adopted an “us versus them” approach to creating a group identity—the Greeks divided the world into civilisation and


79

barbarians, placing themselves in the former category, and everyone else in the latter category; monarchies propounded the divine right of kings as the natural order of things, rather than as an attempt to secure their power and influence; both Christians and Muslims demonise each other as “infidels” and other religions as “idol worship” in order to secure the loyalty of their own followers rather than because those other faiths are intrinsically evil; autocratic rulers throughout history have equated opposition to their rule with treason, regardless of whether such opposition is justifiable or not.

Suffice it to say that Couto and Head have argued in their anthologies that any “knowledge” of the past is necessarily mediated by texts, or to put it differently, that history is in many respects textual. A number of major consequences follow from this assertion. In the first place, there can be no knowledge of the past without interpretation. Just as history texts need to be read, so do the “facts” of history. From a new historical perspective, any reading of a literary text is a question of negotiation: a negotiation between text and reader within the context of history or histories that cannot be closed or finalised. Consequently, narratives in the Voices Made Night and Tales of Tenderness and Power are to be understood in terms of negotiation rather than in the conventional sense of a pure act of untrammelled creation. For example, Perraudin (2005) comments on this negotiation between two opposing groups in a society and draws attention to what he perceives as the potential cause of political tension in the postcolonial African countries:

The acts of violence seem inevitably confined to a highly political and public sphere. The driving motivation behind these acts of torture, excorporations, and rape seems to stem from a desire to weaken the ability of the other to assert himself or herself within a realm of power that is in the process of being contested. (p. 73)

This implies negotiations which are a subtle, network of trades and trade-offs, and a jostling of competing representations. On this note, both Couto and Head have demonstrated in their anthologies, that work of art is the product of negotiation with a complex, communally-shared repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and practices of society.

Claiming the Burden of Exclusion From a memory perspective, Mozambique is depicted as a politico-historical landscape in Voices Made

Night, whose first story begins with “The Fire”. Operating within a defined geo-political discourse which embraces an allegory of the mismanagement of the Mozambican postcolonial opportunities by its ruling elite, “The Fire” narrates a story of an aged couple living on the economic fringes of the rural Mozambique. At the critical phase of their lives in which they are now living alone and doing domestic chores by themselves, the old man became terribly apprehensive that the wife might die before him. To lessen this burden, the old man bought a spade and started digging the wife’s grave. The wife’s reaction to this bizarre act is a confounding bewilderment, which provides the reader an opportunity of viewing the adversarial relationship between the couple. However, the man became very sick and died due to the exhaustion he suffered from digging of the grave. He ironically ended being buried in the grave he dug for his wife.

What becomes apparently revealed in “The Fire” is an indictment of the FRELIMO’s awkward political policies grounded on the Marxist-Leninist framework, which does not accommodate the aspirations of the various Mozambican ethnic groups and the development of the indigenous traditional practices. Unfortunately, these policies fragmented the post-colonial Mozambican society rather than uniting it, and plans for national development become bureaucratized along the European standards. After waging a debilitating warfare against


80

the Portuguese colonization for ten years, Mozambique attained independence in 1975. Nevertheless, FRELIMO’s tragic adventure into the political goose chase is inaugurated with a false start: It started ruling by proclaiming Mozambique a one-party state without conducting any elections. This FRELIMO’s Stalinist appropriation of power forced the RENAMO to take to a guerrilla warfare which lasted decades with colossal casualties in human and infrastructure.

Couto’s allegorical representation of the FRELIMO’s adoption of the Marxist-Leninst policies for the governance of Mozambique as exemplified in “The Fire” has been commented upon by Goncalves (2009):

The policies that FRELIMO has implemented in the country are a grave that is supposed to bury the old; but as in the Couto’s story if the old way does not die, then it has to be killed. The “digging” of these policies creates the need for the grave of the system itself. (p. 26)

The hypocrisy of the FRELIMO’s over subscription to the Marxist-Leninist propaganda is further Criticised by Couto (1990) in the dream of the old woman, where the falsehood of these policies is eloquently critiqued:

When the moon began to light up the trees in the wood, she leant back and fell asleep. She dreamed of times far away from there: her children were present, the dead ones and those still alive, the machamba was full of crops, her eyes slid over the green of it all. There was the old man in the middle, with his tie on, telling stories, lies for the most part. (pp. 4-5)

FRELIMO is typified as the old man in “The Fire” and its adoption of the Marxist-Leninist propaganda in the shaping of the Mozambican national development policies is likened in the dream to a falsehood due to its ineffectiveness in moving the Mozambican economy forward.

A biting satire on the FRELIMO’s political philosophy is further drawn from mismanagement of the flood crisis in “The Tale of the Two Who Returned From the Dead”. It is a narrative which examines the plight of Luis Fernando and Anibal Mucavel who suddenly returned to the village, after they had been given up for dead following the devastating floods which swept away scores of people and submerged their village. The duo was denied food and relief materials which required the intervention of the FRELIMO regional authority to resolve. In reconstructing the Mozambican past within the context of New Historicism discourse, Couto (1990) essentially employs a deft allegorical gambit in examining the FRELIMO’s fetishization of Marxist ideological leanings as portrayed in the following passage:

The official arrived on the scene. He was a tubby man, his belly inquisitive, peeping out of his tunic… “Look: they‘ve sent us supplies. Clothes, blankets, sheets of zinc, a lot of things. But you two weren’t included in the

estimate”. Anibal became agitated when he heard they had been excluded: “What do you mean not included? Do you strike people off just like that?’ But you have died. I don’t even know how

you came to be here”. “What do you mean died? Don’t you believe we are alive?” “Maybe, I’m not sure any more. But this business of being alive and not alive had best be discussed with the other comrades”. (pp. 71-76)

The passage reveals FRELIMO’s bureaucratized approach to the treatment of national issues in the postcolonial Mozambique which leaves a lot to be desired, and has been polemically criticised in the words of Goncalves (2009):

Marxism, introduced to the country by FRELIMO’s leadership, provided the universal language of class capable of denying the ethnic and cultural diversity of Mozambique. This political philosophy gave the tools for the conception of


81

an ideal, yet fabricated a country where the workers allowed FRELIMO to exercise its power in their name against the enemies of the people. The post-Independence project of FRELIMO took seriously the transition to socialism. The political elite of the country was influenced by European principles and failed to look within for the answers to the absolute question of what it means to be Mozambican. (p. 35)

Correspondingly, placing emphasis upon the imbalance of power between the majority blacks and minority whites, recalls an inscription of political tension in the apartheid South Africa’s trajectory of violence as Head’s Tales of Tenderness and Power exemplifies. This tension is grounded in “Oranges and Lemons”, a story which anxiously expresses the effect of unmitigated violence perpetrated by the black gangsters, on the black folks during the apartheid South Africa. The dimension of crime, bloodshed, rape and maiming in these townships occur with frightening frequency. Head (1989) offers readers insightful penetration into lives of the residents who are cramped in the identical small match-box houses; mostly in and out of poorly-paid employment, and are generally: “helplessly trapped in one long dark nightmare without end”. The few who “resisted the evil… were swiftly eliminated… ” (p. 19). The helplessness of the black folks to ward off these wanton killings, conveniently, made death very cheap in these townships. The story reflects a degeneration of humanity into bestiality caused by the political ills of apartheid.

We may without difficulty surmise that Head’s rendering of the narrative of “Oranges and Lemons” in a seamless intertextuality with references to poverty and the apartheid government’s unwillingness to criminalize gangsterism in the black townships, intends to indict the white minority-run South Africa apartheid regime. Power and its attendant problematic thus privilege the enabling discursive treatment of the glorification of violence by the subterranean rival gangs, whose profiles are trenchantly depicted in grotesque comic details of the narrative. It is a depiction which confirms Head’s familiarity with a blow-by-blow fluidity of crime occurrences in these run-down neighbourhoods. The objectification of pain borne by the victims of these black townships’ violence adequately provides a site for the reading of power articulation in the narrative. It is an articulation Scarry (1985) has remarkably dealt with in her book, The Body in Pain:

The de-objectifying of the objects, the unmaking of the made, is a process externalizing the way in which the person’s pain causes his world to disintegrate; and, at the same time, the disintegration of the world is here […] made the direct cause of the pain. (p. 41)

We can conclude from this standpoint that Head’s characters in “Oranges and Lemons” in the likes of Old Ben, Jimmy Motsisi and Mary are victims whose bodies borne the weal of pain inflicted in the power-play manipulated by the rival gang leaders: “Hot Sparks” Phalane and “Big Brain Mazooki” alongside the witchy-bitchy Daphne Matsulaka whose paranoia get expressed in befuddled aspirations. Black on—black violence in the narrative invokes a power discourse which depicts residents of the black—ownships in “Oranges and Lemons” as casualties of a cul-de-sac racialized society. As such, they could only access the limited crumbs of social privileges available in the black townships, and could not rise above the apartheid colour limitations. By vocalizing the magnitude of this black township violence, Head has subtly mounted pressure on the apartheid regime to wake up to its legitimate responsibility of enacting social policies that will remarkably ameliorate this tiring macabre.

If the South Africa’s violence vividly captured in Head’s “Oranges and Lemons” seems sporadic and isolated, violence in the Couto’s Mozambique is apocalyptic, horrendous, and total. The process of rewriting the Mozambican tragic civil war facilitates the uncovering of acts of violence, whose overwhelming effect on


82

the masses is dauntingly scandalized by Couto in “The Day Mabata-bata Exploded”. This is a fast-moving sombre narrative of the misfortune of an orphan, Azarias who constantly trudges a wooded valley set against the backdrop of a nameless village (in “The Day Mabata-bata Exploded”), from dawn to dusk tending the herd of cattle. However, one day while shepherding the herd, the prized-cattle otherwise called Mabata-bata stumbled upon a land mine which must have been planted by the RENAMO rebels and got blown into smithereens. In coming to terms with the understanding that his Uncle Raul would flog him for been careless, Azarias decided to hide himself in the valley as to stay away from home. But in heeding the call of his grandmother and Raul to come out of his hiding, he stepped on a mine which killed him instantly. The narrative heightens effect of the Mozambican war caused by the rivalry between FRELIMO and RENAMO which left in its wake army of maimed, pauperized and traumatized rural dwellers as its casualties. By evincing episodic narrative technique in “The Day Mabata-bata Exploded”, Couto is focusing attention on the plight of Azarias who became an orphan at a tender age and became a cowherd to his cruel uncle, Raul. This attention is further deepened by Couto’s evaluation of Azaria’s inability to access a formal education in the narrative due to poverty, which embeds a powerful metaphor for the interconnectedness of violence as harbinger of war and deprivation. For Couto, in effect, violence in “The Day Mabata-bata Exploded” problematizes the spate of political upheavals in the postcolonial Africa, whose narrations take pre-eminence over other national issues (Cazenave, 2005, p. 60). In explicating the symbolism of this story, Couto is at pain to stress that a society at war can never make any economic headway. Azaria typifies the collective Mozambican masses whose voices have been submerged in the bedlam of political schism, and whose lives have been disrupted by the ideological differences between FRELIMO and RENAMO which degenerated into civil war of 30 May 1977 to 4 October 1992.

It is interesting to note that the struggle for power occupies a prominent place in the African postcolonial discourses, but not limited to the Mozambican literary discourse. Oseghae (2004) while cautioning against inordinate struggle for power in postcolonial Africa posits that:

[I]ssues of contested identity, autonomy, citizenship, equity, power sharing and rights loomed larger than ever before in postcolonial Africa (emphasis mine), thanks to the contradictions of globalisation, democratization, liberalization and other simultaneous economic and social processes that gave vent and legitimacy to non-state and anti-state claims and demands. (p. 10)

Inordinate struggle for power highlights a discourse which Head has also subjected to a critical evaluation in “A Power Struggle”: a story of bitter political rivalry between two royalties of the Tlabina clan, Davhana, and Baeli. The narrative focuses on the displacement of Davhana the throne’s heir apparent, by his younger brother Baeli, who crowned himself in his stead afterwards through sheer brigandage. Interestingly the narrative condemns inordinate ambition among politicians, in their blind pursuit of power in the postcolonial Africa. Although, the story revolves around a melange of narrative styles, from oral narrative and fictional narrative anchored on a political anecdote which has its setting in the pre-colonial South Africa.

Its import tellingly reflects a troublesome political trajectory in the pre-colonial Africa which got extended to the postcolonial Africa, where criminals and individuals of questionable characters have often emerged as members of the political elite of most African countries. Baeli’s usurpation of power through might rather than the people’s will, led to the political ruination of the Tlabina clan. This communal ruination reflects Soyinka’s (1999) submission on the violent crime perpetrated by the African rulers on their subjects “[t]he crimes that the


83

African continent commits against her kind are of a dimension and, unfortunately, of a nature that appears to constantly provoke memories of the historic wrongs inflicted on that continent by others” (p. 19). By exploring the way in which power is deviously pursued and aggressively hijacked by Baeli, Head ostensibly tends to demonstrate that power is often violently acquired in Africa through armed insurrection rather than by democratic means.

If the discourse of power and its acquisition process in the pre-colonial Africa foregrounds the thematic preoccupation of “A Power Struggle”, its deployment as a weapon for hounding the real and imagined enemies constitute its dialectic in “The General”. It is a narrative which anatomizes power and its intoxication in a nameless, postcolonial Southern African country, where a charismatic personality was elected on the basis of brilliance and patriotism. In retrospect, these twin attributes of the President have been elliptically alluded to by Head (1989) in the narrative “[T]hings were not so bad in the beginning. The President had charm and his intellectual brilliance was recognised throughout the whole world. He was completely objective and that was his charm” (p. 102). Characteristic of most leaders in the postcolonial African states, the nameless president in the narrative soon become a despot with egocentric and dictatorial credentials. His dictatorial proclivity manifests in the incarceration of scores of brilliant young politicians and intellectuals who were railroaded into jail and others forced into hasty exile. This madness continued unabated until a coup forced the president out of power. Inherent power dialogic embedded in “The General” has been appropriated by Head to highlight consequences of political tyranny and dictatorship in the postcolonial Africa.

Conclusions

The paper has articulated how memory has been appropriated to untangle a complex web of misery and violence which permeated the narratives of Mia Couto’s Voices Made Night and Bessie Head’s Tales of Tenderness and Power. Just as New Historicism does not consider art (images and narratives) as products to be merely contemplated for their aesthetic content, the paper has argued that stories in the anthologies fittingly operate as sites of “socio-political workshop” where political issues, economic anxieties, social struggles, problems, hopes and aspirations are addressed by the two writers.

The paper has subjected the literary interpretations of the political tension between FRELIMO/RENAMO in Mozambique and the black township’s violence in the apartheid South Africa within the historical epochs that produced the texts, which have invariably influenced the issues raised in them. Couto and Head’s reliance on memory in the anthologies becomes a means of negotiating the Mozambican and South African politics and societies in the paper. To this end, critical attention consequently shifts from the authors, the canons and the organic texts to the study of the forms and flows of power. In conclusion, memory facilitates in the texts, sites for the negotiation, authorisation, interrogation, and recuperation of the dialogic between the adversarial parties, between the ruler and the ruled.

References Abrams, M. H. (1981). A glossary of literary terms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Agovi, K. (1995). A king is not above insult: The politics of good governance in Nzema Avudwene festival songs. In F. Graham,

& L. Gunner (Eds.), Power, marginality and African oral literature (pp. 47-61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Booker, K. M. (1996). A practical introduction to literary theory and criticism. White Plains: Longman. Brennan, T. (1993). History after Lacan. London and New York: Routledge.


84

Carlson, M. (1993). Theories of the theatre: A historical and cultural survey from the Greeks to the present (Expanded Ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cazenave, O. (2005). Writing the child, youth, and violence into the Francophone novel from Sub-Saharan Africa: The impact of age and gender. Research in African Literatures, 36(2), 59-71.

Couto, M. (1990). Voices made night. England: Heinemann Education Limited. Goncalves, L. (2009). Mia Couto and Mozambique: The renegotiation of the national narrative and identity in an African nation

(Ph.D. Thesis, Carolina: University of North Carolina). Head, B. (1989). Tales of tenderness and power. England: Heinemann Education Limited. Mosieleng, P. (2004). Conditions of exile and the negation of commitment: A biographical study of Bessie Head. In I. Human

(Ed.), Emerging perspectives on Bessie Head (pp. 105-125). Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, Inc.. Oseghae, E. E. (2004). Federalism and the management of diversity in Africa. Identity, Culture and Politics, 5(1-2), 164. Perraudin, P. (2005). From a “large morsel of meat” to “passwords-in-flesh”: Resistance through representation of the tortured

body in Labou Tansi’s La vie et demie. Research in African Literatures, 36(2), 72-84. Said, E. (1990). Figures, configurations, transfigurations. Race and Class, 32(1), 1-16. Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. New York: Oxford University Press. Selden, R. (1989). Practicing theory and reading literature: An introduction. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Soyinka, W. (1999). The burden of memory, the muse of forgiveness. New York: Oxford University Press. Tyson, L. (1999). Critical theory today. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.. White, H. (1978). The historical text as literary artifact: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.


Causes of Pecola’s Tragedy in The Bluest Eye∗

WANG Xiao-yan Changchun University, Changchun, China

LIU Xi Changchun University, Changchun, China

Toni Morrison has a unique status in American literature. She is the winner of the National Book Critic Circle

Award, the Pulitzer for Fiction and many other literary awards. She was granted the Nobel Prize for literature in

1993, thus becoming the first African-American writer to receive this honor. Her first novel The Bluest Eye (1970)

tells the story of the bitter and tragic experience suffered by Pecola, a little black girl, and loss of black people’s

self-respect, confidence, value, and culture. The present paper, first of all, gives a brief introduction of the story.

Then the paper explores the root causes of Pecola’s tragedy from two aspects: The cause of racial oppression and

self-hatred, and the cause of the loss in her independent consciousness. The paper concludes that Pecola is the

victim and scapegoat of racial oppression, self-hatred and the loss of her independent consciousness existing in

the black community.

Keywords: The Bluest Eye, causes, self-hatred, loss of independent consciousness

Introduction

Toni Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye (1970) tells the heartbreaking story of Pecola Breedlove, a vulnerable black girl, living in Ohio, in the early 1940s. The 1993 Nobel Prize presentation speech points out, “In her depictions of the world of the black people, in life as in legend, Toni Morrison has given the Afro-American people their history back, piece by piece”. Yet, at the same time her work is always symbolic of the shared human condition, transcending lines of gender, race, and class. The most enduring impression her novel leave is of “empathy, of compassion with one’s fellow human beings” (YANG, 2004, p. 165).

The story centers around the tragic life of a little black girl named Pecola Breedlove. The Breedloves are the poorest family of the town, who live in a storefront of an abandoned store. Pecola, 11 years old, is black and ugly. Her father, Cholly Breedlove, is driven to alcoholism by a life of appalling racial oppression. Once he burned up his house and turned his family outdoors. Driven by her husband’s rage and the unbearable misery of her life, her mother, Pauline tries to escape from life and finds peace only working as a servant in white’s home. She gives more care and attention to her master’s children than her own little girl. The poverty-stricken and frustrated couple is constantly quarreling and fighting. They totally ignore their daughter Pecola. At school

∗ Acknowledgements: This paper is part of the result of the research programs the authors have participated “The Study of Counter-elite Essentiality in American Post-modernism Novels”, 2013, No. 265.

WANG Xiao-yan, associate professor, School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University. LIU Xi, lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Changchun University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

CAUSES OF PECOLA’S TRAGEDY IN THE BLUEST EYE 86

other children bully and ridicule her, calling her ugly. Imprisoned by dire poverty and extreme misery, Pecola wishes for lighter skin, blond hair, and especially blue eyes like movie star Shirley Temple and other white girls, which was the mainstream white cultural values at that time. She believes that her ugliness is the source of all her misery and that having blue eyes would be the key to happiness. Finally, through madness, she thinks that her eyes have become blue. In her imagination she has been transformed into a pretty girl, as she is waiting for love and happiness to come to her. Ironically, her drunken father gets home, and gives “love” to his daughter by raping her. The little girl becomes pregnant and she gives birth to a stillborn child. She sinks deeper into despair and madness. In the end of the novel, “She was so sad to see. Grown people looked away; children, those who were not frightened by her, laughed outright… the damage done was total” (Morrison, 1970, p. 122). Pecola’s father died in the workhouse; her mother still does housework. Pecola and her mother move to a little house on the edge of the town. The black little girl is often seen picking her way “between the tire rims and the sunflowers, among all the waste and beauty of the world-which is what she herself was” (Morrison, 1970, p. 122).

The Causes of Pecola’s Tragedy

The Cause of Racial Oppression and Self-hatred The Bluest Eye depicts the pernicious psychological impact that the dominant white cultural values have

had on black people. Published in 1970, The Bluest Eye has its setting in the black community in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, long before the Civil Rights Movement. In those days, blackness was synonymous with ugliness. The dominant white culture exercised its hegemony and dictated standards of beauty. Many black people accepted an internalized white values and developed self-contempt and self-hatred for themselves or other black people, making some of their own people victims and scapegoats.

In Hate Prejudice and Racism (1993), Milton Kleg points out: “Self-hatred refers to the condition where an individual attempts to blame his or her group for those problems encountered by acts of prejudice” (as cited in YANG, 2004, p. 183). Self-hatred is a result of thorough assimilation into the dominant white culture and ideology and complete denial of one’s own racial roots and cultural heritage. Self-hatred is an important theme of The Bluest Eye. By exploring self-hatred among the black people, The Bluest Eye reveals the deep psychological injury white racism has inflicted on African-Americans.

Even the mixed blood girl victimized the black people. In one of the most vivid scenes in the novel, Toni Morrison describes a particular type of blacks—brown-skinned people. These brown girls have lighter skins than other black people because their mixed blood. Many of them are descendents of former slaves who were house servants. Working in the house rather than in the fields, they were closer to their slave owners than the field Negroes. It was a common thing for a white master to have babies with black maids.

They hold themselves up high above the other blacks. These sugar-brown girls are from better-off families, “go to land-grant colleges, learn how to do the white man’s work with refinement” (YANG, 2003, p. 122), marry successfully, living in their own inviolable worlds in quiet, black neighborhoods. With a certain proportion of white blood, they feel superior to other black people. Like the whites, they detest blackness, and project their hatred and contempt for it onto Negroes with darker skins. They blindly believe in the mainstream white cultural value and imitate the white middle class in every possible way. They whitened the skin, or have


surgery that makes the nose narrow and higher, or straighten their hair and may be dyed it blond. They were more alienated from their black cultural heritage.

Pecola was growing under such circumstances everyday she prays for a miracle to happen, so that she is given a pair of the bluest eyes. She is convinced that if she had blue eyes, she would become pretty and happy and that all her problems would be gone. Yet the hard reality cheated her. She not only could not get the love from her parents, but also bullied by other children. At school, Pecola kept her head down, showing she was very timid and frightened. She was very lonely, too. At recess kids played together, but nobody ever played with her. She was “ugly” because she is very black, she represented an image of extreme ugliness and dire poverty. All the kids, including Pecola herself, thought so because all of them were educated to internalize the value that dictates standards of beauty. Even the brown-skinned lady—Geraldine who even called black children “niggers”. Because of her distorted motherhood, her son—Junior also bullied Pecola.

Pecola is a victim of racial oppression and a scapegoat for the self-oppression and self-hatred existing in the black community.

The Cause of the Loss in Her Independent Consciousness In The Bluest Eye, Pecola, who is described as “the popeyed, tongue-tied kid” (Baldwin, 1984, p. 14) in

America with racial discrimination, could not accept her own independent subject identity and accept the image others imposed on her. Furthermore exposed to the influence of the family, community, mass media, school and others, she has lost the black aesthetic value. Her desire for the blue eyes indicates the loss of her independent consciousness.

Pecola lives in a family without love, safety, and warmth. Cholly is an irresponsible father who never shows paternal love to her and Pauline, her mother, who has self-hatred, who excludes the black culture, passes the sense of ugliness and inferiority to her, which impels Pecola to accept the white aesthetic values and concept unconsciously. The dislike and rejection of her mother to her have intensified her self-denied and her loss of the subjective consciousness, “which means that human beings as subject in a real world realizes consciously that they take the special, superior and dominate position” (Kriegel, 2009, p. 67). The subjective consciousness makes her feel fearful to the development and even fall into the crisis of the self-recognition. Lacking the parental love and guidance, Pecola has illusion of getting the blue eyes to escape from the miserable life. Morrison (1970) writes:

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they’d say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes”. (p. 40)

If she had the blue eyes, parents would stop fighting and her brother would not run away and her teachers and classmates would like her and would gaze at her. Having blue eyes means having everything—love, acceptance, family, and friend for. Obviously, Pecola has already accepted the white beauty norms and prays to get them everyday.

Pecola has lost her independent consciousness, so other’s consciousness influences her thinking and she accepts the image that others have imposed on her. Under the impact of the white culture, the whole community is


marginalized, so the black loses their subjective consciousness, which makes them lose their own culture and aesthetic value. In that case, the blacks have unhealthy mentality and find their beauty from Pecola’s ugliness. So she has experienced indifference of her family and discrimination from the others; as a little girl how could she observe the world with the correct angle?

In order to change her life, Pecola first thinks that she should change the things she has seen and she believes that changing the color of her eyes would change her fate, because from her point of view, people with blue eyes would see the beautiful world. The desire of the blue eyes indicates that she has internalized the white norm of the beauty. Therefore, she has lost the independent consciousness to think and has forgotten that she is an independent human being. In our opinion, when she faced the unfair treatment, she should have resist rather than escape and when others regarded her as ugliness, she should have reject the model of socialization they represented. The fact is, under that circumstances, that she could only accept and endure. Instead of venting her anger, she would rather live with a dream of having blue eyes. She is made by the circumstance to lose her independent consciousness and lives in the dream which makes her sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of misery. Her dream of finding shelter in her fantasy of whiteness mercilessly destroyed, the girl is thrown into madness.

Conclusions

Pecola is a fragile and delicate child when the novel begins, but at the end of the novel, she has been almost completely destroyed by the racial oppression, self-hatred, and her loss of independent consciousness.

Pecola is a symbol of the black community’s self-hatred and belief in its own ugliness. Others in the community, including her mother, father, and Geraldine, act out their own self-hatred by expressing hatred toward her. Therefore, in The Bluest Eye, they considered white color, blonde hair, and the bluest eye as the standard of beauty, and the black skin as the symbol of dirty and ugliness. They lost and abandoned themselves, changed the value standard and denied the fact of existence as the black, which became the source of their tragedy.

At the end of the novel, we are told that Pecola has been a scapegoat for the entire community. Her ugliness has made them feel beautiful, her suffering has made them feel comparatively lucky, and her silence has given them the opportunity for speaking. But because she continues to live after she has lost her mind, Pecola’s aimless wandering at the edge of town haunts the community, reminding them of the ugliness and hatred that they have tried to repress. She becomes a reminder of human cruelty and an emblem of human suffering.

Pecola’s fate is a fate worse than death because she is not allowed any release from her world—she simply moves to “the edge of town, where you can see her even now” (Morrison, 1970, p. 122). The paper believes that the loss of black people’s independent and subjective consciousness leads to the loss of their black culture. In order to get the real independence, the blacks must recover their subjective consciousness, regain self-respect, and self-confidence, and realize that they play a crucial role in the survival of their nation.

References Baldwin, J. (1984). Notes of a native son. Boston: Beacon Press. Carl, D. M. (2000). Texts, Primers, and Voices in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye Critique. Critique, 41(3), 251-260. CHANG, Y. X. (2002). A survey of American literature. Tianjin: Nankai University Press. Dittmar, L. (1990). The politics of form in The Bluest Eye. A Forum on Fiction, 23(2), 137-155. GUI, Y. Q. (1985). Selected reading in English and American literature. Beijing: Translation Company Press.


James, W. (1997). Morrison’s the bluest eye. The Explicator, 55(3), 172-175. Kleg, M. (1993). The prejudice and racism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kriegel, U. (2009). Subjective consciousness: A self-representational theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuena, J. (1993). The Bluest Eye: Notes on history, community, and black female subjectivity. African American Review, 27(3),

421-431. Morrison, T. (1970). The bluest eye. New York: Washington Square Press. Rubinstein, A. T. (1988). American literature: Root and flower. Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press. Wong, S. (1990). Transgression as poesis in The Bluest Eye. Callaloo, 13(3), 471-481. YANG, L. M. (2003). Contemporary college English. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. YANG, L. M. (2004). Teachers’ book of contemporary college English. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.


Spatial Representations in Charles Dickens’s

New York and London

Tzu Yu Allison Lin Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey

The purpose of this research is to see the image of New York and London in Charles Dickens’s writings. In

American Notes (1987), on the surface, the city shows Dickens’s eye of observation, revealing the dark side of the

city. However, his writing expresses more than what he sees. In this paper, the author sees New York and London

not only as realistic accounts of what things look like, but also a true realization of how Dickens feels about himself,

and about the country in which he was situated in. In Oliver Twist (2003), a New York prison can be linked to

Dickens’s London, representing the darkness of the city with the prison cell and its suggestiveness, including

punishment, exclusion, and dehumanization. A New York Asylum reveals the dialectic of order and disorder, in a

way which alienation brings out the crisis of humanity. This research shows that New York is an extension of

London, in a way which the personal crisis is vividly revealed, as the reader can see in Charles Dickens: A Life

(2012). Through New York, Dickens is more conscious about his London childhood, as spatial representations of

London have their own symbolic meanings.

Keywords: Charles Dickens, New York, London, space, representation, prison, insanity

Introduction

In this paper, the author deals with an issue, which is essential to the study of Charles Dickens’s writings. Critics usually focus on the image of the city of London, in a way which they found Dickens and his novels were best known. And yet, the author argues that Dickens’s American Notes (1987) also plays a critical role in Dickens’s writing career. It takes a form of travel writing, but it does not only show an ordinary tourist’s point of view. Dickens’s New York, in his writing, expresses a particular perspective of how this Victorian writer sees himself and his own past as an internationally celebrated writer. His New York is significant, because through that city, the reader can see the way in which Dickens comes to connect to his childhood memory in London through writing.

America

The image of America seems to be a fairy land for the British travelers. Daniel Defoe’s most famous character, Robinson Crusoe, has travelled to “an un-inhibited island on the Coast of America” (Defoe, 1998, title page), as in his title page of the novel Robinson Crusoe shows. Although Crusoe’s trip was not to the continent

Tzu Yu Allison Lin, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Foreign Language Education, Gaziantep University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

SPATIAL REPRESENTATIONS IN CHARLES DICKENS’S NEW YORK AND LONDON 91

itself, the spirit is to travel and to see a different kind of world, such as Charles Dickens himself, as a Victorian traveler, would do. Dickens’s American Notes may not be as well-known as his other fictional writings about the city of London. According to Grubb’s American Notes (1950), “appeared in London on October 18, 1842” (p. 101). In general, the reviewers do not like it. One of the “unfavorable reviews” even says that this work of Dickens’s “has no real literary value” (Grubb, 1950, p. 101).

Dickens may be able to use his travel experience later in his novels, as Meckier (1984) points out, to “[transform] an unsatisfactory England into that best of all possible worlds he had hoped to discover in America” (p. 273). Stone (1957) also claims that Dickens’s travel experience in America, is certainly not purposeless and useless. Dickens’s American Notes can be read as a way, in which one can see “his artistic methods and limitations” (p. 464). To be more precise, as Heilman (1947) puts it, the American experience is Dickens’s “source of materials to be used in satirizing Europe” (p. 21), in his later writings. At the first glance, in general, American Notes shows that Dickens “became disenchanted with many things American” (Waller, 1960, p. 535). There may be rumors about why Dickens “became soured upon American manners” and “customs” (Grubb, 1951, p. 87). And yet, the author would argue that his image of New York is certainly worth a discussion in depth.

New York and Dickens’s Dual Vision

Dickens’s perspective of the city of New York indicates a double ways of seeing—First of all, he sees people and things as what an outsider or a traveler can possibly see; and second, he sees the city as a representation of a part of his personal history. More precisely, this personal history refers to his memory as a young man. This dual way of seeing a city represents his own thoughts and feelings, as Dickens’s narrative forms a threshold between his own self and the narrator in the travel writing. Spaces of New York City are filled with metaphorical meanings. But the question is, why are these images significant?

The image of Charles Dickens’s New York City is a “witch’s cauldron”, which is “hot”, “suffocating”, and “vaporous” (Dickens, 1987, p. 142). Just as Poe (1996) points out in his short story, “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), there are certain books which are not suppose to be read, “[t]here are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told” (p. 388). Here, the author would like to add up one more thing—the city of New York, in Dickens’s narrative, is a city which does not permit itself to be visited.

Poe’s man of the crowd is an observer. This man seems to be indicating Charles Baudelaire’s image of the flâneur, which is a representative figure, finding himself “[t]o be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world” (Baudelaire, 1995, p. 9). As a traveler, Dickens has his own friends who are able to take him around the city, so that he can feel free to see whatever he wants to see. Although he does not tell his readers whos these “friends”1 are, we can be sure that he is “grateful” to have their company, without even mentioning about any of their names, as he writes in the 1859 Library Edition Preface. These friends make Dickens’s observation of New York City possible, as he travels and becomes a man of leisure, when he visits places such as Music and Dance Halls for

1 According to Tomalin (2012), Washington Irving was one of the friends, who “spoke in his praise” in “the New York Dickens Dinner”. Dickens had a chance to meet Irving “almost daily”, for taking the issue of “international copyright to the Congress”. Cornelius Felton was also with Dickens most of the time in New York, together they visited “a great many oyster cellars” (p. 132).


entertainments. He is also engaged in seeing places he wants to see, particularly Institutions such as prisons and mental hospitals.

The streets of New York City have their own textual and social meanings. Broadway is the first street, which Dickens addresses, when he stays in “the upper floor” of “the Carlton House Hotel” (Dickens, 1987, p. 128). Dickens could gaze at the stream of life on the street from his window. This stream of life shows Broadway as “a sunny street”. Dickens’s hotel room window is burning because of the heat of the sun, through which, in “ten minutes” time, he sees all kinds of well-dressed ladies, and their colorful parasols. Black and white coachmen are in different colors and styles of hats:

In straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps, fur caps, in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nankeen, striped jean and linen; and there, in that one instance (look while it passes, or it will be too late), in suits of livery. (Dickens, 1987, p. 128)

In Dickens’s writing, one can see that he seems to be taking a picture through his hotel room window as a traveler can do, as his eye becomes a symbolic camera eye, looking at people’s movements and their fashion styles as they pass. As a traveler, his mood is cheerful, since Broadway is so sunny, as:

[T]he pavement stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry, hot kilns; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. (Dickens, 1987, p. 128)

The heat of Broadway feels just like Dickens’s passion of looking at the crowd, as the adventure of walking around New York City has just begun.

And yet, the bright vision and the cheerful mood of Dickens’s, after a while, turn to an image of horror, when he walks along Bow Street. This street represents an area, which is full of “narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth” (Dickens, 1987, p. 136). This is one of the worst places in Dickens’ New York, because it is very dirty and filthy. For instances, the houses here are “prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays” (Dickens, 1987, p. 136).

Houses seem to indicate the condition of people who live there. Apparently, people live in Bow Street are not very healthy, and they look old and shabby. The windows of their houses are “broken”, as if those people are as drunk as “pigs” (Dickens, 1987, p. 136). Their eyes have been injured because they are unconscious and drunk. Dickens’s hotel room window in Broadway seems to be perfect. To compare to other people who live in different areas of New York, people in Bow Street cannot even be named in human terms—even the place they live is like a “wolfish den” (Dickens, 1987, p. 137). There is this “Negro” (Dickens, 1987, p. 137) lives in this “miserable room”, among one of the “squalid street” and a “square of leprous houses” (Dickens, 1987, p. 137). In Broadway, there are black men and white men. At least they all look like human beings. But here, black man is a nameless “Negro”, with a socially insignificant fever in his head. In the bottom of the social class, this person does not even bother to “look up”, when the officer asks him for what happened to him (Dickens, 1987, p. 137). Dickens’s term “Negro” here suggests the man’s being black. It has a stronger implication of Dickens’s discontent of “[t]he barbarity of the slavery system” (Pound, 1947, p. 124), as he sees “the horrors of the system” (Dickens, 1987, p. 269).


The term “Negro” is particularly meaningful, when in the context of Southern America, as people can “own, breed, use, buy and sell” their slaves (Adrian, 1952, p. 319). As Claybaugh (2006) points out, “British antislavery activities offered their American counterparts moral example, financial support and practical advice. This support peaked in the early 1840s, at the moment when Dickens made his tour of the United States” (p. 444). Here the author’s point is, the general impression of America, in Dickens’s writing, seems to be rough and barbaric. Clearly, the general condition of the way in which people live is not as good as Dickens has expected—to a least expectation of a human being’s living condition. Although it is not particular necessary to see Dickens’s American Notes as a “propaganda for reform” (Goldberg, 1972, p. 74), still, the author can see more about the human conditions in America that Dickens has noticed. For Dickens, in some areas of New York, people—including white or black, men or women, their way of living makes them all look like animals, as he noticed, “Such is life: all flesh is pork!” (Dickens, 1987, p. 134). In some certain extreme social conditions, the way people live represents them as only different kinds of “pigs” (Dickens, 1987, p. 134), or “a pig’s likeness” (Dickens, 1987, p. 134).

These people’s situation seems to be indicating Dickens’s moment of Dickens’s own awakening, especially, when he sees the “colour prints of Washington, and Queen Victoria of England, and the American Eagle” on the wall of these “pigeon-holes” houses (Dickens, 1987, p. 136). It is hard to tell, from Dickens’s writing, how people in New York feel about Queen Victoria. And yet, the contrast between monarchy and “an American form of Government, with an elective head of State” (Benson & Esher, 1907, p. 640), is still there. According to the King of the Belgians, in his letter written in Laeken, on 15th December 1843, to his niece Queen Victoria, the reader can see that some people in England, “for some years”, thought “that Royalty was useless and ignorant” (Benson & Esher, 1907, p. 639). The color prints of Queen Victoria of England on the wall in the street of New York, certainly brings out “a very aristocratic feeling” (Benson & Esher, 1907, p. 640).

It seems that both worlds, across the Atlantic, are each other’s counterparts. The King of the Belgians remembered that there was “a very rich and influential American from New York”, he thought that the Americans need “a Government which was able to grant protection to property, and that feeling of many was for Monarchy instead of the misrule of mobs” (Benson & Esher, 1907, p. 640). In Dickens’s New York, ironically enough, images such as “designed ships, and forts, and flags, and American Eagles out of number” can particularly be seen in those poor areas, in a way which the rich American man from New York in the letter of the King of Belgians, seems to have a point. These colorful images of American dreams come to make a sharp contrast with the reality of the visible world of New York City—the area of “ruined houses, opened to the street, whence, through wide gaps in the walls” (Dickens, 1987, p. 138). The “wide gaps” of the walls seem to ironically indicate the “gaps” between the dream image and the visible reality, reinforcing the ambiguity of the private and the public spheres, as the houses are opened to the street.

The Victorian Prison and Insanity

Dickens has made a decision of leaving America and going back to England, when he was in New York. Most probably, he realizes that home is not perfect, but it seems to be at least livable. This City of New York, in his eyes, is nothing more than a broken dream. Visiting a Lunatic Asylum in Long Island area, Dickens was again, painfully shocked by the “naked ugliness and horror” of human faces and human conditions. A typical one is


called the “moping idiot”, with “long disheveled hair”, “the gibbering maniac”, “hideous laugh and pointed finger” (Dickens, 1987, p. 140). The wall of the dining-room is “empty”, “with nothing for the rest of the eye to rest”. Among these “bare, dull” and “dreary” spaces, the author would argue that Dickens sees a sadness of this “refuge of afflicted and degraded humanity” (Dickens, 1987, pp. 140-141). The true meaning of American spirit, here in Dickens’s eyes, is something as hot and as dry as a desert, “sickening and blighting everything of wholesome life with its reach” (Dickens, 1987, p. 141). New York seems to be the most of it, with the “crowd” of terror in the “madhouse”. The threshold of the mental hospital reveals Dickens’s feeling of “deep disgust and measureless contempt” (Dickens, 1987, p. 141). It is a threshold of non-returning, no matter physically or spiritually. Dickens does not even look back again.

Home is not perfect, but as least it has a sense of humanity. Dickens’s observation of prisons in New York, once more, makes readers see the vivid image of a kind of human-as-animal way of living. Even prisons back home in England, for Dickens, treats the prisoners as human beings, instead of caged chickens. For example, Dickens sees this man of 60 years old, who “has murdered his wife, and will probably be hanged” (Dickens, 1987, p. 132). Dickens depicts this man in his “small bare” prison cell, in a way which shows that this man is like an actor on the stage, with a spot light coming from above, as “the light enters through a high chink in the wall” (Dickens, 1987, p. 132). The wall of this prison cell indicates the consciousness of the man and his thought, when he is reading in this “four walled room” (Benjamin, 1973, p. 37). And yet, ironically, this man is not allowed to walk freely in the city, unlike the flâneur. He looks up at Dickens’s eyes, “for a moment”, but soon he “gives an impatient dogged shake; and fixes his eyes upon his book again” (Dickens, 1987, p. 132).

Dickens (1987) tells the officer, that “[i]n England, if a man be under sentence of death, even, he has air and exercise at certain periods of the day” (p. 132). Dickens (1987) also notices that there is a “lonely child, of ten or twelve years old” also in another prison cell. He is again in deep shock, when he realizes that this boy is the son of that reading man. The function of this boy is to be “a witness against his father” (p. 132), but he is also treated as a prisoner, staying in a separate cell for a month.

The child “of ten or twelve” in the city prison of New York, most probably makes Dickens thought about his own childhood. It was almost twenty years ago before he visited America. According to Angus Calder, in the year of 1823, Dickens’s “family moved to London, faced with financial disaster”, because Dickens’s father John Dickens “had been arrested for debt, and soon the whole family, except for Charles who was found lodgings, joined him in the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison” (Calder, 1987, p. 7). Although Dickens did not join the family in the prison, and yet, according to Calder, this “family shame” “transformed him”, “which haunted him till his death” (Calder, 1987, p. 7). The shameful feeling is like the shadow under the long and thick “brick structure” of “the Marshalea’s wall” (Tagholm, 2001, p. 172). This boy in the city prison of New York happens to have a similar age with Dickens’s, when his family was in prison. Dickens had the feeling of humiliation not only because of his father’s being in prison, as “the buildings were old and shabby” (Tomalin, 2012, p. 23), but also before that had happened in February 1824, the family was “pursued by creditors with increasing ferocity, their furious knockings and shoutings at the front door driving his father to ignominious hiding places upstairs” (Tomalin, 2012, p. 22). Dickens, “as the man of the family, just twelve years old”, had absolutely “[n]o help” from any other family members—not even from his uncle William Dickens who owned a coffee shop in Oxford Street.

At Warren’s factory, “young and sensitive” Dickens had to use his “lunch hour to keep up his education”


(Tomalin, 2012, p. 24), while his parents did not care about the importance of his being educated. As Tomalin explains, Dickens’s experiences:

Of debt, fear, angry creditors, bailiffs, pawnbrokers, prison, living in freezing empty rooms and managing on what can be borrowed or begged—were impressed on his mind and used again and again in his stories and novels, some-times grimly, sometimes with humour. (Tomalin, 2012, p. 23)

As the reader can see the “realistic milieu” (Lankford, 1978, p. 20) of London in Oliver Twist (2003). Dickens’s walk in the city prison of New York, comes as a symbolic walk into his own personal history. The

prison boy can be seen as a form of child labour, since he is there not for his criminal behavior, but for watching his father. The situation of this boy, somehow reminds in Dickens himself, that his memory of his early form of child labor, as “[t]wo days before his twelfth birthday, the boy began work as a factory at Hungerford Stairs, labelling bottles for six shillings a week” (Calder, 1987, p. 7). Dickens’s illustration of New York may only be a very small part of his American Notes, and yet, it shows his emotions and his feelings about New York, in a way which his words and his self are strongly connected. In January 1840, the “young woman prisoner” from Marylebone Workhouse was “accused of killing her newborn baby in the kitchen of her employers’ house” also made Dickens upset, because of the “terrified, ignorant, unhappy” (Tomalin, 2012, p. xii) servant girl and her missing baby. It reminds him a feeling of “powerless,” facing a “traumatic situation” (Freud, 1959, p. 170) of loss and pain, as what he had been through when he was 12, just like his character Oliver and his “helpless position of a child,” while facing “terror and uncertainly” (West, 1989, p. 46).

London, Prison: Oliver Twist

As Werner and Williams (2011) once claimed:

Dickens’s word-pictures of London did not simply describe a backdrop, a stage set, upon which the novelist’s artfully-drawn characters world play out their lives, loves, hates and fears. London itself is a central presence in the novels, a character in its own right. (p. 7)

For the author, Dickens’s London prison in Oliver Twist, recognizing by Kincaid (1968) as “a dark novel” (p. 63), provides one of the best examples for this statement. In Chapter the Fourteenth, “The Jew’s Last Night Alive”, the reader can see the way in which Dickens made his verbal portraits of the prison and the prisoner “a spectacle” (Dickens, 2003, p. 446). The prison is depicted as a fearful space, representing crisis and the painful experience which Dickens had in his childhood. The prison in Oliver Twist has a “death-like stillness” (Dickens, 2003, p. 441), urging a feeling of anxiety. The prisoner is left “alone” in one of “the condemned cells” “through a gloomy passage, lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison” (Dickens, 2003, p. 443).

As Foucault (1991) has stated in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, the purpose of putting a criminal in prison is to let one “pay one’s debt” (p. 233) by losing one’s own freedom. Imprisonment is a situation, according to Foucault (1991), which shows a “self-evident” character of the prison in a form of “deprivation of liberty” (p. 232). The prisoner is like a beast in its cage, ruling by “silence” (Foucault, 1991, p. 238). Silence and isolation are very important. Through the form of “absolute isolation” and silence, it is possible to have some sort of enlightenment “from within” (Foucault, 1991, p. 238), in a way which one can achieve “a change of ‘morality’” (Foucault, 1991, p. 239). In Dickens’s (2003) narrative, the prison cell is very dark,


depicting an illusion of many prisoners’ “last hours”, as if the Jew can see “the faces” “beneath that hideous veil”, when light is “desperately needed” (p. 445). The death sentence has been decided by the court. It gives no time for the Jew to think about morality. All he has is endless fear, in the long night and “in its dreadful silence”, counting by “the church-clocks strike”, as “[t]he boom of every iron bell came laden with the one deep hollow sound—Death” (Dickens, 2003, p. 445).

As Frederick (1966) has claimed, “the image of evil [Oliver Twist] presents is far more forceful than that of the ostensibly triumphant good” (p. 465). Like Dickens’s New York prison, this prisoner is under the gaze of a young boy—Oliver. The prisoner represents a sight of horror himself, “in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath”, as he “grew so terrible at last in all the tortures of his evil consciousness” and the “full intensity upon his blighted soul” (Dickens, 2003, p. 446). It is indeed, “not a sight for children” (Dickens, 2003, p. 447). But according to Mr. Brownlow, Oliver is “intimately connected with” the Jew. As a child, Oliver “has seen him in the full career of his success and villainy” (Dickens, 2003, p. 447). Just like the child in the New York prison and Dickens’s own childhood experience of prison visiting, the meeting between Oliver and the Jew in prison in the novel reminds the reader “dark and winding ways towards the cells”, visualizing the fear of punishment through the “narrow steps” and the passage which leads to “a row of strong doors” (Dickens, 2003, p. 447). Oliver sees the horrible situation of the prisoner. As Dickens (2003) depicts:

The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for he continued to mutter, without seeming conscious of their presence otherwise than as a part of his vision. (p. 448)

This scene synthesises imprisonment and madness, as the prisoner is “rocking himself from side to side” on his bed. The Jew now looks like a mad beast, rather than a human being. As Foucault has pointed out, “madmen remained monsters—that is, etymologically, beings or things to be shown” (Foucault, 1988, p. 70). Insanity, like the criminal’s “evil consciousness” in Dickens’s narrative, is treated as one of many “forms of evil”, as “Classicism felt a shame in the presence of the inhuman that the Renaissance had never experienced” (Foucault, 1988, p. 68). Dickens’s own childhood situation and the scenes in American Notes and Oliver Twist all show the reader the way in which different forms of de-humanization in the 19th-century.

Conclusions

To conclude, Dickens’s figures of imprisonment and insanity are “symbolic” (Grossman, 2012, p. 155). These figures can be read as metaphors of de-humanization, with terms such as “pigs” or “beasts”, applying to human beings. “Life in the city”, as Duffy Jr. (1968) has stated, “so diminishes its inhabitants that the slum-dwellers are like rats and Fagin like a reptile and man like a dog or dog like a man in the Sikes relationship with his cur” (p. 408). As a novelist, Dickens’s London and its Victorian prison scene in Oliver Twist demonstrate the same sense of “exclusion” and “silencing” (Sapouna, 2012, p. 613), as the readers can see in his New York prisons and mental institutions in American Notes. The sense of exclusion and silencing is symbolic, in a way which a human being becomes a non-being, or some sort of nothingness, being separated from humanity, and being pushed into darkness. This darkness comes to deform a person, showing primitive savagery through institutions. It reinforces the dialectic between order and disorder, civilization and crisis, performing the end and yet, the beginning of things, as a part of human life.


References Adrian, A. (1952). Dickens on American slavery: A carlylean slant. PMLA, 67(4), 315-329. Baudelaire, C. (1995). The painter of modern life and other essays. (J. Mayne, Trans.). London: Phaidon. Benjamin, W. (1973). Charles Baudelaire: A lyric poet in the era of high capitalism. (H. Zohn, Trans.). London: New Left Books. Benson, A. C., & Esher, V. (Eds.). (1907). The letters of Queen Victoria: A selection from Her Majesty’s correspondence between

the years 1837 and 1861, Volume I. London: John Murray. Calder, A. (1987). Charles Dickens: A note. American Notes (pp. 7-10). Middlesex: Penguin. Claybaugh, A. (2006). Toward a new transatlanticism: Dickens in the United States. Victorian Studies, 48(3), 439-460. Defoe, D. (1998). Robinson crusoe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dickens, C. (1987). American notes. J. S. Whitley, & A. Goldman, (Eds.). Middlesex: Penguin. Dickens, C. (2003). Oliver twist. P. Horne, (Ed.). London: Penguin. Duffy, Jr. J. M. (1968). Another version of pastoral: Oliver twist. ELH, 35(3), 403-421. Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization. New York: Vintage. Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin. Frederick, K. C. (1966). The cold, cold hearth: Domestic strife in Oliver Twist. College English, 27(6), 465-470. Freud, S. (1959). An autobiographical study: Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety (The standard edition of the complete psychological

works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XX). (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: Hogarth. Goldberg, M. (1972). From Bentham to Carlyle: Dickens’ political development. Journal of the History of Ideas, 33(1), 61-76. Grossman, J. H. (2012). Charles Dickens’s networks: Public transport and the novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grubb, G. G. (1950). The personal and literary relationships of Dickens and Poe (Part two: “English Notes” and “The Poet of

America”). Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 5(2), 101-120. Grubb, G. G. (1951). Dickens’ Western tour and the Cairo legend. Studies in Philology, 48(1), 87-97. Heilman, R. B. (1947). The new world in Dickens’s writings: Part two. Trollopain, 1(4), 11-26. Kincaid, J. R. (1968). Laughter and “oliver twist”. PMLA, 83(1), 63-70. Lankford, W. T. (1978). “The parish boy’s progress”: The evolving form of Oliver Twist. PMLA, 93(1), 20-32. Meckier, J. (1984). Dickens discovers America, Dickens discovers Dickens: The first visit reconsidered. The Modern Language

Review, 79(2), 266-277. Poe, E. A. (1996). The man of the crowd. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry, tales, and selected essays. New York: The Library of America. Pound, L. (1947). The American dialect of Charles Dickens. American Speech, 22(2), 124-130. Sapouna, L. (2012). Classic texts: No. 16. Community Development Journal, 47(4), 612-617. Stone, H. (1957). Dickens’ use of his American experiences in Martin Chuzzlewit. PMLA, 72(3), 464-478. Tagholm, R. (2001). Walking literary London. London: Garfield House. Tomalin, C. (2012). Charles Dickens: A life. London: Penguin. Waller, J. O. (1960). Charles Dickens and the American Civil War. Studies in Philology, 57(3), 535-548. Werner, A., & Williams, T. (2011). Dickens’s Victorian London: 1839-1901. London: The Museum of London. West, N. M. (1989). Order in disorder: Surrealism and “oliver twist”. South Atlantic Review, 54(2), 41-58.


Subversive Ambiguity in the Poetry of Delmira Agustini,

Alfonsina Storni, and Giovanna Pollarolo

Sara Villa The New School, New York, USA

This paper analyzes the poetry of Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, and Giovanna Pollarolo, three Latin

American poets who collectively spanned the arc of the 20th century, in order to demonstrate that they were all

acting to subvert certain stereotypical notions propagated by society and by canonical literature. While Agustini

used a parodic discourse to deconstruct the sacrality of masculinity, Storni employed parody and excessive,

calculated use of quotes from canonical male authors to subvert the traditional images and roles assigned to

women. Parody, hyperbolic images, and ambiguity will be analyzed here as the major literary means used by

these two poets to criticize the deep-rooted, gendered discourse of their times. Pollarolo’s poetry, as well as that

of Storni, will be analyzed as “minor” literature, as described in the theories of Deleuze and Guattari.

Keywords: subversive poetry, parody, hypebole, canonic discourse, deconstructive images, Latin America

Introduction

It might appear an arduous endeavour to try to analyze in a single essay three poets whose work was written during the span of a century and which expressed, consequently, very different concerns and needs. In the case of these poets—Agustini, Storni, and Pollarolo—it is not as complicated as it may seem, since all of them used the same linguistic devices to defend themselves against the role assigned to them.

The purpose of this work is to come to an understanding of how these three poets used a variety of methods to fight against the sanctioned, anti-feminist stereotypes and attitudes so deeply rooted in the literary canon. This paper will demonstrate how, through hyperbolic and grotesque images, each was able to defeat not only the stereotypes that have become canonical in the masculine world but also the ones that have been circulating among women. It will also be evident that, behind the apparent reverence to the canon in their poetry, there hides in fact a strong desire to subvert the canonic discourse.

Delmira Agustini: Deconstructing Sacrality

Delmira Agustini and Alfonsina Storni are two poets who worked within, respectively, a modernist period and a postmodern period. None of the two was able to escape from the refined, the artificial, and the exotic

Sara Villa, Ph.D., assistant professor of Spanish, Department of Foreign Language, School of Language and Learning, The

New School.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

SUBVERSIVE AMBIGUITY IN THE POETRY 99

aspects that Modernism had left as an inheritance. The poems “Capricho” by Agustini (1924) and “Lo blanco” by Storni (1916) are clear examples of that.

Nevertheless, the modernist vein vanishes soon in their poetry to leave space to, especially in Agustini’s case, a more personalized poetry. It is clear, however, that the modernist echoes do not disappear completely nor suddenly in their writing. In the book El libro blanco (1907) by Agustini, we notice a rejection of the euphony so typical of the modernist movement. This rejection is very well expressed in the poem “Rebelión” (1913), a clear example of her subversiveness in the treatment of rhyme. There are also a series of poems where the use of hyperbolic images allows the author to subvert the traditional stereotypes about women. “El intruso”, a poem that belongs to the collection Los astros del abismo (1924), describes a night of romantic love during which the lover-intruder is presented almost as a celestial being who, with a golden key, opens the door where he finds the narrative voice. His form/shape, a “mancha de luz y blancura”, converts him into a semi-ethereal creature, an idea reinforced in the following lines where the poet describes the “intruder” in a more idealized way. His eyes become diamonds that glow, and his head is fragrant. The lines that follow portray a woman who totally erases herself, annihilates her being under his light. She is the dog that sleeps at his feet, the one who blends into her shadow the fresh smell of her man, the one who laughs when he laughs and sings only when he sings. So it is clear in these lines that there is a perfect representation of the woman-shadow of the male partner, the faithful dog who never separates from her man. This clichéd image, as we will see, is taken to its extreme through parody, used here with the purpose of subverting entirely the final message.

At the end of the poem, Agustini reiterates through more hyporbole the reverential, almost religious “slavery” to which she succumbs. The trembling feeling that she has when he touches the doorknob gives the reader the sensation/feeling that we are facing a superhuman. Nevertheless, at the same time, we sense the ridicule of these images aimed at deconstructing the deity and sacrality of man.

Other poems also confirm the use of a repertoire of extremely hyperbolic images to represent the relation man-woman. One of these poems belongs to the book El Rosario de Eros (1924), a poem that even in the title betrayes a doubtful religious reference.

Altough not all the poems in this book can be analyzed by the same way, the poem “Oh tú” (Agustini, 1924, p. 55) is significant for the use of certain images that provoke the opposite effect of what they seem to propose.

Reflecting the life of the poet, the poem is divided into two parts. The first describes the melancholic state in which she has lived her life till the arrival of her man. Agustini (1924) uses images such as the owl of “de las ruinas ilustres y las almas altas y desoladas” (p. 56), the night, the tower, the spiders—all typical of the gothic repertoire—to describe this melancholic state. All of a sudden we witness a change that is equivalent to the one that has happened in the second part of her life. The reiterated pronoun “tú” in the following lines reveals with no doubts the person responsible for her miracoulous rescue:

¡Oh, tú que me arrancaste a la torre más fuerte!

Que alzaste suavemente la sombra como un velo, Que me lograste rosas en la nieve del alma, Que me lograste llamas en el mármol del cuerpo Que hiciste todo un lago con cisnes, de mi lloro…. (Agustini, 1924, p. 56)


The poet is thus calling the omnipotent man who is being transformed into a semi-God. For this particular invocation—which has a clear parodic tone—Agustini has chosen images that, not by chance, refer to objects that belong to religious ritual: The shiny chalice, the woman as the wife or daughter of God carrying a lily and the man himself addressed as Lord.

One more time then, Augustini is trying to deconstruct a myth—that of a man who is a semi-God—with the help of exaggerated images that border on blasphemy.

Alfonsina Storni: Parodic Discourse

The second poet analyzed in this essay is Alfonsina Storni. Like Agustini, Storni passed through a variety of poetic phases. After an initial period marked by a less defined style with modernist influences, her production abondons the stereotype of the pure, holy, and abandoned woman figure. The poems that follow are progressively more imbued with a parody and an irony aimed at exposing the demystifying operations that are now taking place in her poetry.

With “Hombre pequeñito”, “La armadura”, “Bien pudiera ser”, and “La ronda de las muchachas”, it is clear that the author’s goal is to subvert the traditional images and roles assigned to women. “La armadura” is very close to being a revolutionary manifesto. The author’s voice is firmer, with fewer ambiguities, and acquires a collective voice that is typical of “minority” literature whose fight concerns group identity. So, as her poems become more like pamphlets, the protest takes a more direct approach.

The poem “Oye” in Irremediablemente (1919) reinforces from the beginning the same image of an obliterated woman that we have seen in Delmira Agustini. Storni (1919) plays with the cliché of a submissive woman who, next to her man, becomes nothing, turning into:

silencio, silencio, Perfume, perfume, no sabré pensar No tendré palabras, no tendré deseos, Sólo sabré amar. (p. 137)

The exaggeration of the cliché, taken to the limits of the absurd, is accompanied by another feature typical of women’s writing:

The homage-quote of the text, style and genre of the prestigious canonized words, is used to obtain the benevolence of the audience and to validate her own poetic voice. […]. (Reisz, 1994a, p. 71)

la cita-homenaje del texto, el estilo o el género evocados, en la que la autora utiliza el prestigio de la palabra canonizada para ganar la benevolencia del público y validar su propia voz […]. (Reisz, 1994a, p. 71)

In this case perhaps the poet Neruda is being indirectly quoted with lines from “Me gustas cuando callas” from the book Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924). In this way the author is accomplishing two things: She is validating herself through the quote of a canonical author, and at the same time, she is subverting the image through the exaggerated quote. All the while she is establishing an ironic distance from what is being imitated.

In “El hombre sereno” (1919), we notice again a similarity with Agustini’s poem. We encounter the same ironic description of the man as a generous, prudent, serene, and beautiful human being. The parody reaches its climax in the final lines when the woman erases herself completely in front of his omnipotence and omniscience:


Con sus palabras hablo; su ventura es la mía; Me infundo en sus deseos, me pierdo en su energía, Porque todo lo puede, porque todo lo sabe. (Storni, 1968, p. 139)

“Tú me quieres blanca” (1918) is a poem entirely constructed through the reiteretion of the cliché of the woman as white, chaste and pure. The poet is once again borrowing the images from another canonical author, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz, and is taking the image to its extreme in order to deconstruct it and surpass it. The whole emotional power, accumulated in the first verses in which the author seems to reiterate the representation that women have of men, reaches its climax in the following stanza:

Me pretendes blanca (Dios te lo perdone), Me pretendes casta (Dios te lo perdone), ¡Me pretendes alba! (p. 108)

What comes after this stanza are a series of challenges that she proposes to the man and that allow to show his hypocrisy.

A final poem analyzed here is “Saludo al hombre” (1925). Seemingly, we experience the same tone and the same attitude toward the masculine figure. The only difference is that now the man is, instead of an omnipotent God, a kind of Roman Emperor. The title itself suggests an oratorical tone, and this poetic key is indeed realized in the poem itself. Compared to him, the feminine voice can only lay down the coat of arms and admit her defeat. Next to him, born to win and triumph, she is only able to toast humbly to him and end her poem with these classic lines: “¡Salud! En versos te hago mi fina reverencia” (Storni, 1925, p. 270).

Pollarolo’s “Minor” Poetry

Until now our analysis of the poetry of Agustini and Storni has focused on the parodic imitation of themes and language typical of canonical literature. This strategy allowed them to defend themselves from the stereotypes of the antifeminism group. This seems to be the same path followed by Giovanna Pollarolo. Entre mujeres solas (1995) shows in the title itself—which is a direct quote from a Pavese short story—the need to be among those Latin American authors who, knowing or not that they lack a language of their own, use the citation of canonical authors to take ownership of the language. With this overtly open gesture, Pollarolo is trying to win the reader’s sympathy and, at the same time, to establish an ironic distance with what she is imitating (Reisz, 1994a, p. 134).

Once we start reading the text, the presence of a choir of poetic voices stands out:

El yo poético confesional se refracta desde un comienzo en una multiplicidad de voces ficcionales distribuidas, a la manera de una novela, entre una narradora primaria o principal y una serie de personaje femeninos monologantes o dialogantes a los que áquella se dirige o a los que implícitamente les cede la palabra. (Reisz, 1994a, p. 130)

With respect to this, if we think that the Bakhtinian theory exposed in “El discurso en la novella” (from Estética de la creación verbal) excludes from all poetic text a polyphony of voices, because it regards them as typical of a narrative text and not a poetic one, we understand how Pollarolo is consciously fighting against a long established tradition. It is exactly for this reason that her texts can be read as example of “minor” literature,


especially if we take into account the definition offered by Deleuze and Guattari in which they reelaborated Kafka’s theories.

The word “minor” in reference to women does not imply a quantitative judgement nor does it refer to power. The term simply underlines the marginal role that women have always played and continue to play in patriarchal societies where there is few or no public space reserved to them.

According to Deleuze and Guattari (1986), we can talk about a “minor literature” when we are looking at a literature constructed by a minority but moving within the realm of a mainstream language.

If we borrow the example of Jewish literature of German speakers, Deleuze and Guattari (1986) apply the term “minor” to all those literatures that, within the mainstream literature, are able to define a voice that can embrace several marginal ethnic groups. For this kind of literature Deleuze and Guattari identify several essential subversive features that can also be applied to Pollarolo’s texts.

The first essential element would be the decentralization of language, meaning a language uprooted from its primordial territory and “turned strange in the location where is being placed” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 133). A perfect example of this would be the German used by Kafka, who, instead of using the most elevated German, tried “to take the language to the desert” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 26). The second key element for a minor literature would be that everything in it “must be political”. In this kind of literature the social environment has a background function (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 17). The third and last feature would be a “collectiveness” seen in this kind of literature. Since it comes out of a community with little or reduced power, the very few literary voices end up portaying themselves as representantives of a community.

As for the collective aspect of Pollarolo’s text, it is clearly present in Entre mujeres solas, in which the conversations among women echo women’s issues of different social classes. In “Reencuentros”, there are women who have been betrayed by life and who now are surprised to discover that they are longing for their old dreams: “Como no podíamos saber que veinte años después/estamos soñando al revés” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 14). We are aware from the very beginning that the poetic voice is a group of women talking in first person plural in the present and in the past. The poem is filled with: “tenemos”, “decimos”, “vernos”, “hablábamos”, “teníamos”, “hacemos”, “leemos”, “reímos”, “somos”, “recordamos”, “comemos”, and “bebemos”. On other occasions we see the woman who, trapped in her monotonous routine, hates her Saturdays and detest her Sundays; another who is considered lucky by the others who do not know how bored she is; another who is the one who can only function in relation to him who, on the other hand, does not listen to her, and does not look at her; yet another who refuses sex vehemently; and finally all those others who have seen their honeymoon vanish quickly. All of them have reacted differently to their circumstances:

Yo decidí llamar a mis amigas (olvidadas desde antes del día de la boda) buscar trabajo, y abrir las puertas y ventanas de mi casa. (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 44)

Another one says:

A mí pasó igual; pero yo no llamé a nadie no hice nada sólo lloré. (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 44)


Nevertheless, for each one of these women, there is a reader capable of indentifying with her and with her circumstances. The considerable success of this book is proof of that, notwithstanding the limitations posed by a title that seems to address just an audience of women.

Behind the ensemble of poetic voices there is a clear intention of creating a bifurcation or a “plurifurcation” of the masculine and feminine values and preoccupations. In the poem “Confesión” there is an ensemble of voices. First we hear the husband who confesses his infidelity, then we hear the narrative voice criticizing the husband and ultimately becoming a collective voice with the final declaration “¡Por los hombres, qué mal pagan!” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 25).

Another example of this device of several “fictional” voices is found in the poem “Otra noche” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 39). Here the voice of the narrator and that of a friend are interposed. He dreams about his youth and about his never-confessed love for her while revealing to her his desire to fulfill his dream by making love to her. But she is tired now and the contrast between his erotic dream and her real dream of wanting to go to sleep becomes stronger. In the end, their voices get mixed with the narrator’s and with that of the protagonist, who is dialoguing with God:

Entonces no sabía de noches como ésta bordeando los cuarenta sin rumbo avergonzada, desengañada, sucia ante Ti postrada buscando el alivio el alivio que trae el sueño. Cuando éramos amigos, le dice yo no sabía. ¿Sirves para consolar esas penas? Y sus labios se enredaron en una cadena infinita de Padres Nuestros y Dios te Salves. (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 40)

The political value of this text becomes clear in the condemnation of the feminine role as a negative or subordinate one, unable to develop and ultimately “minor”, inferior. There is a clear accusation of all those stereotypes of the woman as mother-wife-sister whose chores are cleaning, ironing, washing clothes, preparing food, taking care of children, consoling their men and making love with them. Although not aware anymore of who exactly she is, she has not forgotten her role (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 60). These are all women who have become “white paper” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 64), whose destiny has been foreseen:

Las esposas y madres de mañana las esposas de los conductores de la Patria las madres de los futuros conductores de la Patria. (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 57)

They are the wives or the mothers of the winners, but they are not triumphant. That is why the poem ends with the sarcastic “¡He ahí el privilegio!” referring to the privilege of having been elected (maybe by God) to accomplish such a difficult mission.


The religious references that we find in the poem are insincere. The women compare their men to God. They have both created a role for the woman, a role that, in the end, is the same. That is how life has always been for these women and that is how it will always be. Even when they think that they have changed their life with a lover, they are unware of the fact that, ultimately, nothing has changed, and that: “… él y él se parecen/casi como dos gotas de agua” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 49).

It is as if, among all these women, the only one who can walk placidly and with no fear is the one who sees men like equals and has put an end to love and sex. It is only in this way that it is possible for her to talk to herself in the mornings, sleep by herself but not see herslf as a mere projection of masculine desires.

The criticism toward the other gender is direct and often is based on the complaints of having to do household chores. At other times it responds to the physical pain suffered by his beating.

Hubo lágrimas, sí pero después de los golpes después de las patadas y de insultos incomprensibles. (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 45)

We also witness a repugnant feeling toward sex and copulation. This is clearly expressed in “Yo me hago la dormida” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 32), where the repressed violence creeps under the sheets and make her feel, right after the sexual act, “el filo de un cuchillo” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 32). As Reisz (1991) says: “… la politización de los tópicos literarios debe entenderse aquí—no en forma exclusiva pero sí prioritaria—como respuesta a cierta ‘política sexual’ dominante en nuestra sociedad” (p. 133).

After reading the first section of Entre mujeres solas, what surprises at first is the colloquial aspect of the poems. From the implicit declaration underlining the title, we already have the sensation of estrangements. It is a feeling that is produced by the transfer of narrative elements to poetry. The entire collection of poems is structured and organized like short stories. Pollarolo’s language is “vuelto extraño por exceso o por carencia en relación con el ámbito en que se inserta” (Reisz, 1991, p. 133). Her poetry is similar to a series of short debates that reflect well the image of a private reunion among old classmates talking about their current lives, their dreams and their faded hopes.

“Luna de miel” (1995), a good example of what was mentioned above, presents at least nine feminine voices. All of them talk about the change that occurred in their lives right after their honeymoon. There is the one who, after being forgotten by the husband, finds consolation in her friends; the one who is abandoned in favor of a boxing match. There is also the one who, after being repeatedly beaten, feels the growing hate in her husband. And through this gallery of women and their dysfunctions, we get to the narrator who, through her routine and vain hopes, converts herself into an animal, a “perra en celo” (Pollarolo, 1995, p. 47).

Conclusions

These three poets, Agustini, Storni, and Pollarolo, whose work covers an entire century, have made possible that their own voices and those of the women about whom they write, could be heard even in mainstream literature. In their work, an apparent reverence toward the literary canon conceals a subversive desire that each expresses through parody, hyperbolic and grotesque images, and finally through a kind of discourse that is considered “minor”.


References Agustini, D. (1924). Obras completas de Delmira Agustini (The complete works of Delmira Agustini). Sarandí: El Siglo Ilustrado. Bakhtin, M. (1978). Estética de la creación verbal (Esthetics of creative discourse). México: Siglo XXI. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a minor literature. (D. Polan, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of

Minnesota Press. Pollarolo, G. (1995). Entre mujeres solas (Among women alone). Lima: Editorial El Santo Oficio. Pollarolo, G. (1997). Las Cerimonias del Adiós (The farewell ceremonies). Lima: Peisá. Reisz, S. (1991). Las mujeres sí tienen afán (Women do have ambition). Hueso, 28, 131-147. Reisz, S. (1994a). Colectivismo versus universalismo: Voces e imágenes de mujer en la literatura de este fin de siglo (Collectivism

vs universalism: Female voices and images in literature at the closing of this century). Actas del II Encuentro Internacional sobre Teorías y Prácticas Críticas. Mendoza.

Reisz, S. (1994b). Conflictos de “género” (y de géneros) en la poesía peruana de nuestro fin de siglo (“Genre” (and gender) conflicts in Peruvian poetry at the closing of this century) (En Actas del XXX Congreso del IILI, Pittsburgh).

Reisz, S. (1996). Voces sexuadas. Género y poesía en hispanoamérica (Sexualized voices: Genre and poetry in Latin America). Lleida: Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida.

Storni, A. (1968). Poesías completas (The complete poetry). Buenos Aires: Sociedad Editora Latino Americana.


Inescapable Choices in Runaway

LIU Jun-min Huishan Sub-district Office, Shenyang, China

Runway (2006) is the masterpiece of Alice Munro who is a famous Canadian female writer, which shows her

concerns about women’s living status. Through depiction of women’s living states in some small places of Canada,

Munro explores women’s dilemmas that may lead to their inescapable and hopeless situation. The motif of

Runway is running away: running away from family, marriage, religion, virtue, betrayal, and even themselves, but

the result of running away is no escape and still lingering at their depressed origins. The cause of this situation is

women’s escape from their inescapable choices, as in the different phases of female’s initiation some choices do

more harm than good. Through the analysis of the text and the comparison between different heroines, Munro’s

feminine living wisdom about the balance in dilemmas is explored from three aspects: the choice of religion,

husband, and child.

Keywords: Runaway, Munro, woman, choice

Introduction

Munro is a remarkable Canadian female writer whose vision is beyond the binary opposition between female and male. Most of her works are about the living states of women and the complicated and tangled relationships between people. Some short stories of Munro, such as Runaway (2006), are written about the women living in the countryside or small towns, focusing on their daily lives which is derived from the writer’s own time spent in the quite Ottawa. Munro is a master of language and she is good at manipulating the essence power of literature, so the personality of her characters may be gentle and introverted, but infectious and insightful. The conflicts in her short stories seem uneventful, but create a revelatory impression after reading. Her words are plain and natural, depicting the simple and real life, but showing the sincere and profound emotions. In the 40 years of literary creation, Munro has published more than 100 short stories. In 1968, her first collection of short stories Dance of the Happy Shades was published and won Governor General’s Award for Literature. Till now, Munro has won this award for three times and Giller Prize twice. In many European and American media comments, Munro has won the title “the greatest contemporary writer”.

Runaway as one of Munro’s masterpieces published in 2004 has a magnificent influence in the literary world, and it won the Ciller Prize for that year and is selected into the New York Times Book of the Year. Till now both home and broad, a few scholars study Runaway, and most of them focused on the short story Runaway instead of the whole collection. About the short story Runaway, scholars have mainly studied three aspects: women’s fate, feminism narrative strategies, and female consciousness. This paper will explore the female choice and wisdom

LIU Jun-min, master, Huishan Sub-district Office.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

INESCAPABLE CHOICES IN RUNAWAY 107

based on Runaway. In this collection, Munro once again depicts the ordinary people in a small place, especially the women who live the kind of life with pathetic regret and struggle against the tangled light-tragic fate. Runaway has a common motif, running away form family, betrayal, unexpected children, and other miseries, and this recurrent motif “runaway” in Munro’s fiction may be derived from “her escape to university as a scholarship student, against the odds” (Grossman, 2008, p. 649). The heroines in Runaway are the depressed ordinary women. Once they have a chance, they run away from the boring life, but they are not clear about what they will run away for and have to come back to the original point, which is their tangled and pathetic living state.

As an experienced and sensitive female writer, Munro does not deliver sermon about the wrong choices some women may commit, but with brief and plain words depicts what those choices will lead to and how they lead to, because according to herself, Munro does not mean to surprise the readers with what happened, but how happened, so Runaway, “there is no resentment, no passion, no intricate plot, and no revelation of wisdom” (TAN & ZHAO, 2011, p. 52). Munro only depicts the tragic living states of some women in the small places, about their relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, love affair and marriage, religion and family and their miseries. Munro shows that in certain phases of a woman, some choices do more harm than good for her, or they would leave a legacy of trouble and misery, enfolding them in a state or place where they want to run away from, but could not do anything about it. Thus, through the study of those women’s trivial life and struggle, this paper will analyse what choice leads them to that tangled states and explore the female living wisdom to avoid those choices.

The Choice of Religion: Dilemma in Indulgence and Prejudice

Mother and daughter is the most natural and close relationship between females, but sometimes conflicts are unavoidable. In accordance with Sigmund Freud’s theories, because of youth jealousy and Electra complex, the conflict and tension between mother and daughter derive from their instinct. Especially, when the conflict is related to religion, the tension would be fiercer. Mother’s choice and her guidance for daughter play an important role in this conflict. As in Munro’s works “the relationship between mother and daughter is feeble and unresponsive” (LIN, 2006, p. 268) because of the lack of communication and tolerance between daughter and mother. In Runaway, the mothers make the extreme choice: indulgence and prejudice in the religious aspect, which both leads to the broken relationship between mother and daughter.

Sara is Juliet’s mother who gives Juliet total freedom in the choice of religion, and Juliet is the heroine of the short stories “Chance”, “Soon”, and “Silence”. Sara is a religious lady and believes in faith as “something wonderful” (Munro, 2006, p. 120), while Juliet does not “believe in Cod’s grace”, which causes the religious conflict. As they are separated, Sara never teaches Juliet how to respect her own religion and others and indulges Juliet’s religious views freely developing. Then Sara is severely sick, so Juliet comes home to look after her. When Minister Don visits Sara in her deathbed, Juliet is very excited and argued with him about the existence of God. Disappointed by Juliet’s aggressive rebuttals to the minister, Sara hopes to get Juliet’s respect and understanding of her faith. However, her former indulgence makes Juliet run away instead of comforting her by appreciating her faith, which makes Juliet regretted in her rest time for her lack of tolerance and narrow mind. Sara gives no guidance to Juliet in the establishment of right religious view, but chooses the attitude of indulgence, which leads to Juliet’s persistency and apathy. Even though at that time Juliet’s own daughter is


one-year-old, Juliet is still immature in the religious aspect, which dues to her mother’s indulgence without proper guidance. Sara’s indulgence also foreshadows the unhappy relationship between Juliet and her own daughter Penelope.

Different from Sara, Juliet is strict in control of her daughter’s religious choice, because she learns a lesson from her mother’s indulgence. However, the similar tragedy also happens to Juliet, because her daughter Penelope leaves their family at the age of 13, because of the pursuit of her own faith. As Penelope cannot bear Juliet’s prejudice in religion, she escapes from her mother and abandons her. Juliet is still not a Christian, and her role in the family has changed from daughter to mother. Juliet’s strong control in Penelope’s faith causes a reverse effect, because Juliet’s education and guidance are based on her prejudice against the existence of God. Once, Penelope is not in the nonreligious home, she is bewitched in religion recklessly. Here it has to admit that, the outside influence affects the Penelope’s selection in some degree. On the other hand, Juliet is busy in her “wonderful busy successful life”, she ignores her daughter’s “loneliness and unhappiness” and believes that it is normal that “most people feel that one time or another” (Munro, 2006, p. 132). Because of Juliet’s prejudice against the impact of faith, she totally denies the possible comfort from faith. The result is that Penelope inherits her mother’s apathy and selfishness, and abandons her mother as well.

The repeated tragedy of Juliet’s family for three generations is due to the religious conflict which is not solved properly. Sara’s tolerance in religion indulges Juliet, while Juliet’s prejudice in faith irritates Penelope. A witted mother would give her daughter reasonable guidance instead of indulgence or prejudice. Hence, a wise mother will get rid of the dilemma in indulgence and prejudice about the different choice of religion between mother and daughter avoiding the potential cause of the pathetic relationship.

The Choice of Husband: Dilemma in Romance and Insurance

Marriage is an important event and turn in a woman’s life. The romance of love and the insurance of life are two influential factors in women’s choice of husband, but love is the essence of a happy marriage. Without wisdom women are easily lost in the dilemma. In Runaway, Munro provides two extreme attitudes before this dilemma: negative attitude towards love and positive attitude romance in choosing a husband.

Grace is the heroine of “Passion”, and she has the negative attitude toward love. Grace never makes it clear whether she loves Neil or she just meets him when she needs marriage. Before Grace goes to Neil’s home and has diner with his family, she persuades herself that Neil will be a proper husband for her. Then she feels her suppressed passions from her hesitance before the wedding. The seduction of Maury, the brother of her fiancé, tests her and makes her reveal her longing for romance. “Life seems to blur at some unknown moments, for some people, which is insignificant, but for others, such as Grace, this is a colorful and illuminated moment of her life” (CHEN, 2010, p. 65). Grace in fact, is dishonest to herself about the issue of love, and she does not recognize her own passion which is covered by the eagerness for the stability of marriage. Her negative attitude makes her compromise, because Neil and their family conditions indeed meet the standards of the ideal marriage objects. Fate does not allow Grace’s “reasonable” choice of marriage. On the way back, Maury was dead of traffic accident. It is difficult to conclude that Maury’s death is Grace’s responsibility, but Neil and their families will not accept her any longer. If marriage is only based on the pursuit of insurance, it may be adhered to the tragedy. Grace’s negative attitude towards the impotence of love in the marriage leads the relationship between Grace and


Neil to end without any result. Different form Grace’s negative attitudes toward love and positive pursuit of insurance of stability, Robin’s

love is full of fantasy, which makes her lost in the longing for romance. Robin has the positive attitude toward romance, but negative to the pursuit of love. Robin is the heroine of “Tricks”, apart from her dream of dramatic romance, before the test of love she withdraws, which may not cause a serious tragedy, but pity. Love also needs to fight, rather than wait. Robin gives up her love because of the cold shoulder of the Denial’s twin brother who she regard as Denial himself, which is the dramatic “twins trick” by fate. In “Tricks”, Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” is a mise-en-abyme romance, but Robin does not have the result. Robin is too infatuated with the romance in the drama of Shakespeare, making her “even forget about the distance between reality and illusion, regarding reality as illusion and illusion as reality” (WAN, 2010, p. 137). Robin keeps single without remorse, while Denial is single too, but it was not Robin’s reason, perhaps he even does not remember the encounter.

Apart from love as the essence of marriage, the longings for romance and coziness are important factors that influence marriage. The proper degree of romance in love leads to marriage, and in this aspect Grace is too negative, while Robin is too positive. “There is an almost surprisingly similar life path for the heroines, which is their beautiful and basic demand of human nature ending up as a tragedy in the face of harsh reality” (LAI, 2011, p. 26), as both choices of Grace and Robin cause their tragedy.

The Choice of Children: Dilemma in Responsibility and Freedom

For women, another important and serious choice is about children including pregnancy, delivery, and nurture, and all these are concerned about moral and responsibility. In this short story collection, the birth of illegitimate children brings trouble and sorrow to both mothers and children, for example the unmarried mothers Delphine in “Trespasses” and Juliet in “Soon”.

Delphine gives up her responsibility and seeks freedom, when she, as a young unmarried woman, gets pregnant and gives birth to a girl. The girl is sent to the charitable organization and then she is adopted by a couple. After 10 years, Delphine is still unmarried and has no child, so she tries to find back her abandoned daughter. There is no doubt that her abandon brings a great tragedy to that little girl who dies in a car accident at about one year old. Delphine is a selfish mother and regards her own freedom over others’. She never cares about others’ choice. For example, Lauren mistaken by Delphine as her little girl is upset and confused by the Delphine’s appearance, because she makes Lauren suspect whether she has blood tie with her parents or not. Delphine’s experience is pathetic and she deserves sympathy, but the daughter and her foster parents already may have close and happy relationship. In “Trespasses”, due to the death of Delphine’s daughter, the combat for daughter is avoided. Then Delphine pays for the mother’s irresponsibility, which caused by her choice before the dilemma between freedom and responsibility.

Different from Delphine, Juliet does not give her daughter away as an unmarried mother, and she takes all the responsibility. However, pathetically her daughter Penelope abandons her at the age of 13. Penelope leaves her mother because of the difference in religion, but the fragmentary family also foreshadows her escape. Juliet respects her own freedom in marriage, so she escapes from the responsibility to build a complete family for her daughter Penelope. Juliet’s love is not complete for the health growth of Penelope, so she can not stop Penelope from running away from the incomplete family. On the other hand, Penelope’s father Eric makes little


contribution in her growth. Eric is also an absolutely unqualified father, because he is married and has mistresses at the same time, and Juliet is one of his mistresses, which shades in Penelope’s existence. At the same time even though Juliet gives all her love to Penelope, because of her busy career and strong religious control she ignores Penelope’s growth and loneliness, which leads Penelope’s extreme behavior running away from the family. When Eric’s wife dies, Juliet and Eric do not get married either, and life goes on as before, so Penelope grows up in such a fragmentary family which brings Penelope miseries.

Responsibility and freedom sometimes are in conflict, so Delphine gives up her daughter, while Juliet fails in the nursery of her daughter. Even though Juliet takes the responsibility to raise her daughter, still keeps her freedom in marriage ignoring Penelope’s need for a complete family.

Conclusions

Women’s issues are the problem of dilemma, such as the dilemmas in indulgence and prejudice, romance and insurance, responsibility and freedom, and so on. Making a proper choice before these dilemmas depends on the art and wisdom of life. “As a writer, the performance of the universal truth of human life is all about his ideas and skills of the plot, and the plot shall include a series of actions carried out by the credibility and necessity”, so in Munro’s Runaway, she did not give an answer about how to choose, she just set out the degree of deviation and the results that degree leads to, through the plots (Seldon, 2000, p. 37). Women’s issues should be solved as they appear, or these problems might be passed down to the next generation. Women, as mothers, should accumulate wisdom, and pass the wisdom on to their daughters. As a female writer, Munro uses her works as the carrier of her own female living wisdom to give guidance to women.

References CHEN, F. (2010). Inescapable life: An analysis on the female fate in Runaway. Literature World, 7, 64-65. Grossman, J. (2008). The view from Castle Rock, and: Mothers and sons. The Hopkins Review, 1(4), 649-654. LAI, J. (2011). Alice Munro and her Runaway. The Legend. Biography Literary Periodical Selection, 9, 25-28. LIN, Y. Z. (2006). Multi themes in the short stories of Alice Munro. World Literature Review, 2, 265-268. Munro, A. (2006). Runaway. London: Vintage Books. Seldon, R. (2000). The theory of criticism from Plato to the Present. (X. Y. LIU, & Y. G. CHEN, Trans.). Beijing: Beijing

University Press. TAN, M., & ZHAO, N. (2011). Lost in the meditation of running away or returning—An analysis on the narrative strategies of

Runaway. Beijing Second Foreign Language University Journal, 6, 48-52. WAN, W. (2010). Feminist narrative techniques of Runaway. Era Literature, 12, 136-137.


Infamous Fame: Shaffer’s Tactic in Amadeus

Shu-Yu Yang Shih-Chien University, Kaohsiung Campus, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the greatest musicians in the world, enchants people across eras with his

fabulous music. Peter Shaffer, in Amadeus (2001), depicts the mysterious life and death of this musician in a very

different way. Instead of presenting an intelligent and refined artist, Shaffer, from the perspective of his rival,

Antonio Salieri, gives us a “foul-mouthed, immature jackanapes” that shocks his audiences in the theatre. Lady

Thatcher’s displeased response after seeing the play tells the gap between Shaffer’s Mozart and the Mozart image

in most public’s mind. However, the image of the vulgar Mozart, though a contrast to his music, lights up the

uniqueness of his music at the age of Enlightenment. The paper, aims to analyze the difference in Mozart’s music,

and the different Mozart character Shaffer presents in his play by drawing on René Girard’s notion of collective

violence and scapegoat mechanism. Also, the author intends to examine the playwright’s intention and exegesis as

he composes this mysterious musician in such a different way.

Keywords: Mozart, René Girard, collective violence, scapegoat mechanism

Introduction

As depicting the mysterious life and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Shaffer presents the world a very different Mozart in his Amadeus (2001). Shaffer, from the perspective of his rival, Antonio Salieri, gives us a “foul-mouthed, immature jackanapes” that shocks his audiences in the theatre, including Lady Thatcher, who directly told to Peter Hall how uncomfortable audiences could be after seeing this foul-mouthed Mozart as knowing that it is the musician who left such elegant music to the world. Lady Thatcher’s displeased response tells how “improper” the Mozart on Shaffer’s play is. In this paper, the author intends to discuss why Shaffer, regardless of the danger of annoying the public, presents such Mozart on his stage. As exploring Shaffer different exegesis towards this musician, the author also intends to discuss how and why Shaffer’s Mozart character could be so different comparing to his time. By drawing on René Girard’s notion of collective violence and scapegoat mechanism, an analysis of the playwright’s motivation of composing this mysterious musician in such a different way will be done in this paper.

Mozart and His Music

Mozart, because of his musical talent, was paraded around the continent by his father, Leopold Mozart, who made him play the keyboard blindfolded or with one finger (Shaffer, 2001), which wins Mozart’s applause and fame since his childhood. Nevertheless, Mozart’s extreme talent and fame is not always a good thing in his career,

Shu-Yu Yang, assistant professor, Department of Applied English, Shih Chien University, Kaohsiung Campus.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

INFAMOUS FAME: SHAFFER’S TACTIC IN AMADEUS 112

especially his musical one at the court. Owing extreme talent could be a hint to Mozart’s later destruction. Girard (1986) in The Scapegoat tells us

that extreme characteristics are never good things, for they “ultimately attract collective destruction at some time or other”. The “extremes” Girard mentions, are “not just of wealth or poverty, but also of success and failure, beauty and ugliness, vice and virtue, the ability to please and to displease” (p. 19). Girard’s statement accidently echoes what Mozart encounters at the court of Emperor Joseph II.

By the time of Mozart’s arrival in Vienna, the court has already been alive within gossip about this musical prodigy. Rosenberg, the Director of the Imperial Opera, directly sees him as a troublemaker. As he noteds: “I believe we are going to have trouble with this young man. He was a child prodigy. That always spells trouble” (Shaffer, 2001, p. 22). Mozart, in fact, brings trouble not only to the conventional court but also to himself. He makes himself as the target of attack. The purpose of his emergence initiates his days as the target of public resentment, that is, the mission to compose a comic opera in German, which is not warmly accepted by the nobles at the court.

STRACK (To ROSENBERG) You are required to commission a comic opera in German from Herr Mozart. […] ROSENBERG (Loftily) Why in German? Italian is the only possible language for opera! […] STRACK (Firmly) The idea of a national opera is dear to His Majesty’s heart. He desires to hear pieces in good plain

German. VAN SWIETEN Yes, but why comic [italic original]? It is not the function of music to be funny. (Shaffer, 2001, pp. 21-22)

From the responses of Rosenberg, Van Swieten, and the Prefect of the Imperial Library, it is clear that only a serious Italian work is appropriate for the Viennese court. The work Mozart is commissioned to write undoubtedly breaks the operatic traditions in Vienna. As Mozart disobeys the opera convention of the court, he also challenges to the highest musical Establishment in Austria (Gianakaris, 1981, p. 40). He is unwelcome to the court authorities.

In addition, not only Mozart’s coming brings trouble to the established court system, but also his music is troublesome to the conventional court at that time. Though being highly appreciated today, Mozart’s music was not understood by his contemporaries. Mozart’s original music “marked the dawning of a new musical freedom”. “His music”, as Gianakaris (1981) puts it, “was unsettling to audiences, patrons, and other musicians of the day who were accustomed to one particular set of conventions—and to conventionality” (p. 40). As Rosenberg says that Mozart puts “too much spice” and “too many notes” in his music (Shaffer, 2001, p. 22). Even the emperor shares this “too much spice and too many notes” viewpoint after watching the first performance of The Abduction From the Seraglio. As the emperor mentions, “There are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening” (Shaffer, 2001, p. 39). Obviously, Mozart’s music is very different from the musical system that those authorities are used to, and it is too complicated or too difficult for his (mediocre) contemporaries to understand or to enjoy his music.

Difference could be dangerous, especially in Mozart’s case. Girard’s interpretation about difference explains why Mozart’s difference brings him a disaster. Girard (1986) proposes the ideas: “difference within the system” and “difference outside the system” (p. 21) in The Scapegoat, and uses a “human body” as the example


to explain the distinction. Girard (1986) sees the human body as “a system of anatomic differences”, where various different organs function differently inside the human body. However, if there is one disability taking place, even if it is a result of an accident, it is disturbing, because it gives the impression of a disturbing dynamism, which seems to threaten the very system (Girard, 1986, p. 21). As mentioned, Mozart’s emergence brings difference, and that difference obviously disturbs the system of his time, and therefore threatens the very system of the old authority. Mozart’s music is a typical example. As he mentioned, “Why are Italians so terrified by the slightest complexity in music? Show them one chromatic passage and they faint! [italics original]” (Shaffer, 2001, p. 43). His answer tells how his music bothers the court authorities at his time. For them, Mozart’s “complexity” or “chromatic passage” in music is terrifying, because it, in terms of Girard (1986), “reveals the truth of the system, its relativity, its fragility, and its morality” (p. 21). Mozart’s difference, in other words, reminds the old system of the existence of the other like him, which is unacceptable, for once such difference is acknowledged, the establishment must be turned over. Therefore, though Mozart’s musical talent makes him stand out in the continent, his music, like a disturbing dynamism, menaces the very musical system of the Enlightenment.

As Huber and Zapf (1993) suggest: “nothing but the very essence of Mozart’s music […] is the ultimate reason for his conflict with the established society of the Court: the greater the works he writes, the more he writes himself out of this society” (p. 309). As his music, which cannot be appreciated by his contemporary, the musician himself cannot merge into the society, either.

Accordingly, the author believes that it could be such “difference” in Mozart’s music that contributes to Shaffer’s Mozart persona in Amadeus. The brat-Mozart character in Amadeus comes from Shaffer’s exegesis of Mozart’s music at the Age of Enlightenment, that is, being different, unique and original. Therefore, the way Shaffer depicts Mozart not only matches the plight or conflict the historical Mozart encounters in his society, but also makes him a public enemy of the court.

Being a musical prodigy has already set Mozart as an unwelcome guest; his original music also makes him an improper candidate staying at the conventional court. The way Shaffer depicts the musician further pushes Mozart to the hell where he could never find an exit out. It is the historical time Mozart belongs to that enhances his disaster. As mentioned, Mozart lives at the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the tenant of which, as Gianakaris (1981) writes, “included supreme faith in rational man and in the universally valid principles that governed humanity, nature and society” (p. 40). However, the sudden giggling and vulgarity of Shaffer’s Mozart demonstrate his infantile personality and arbitrary lifestyle, all of which violate the basic principles of being a “normal” or “rational” man. And it is not simply his behavior, but also his appearance that abhors his contemporaries. Mozart’s gaudy coat, for instance, embellishes with scarlet ribbons, as Salieri notes, is “an even more vulgar coat than usual” that reveals his “difference” or “abnormality” in advance (Shaffer, 2001, p. 37). Mozart, therefore, becomes a menace to the foundations of Enlightenment thought (as cited in Gianakaris, 1982, p. 40). As completely disobeying the credo of his time, the Mozart persona also implies Mozart’s later persecuted destiny and fate as the scapegoat—that is, Mozart needs to be sacrificed for the good of the society.

The Scapegoat

In The Scapegoat, Girard (1986) lists some stereotypes of the victims of persecution. As Girard notes: “They [the victims] attack the very foundation of cultural order, the family and the hierarchical differences without


which there would be no social order” (p. 15). Although Mozart did not commit any violent crimes against society, his vulgar speech, actions, and manners remain a threat to the social order of the Age of Enlightenment, and his violations of the musical conventions of his contemporaries also make him a threat to the social convention, which all indicates his being selected as the victim of sacrificed. As Girard (1986) tells: “The signs that indicate a victim’s selection result not from the difference within the system but from the difference outside the system” (p. 21). Therefore, Mozart’s difference, which is outside the system of his time, contributes his fate as the selected victim.

In addition, “In an Age of Reason”, as Gianakaris (1981) puts it, “he [Mozart] was an aberration whose potential artistic success became an offense to the grand order of the universe” (p. 40). The author believes that Shaffer, to rationalize Mozart unfortunate experience, exaggerates the musician’s abnormality. Therefore, Shaffer’s Mozart-persona is “abnormal” in taste, actions, and personality. Not only his extraordinary musical talent, but also his very personal being disturb those court authorities, which results in his being an outsider at the court. Being a threat to Viennese music generally, and to the pervasive attitudes of the Age of Reason metaphysically, “Mozart had to be deterred” (Gianakaris, 1986, p. 40). “The collective anguish and frustration” of the authorities at the court therefore finds “vicarious appeasement” in Mozart as the victim.1 Mozart therefore is the scapegoat selected for the “crisis” he arouses to the order of the age of Enlightenment.

Metamorphosis

As Mozart is gradually perished physically and spiritually, the younger man, like those mythical scapegoats Girard mentions, is transformed to “the sacred”. As Girard (1986) notes:

It is conceivable that a victim may be responsible for public disasters, which is what happened in myths as in collective persecutions, but in myths, and only in myths, the same victim restores the order, symbolizes, and even incarnates it. (p. 42)

In Amadeus, we cannot see the victim restoring, symbolizing, or incarnating order, but we can see the transformation of Mozart: transforming from an obscene child with God’s gift (the musical talent) to the incarnation of the divinity within his music. Salieri, at the end of the play, finds such divinity in Mozart as Mozart is presenting him his Requiem. That is, Mozart, via his music, transforms himself into a sacred being that possesses the power of purgation, purifying his anguished rival, Salieri. Such divinity is especially obvious as Shaffer cooperates with director Milos Forman and adapts this play into a film work in 1984. In the film version Amadeus, Mozart’s Requiem is done by Salieri’s dictation. At the deathbed scene, Mozart, as his music, is not vulgar anymore.2

In addition, Mozart, with his Requiem, makes Salieri let go his inner wrath and agony; he makes the manic Salieri confess his sins to his rival, and even makes him ask for forgiveness.

SALIERI Please, Wolfgang. Ti implore! [italics original] […] For all my sins against you. All my damages, my

1 These terms are from Girard’s expression in the third chapter of The Scapegoat (1986); the original sentence is translated as follows: “Vast social groups found themselves at the mercy of terrifying plagues such as the Black Death or sometimes less visible problems. Thanks to the mechanism of persecution, collective anguish and frustration found vicarious appeasement in the victims… ” (p. 39). 2 See Amadeus, dir. by Milos Forman (Warner Bros, 1984).


trespasses unnumbered—absolve me now! For all my cruelties—my slanders and malice—my destructive wickedness and most unworthy deeds—absolve me now! (Shaffer, 2001, p. 110)

As Girard (1986) mentions: “If this victim can extend his benefits beyond death to those who have killed him, he must either be resuscitated or was not truly dead” (p. 44). Such is the case with Mozart’s music. Salieri after reading Mozart’s Requiem says:

SALIERI (To audience) What could I say? In my shaking hands I held a terrible contradiction that only Art can show. Something immortal—yet stinking of death. Indestructible—and yet rotting! [italics original] […] Suddenly I was seized by an over-whelming horror!

[…] SALIERI (Still to audience, clutching the manuscript) Who was this for [italics original], this appalling music? Not

himself. Of course not himself! What need to mourn a man who will live forever [italics original]? (Shaffer, 2001, p. 106)

Mozart, as Salieri says, will live forever in his music, and as the persecuted victim, he has such a force that even death cannot stop him. Salieri, who has spent his life pursuing the divinity in music, finds eternity in Mozart’s compositions. As having Salieri involved in the process of composing Mozart’s Requiem, Shaffer presents the composer’s crazed lust of “snatch[ing] a piece of divinity for himself” (Shaffer, 1984, p. 46). The author believes that Salieri, to seize eternity, intends to get the signs of a victim from Mozart: to become a victimizing victim.

Victimizing Victim

To snatch the divinity in Mozart’s being and to seize a name for eternality, Salieri wants to be a victim, too. He wants to be a scapegoat, because the scapegoat has a certain force that even death cannot stop it, and is thus immortalized. Salieri then has one trick to get his own name remembered. Intending to inspire anger or terror in his contemporaries, Salieri gets himself accused of committing a violent crime.

SALIERI […] All this week I have been shouting out about murder […]. Mozart—pieta! Pardon your assassin! Mozart!

[…] WHISPERERS (Faintly) Salieri! … SALIERI (Triumphantly) I did this deliberately! … My servants carried the news into the street! WHISPERERS (Louder) Salieri! … SALIERI The streets repeated it to one another! WHISPERERS (Louder) Salieri! … Salieri! … SALIERI Now my name is on every tongue! Vienna, City of Scandals, has a scandal worthy of it at last. WHISPERERS SALIERI! … ASSASSIN! … ASSASSIN! … SALIERI! […] SALIERI Well, my friends, now they all know for sure! They will learn of my dreadful death—and will believe the lie

forever! After today, whenever men speak of Mozart’s name with love, they will speak of mine with loathing! As his name grows in the world, so will mine—if not in fame, then in infamy. I’m going to be immortal after all—And He will be powerless to prevent that! (Shaffer, 2001, pp. 116-117)

To be remembered, Salieri has himself been accused of murdering Mozart, by which his name could be connected with Mozart’s forever, even at the price of infamy. The blending of these two composers is thus further realized in the “murder”.

However, can this trick be successful? At the end of the play the venticellos read Beethoven’s Conversation


Book and the newspaper, The German Musical Times, to each other:

V.1 Beethoven’s Conversation Book, eighteen twenty-four. Visitors write the news for the deaf man. V.2 (Reading) Salieri is quite deranged. He keeps claiming that he is guilty of Mozart’s death, and made away with

him by poison. V.1 The German Musical Times, May twenty-fifth, eighteen twenty-five. He hands newspaper to VENTICELLO 2. V.1 (Reading) Our worthy Salieri just cannot die. In the frenzy of his imagination he is even said to accuse himself of

complicity in Mozart’s early death. A rambling of the mind believed in truth by no one but the deluded old man himself. […] V.1 I don’t believe it. V.2 I don’t believe it. […] V.1 & V.2 (Together) No one believes it in the world! (Shaffer, 2001, p. 118)

Though Salieri intends to connect his name to Mozart in order to be remembered, the story Salieri tries to spread can lead to gossip or rumor. Being a murderer though causes turmoil of the social order; Salieri cannot successfully make him a selected victim, being sacrificed for the good of the society. As Girard (1986) reminds us: “the victims are chosen not for the crimes they are accused of but for the victim’s signs that they bear, for everything that suggests their guilty relationship with the crisis” (p. 24). Though in Mozart’s case, we can see Mozart’s fate as the scapegoat results from the turmoil he brings to his society, in Mozart we can find the marks of the victim, which further convinces his persecutors his connection to the crises he causes. Certainly groups of people, as Girard suggests, tend to be marked as the victims, such as the minority, the outsider, a foreigner, or a newcomer of a group. And those signs all can be found in Mozart; for instance, Mozart’s unique musical style makes him the musical minority at the court; his Salzburg roots make him a foreigner in a court dominated by Italians. He is certainly a new comer of the court. All signs indicate that Mozart is meant to be the victim.

On the contrary, Salieri does not bear signs of the victim. Though he tries to connect his name to a scandal of murder to disturb the social order, the selection of the scapegoat does not count on one scandal but the signs of the victim. Such a rumor cannot make him the scapegoat, suffering from persecution of collective violence and being sacrificed to be the sacred one. People just see him as a deluded old man, and his music is gradually forgotten with time passing. However, Salieri’s wish to achieve infamy is not completely thwarted; the rumor ferments somehow. As his music is gradually forgotten, some people still connect his name to Mozart.

In addition, Conroy (1989) proposes that Shaffer recognizes in the mediocre Salieri a possible alter ego. “Like Salieri in the 1780’s”, Conroy mentions, “Shaffer is at the top of his profession, generously rewarded for his endeavors, applauded by critics and audiences. But has he written any work that will stand the test of time? Has he produced any real art?” (p. 35). Conroy certainly does not answer these questions, but he believes such questions inform the structure and the deepest meaning of Amadeus. It is Conroy’s questions that remind us of what Lady Thatcher said after seeing Amadeus: “It was inconceivable that a man who wrote such exquisite and elegant music could be so foulmouthed” (Shaffer, 2001, p. xii).3 Although Hall told her, “Mozart’s letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humor. In a sense, he protected himself from maturity

3 See Introduction to the play Amadeus, in which Sir Peter Hall records the response of the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who after watching the play was very much displeased with its depiction of a vulgar Mozart.


by indulging his childishness” (Shaffer, 2001, p. xii). Lady Thatcher still disbelieved Hall, and replied: “I don’t think you heard what I said. He couldn’t have been like that” (Shaffer, 2001, p. xii). To further convince Lady Thatcher, Hall sent a copy of Mozart’s letters to her the next day; however, it was useless. The Prime Minister insisted that he was wrong. Lady Thatcher’s response shows how uncomfortable the audience may feel while seeing Mozart, who wrote such exquisite music, is depicted so foulmouthed. The author cannot help wondering if it is Shaffer’s aim to have history remember him by this shocking portrait of a musical immortal. If we, as Conroy suggests, see Salieri as the alter ego of the playwright, then it is very possible that Shaffer, as Salieri, intended to get such infamy to have his name fall into the margin of selected victims. Shaffer in fact successfully arouses the turmoil of being blamed for presenting such “different” Mozart to the world. However, like his Salieri, Shaffer cannot be a victim of collective violence, because he, as his Salieri, does not possess marks of persecuted victims. Nevertheless, the turmoil he creates connects his name to Mozart’s, for his creating a “very different” Mozart.

Conclusions

In the end of this paper, the author, as quoting Conroy’s article in 1989, which suggests Shaffer sees Salieri, Mozart’s rival, as his alter ego, infers that Shaffer is stepping on Saleiri’s path of connecting his name with Mozart. That is, no matter what kind of reputation he might get, what he wants is merely to be remembered. As presenting the “foul-mouthed” Mozart to the world, Shaffer successfully arouses a turmoil from the annoyance of Mozart’s fans, and the turmoil he creates, though cannot contribute his eternal fame (or infame), still connects his name to Mozart, especially after the play was adapted into a movie. Everytime people watch the Amadeus film, watching Mozart’s childish pink wig and silly giggle, people may turn the DVD back and check whose work makes Mozart this way, and then they will see the name Peter Shaffer. Shaffer is therefore connected to Amadeus always.

References Conroy, P. V. Jr. (1989). Amadeus on stage and screen. Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, 9(1-2), 25-37. Deemer, C. (1997). Amadeus: Fine-tuning villainy: Salieri’s journey. Creative Screenwriting, 4(4), 75-84. Gianakaris, C. J. (1985). Drama into film: The Shaffer situation. Modern Drama, 28(1), 83-98. Gianakaris, C. J. (1981). A playwright looks at Mozart: Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. Comparative Drama, 15(1), 37-53. Girard, R. (1986). The scapegoat. (Y. Freccero, Trans.). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Huber, W., & Zapf, H. (1993). On the structure of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. In H. Zeifman, & C. Zimmerman (Eds.), Contemporary

British drama, 1970-90 (pp. 299-313). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Shaffer, P. (1984). Making film speak. Film Comment, 20(5), 50-57. Shaffer, P. (2001). Amadeus. New York: Perennial.


The Importance of Being on Screen: A Comparative Approach to

Cinematographic Versions of The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

Maria Isabel dos Santos Sampaio Vieira Barbudo University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

In contrast with the large number of theatrical performances and filmic versions for television, both British and

American, based on the play The Importance of Being Earnest (1975) by Oscar Wilde, there have only been, so far,

three films made for the cinema. Although one of them was made in the United States by the American director

Kurt Baker in 1992, this paper will address only the two English versions, chronologically separated by a 50-year

time span. It will focus on the cinematic adaptations made by English directors Anthony Asquith and Oliver Parker,

the former in 1952 and the latter in 2002. Based on the same play, this comparative approach may throw some light

on the evolution of cinematographic conditions and techniques as well as relate them to the expectations of

audiences in the mid 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century.

Keywords: Wilde, play, adaptation, cinematographic techniques

Introduction

The author will start this paper with the statement that all films, regardless of their genre, are involved in history, for the simple reason that they always reflect the conditions, values, and ideas of the culture that produce them. Under this perspective, they can always be seen as historical documents. In the case of adaptations of literary works, not only do they reflect the work and its period and culture of origin, but also the time and culture of the adaptations. As Stam (2005) argued in his book on Literature and Film: “Since adaptations engage the discursive energies of their time, they become a barometer of the ideological trends circulating during the moment of production” (p. 45).

One way of clearly illustrating this notion consists of comparing two cinematographic adaptations of the same literary work, especially when those adaptations are chronologically separated by some decades. This is the case of the two cinematic versions of the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, since the first dated back to 1952 being directed by Anthony Asquith, while the latest was made in 2002 and directed by Oliver Parker.

Based on the same play—a play written and staged in 1985, famous for the satirical portrait of English society up to the end of the 19th century—the two versions reflect the conditions and techniques pertaining to

Maria Isabel dos Santos Sampaio Vieira Barbudo, associate professor, Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ON SCREEN 119

different phases in the history of British cinema. They are also related to the dissimilar expectations of audiences in the mid-20th century and the early 21st century.

The First Version (Mid-20th Century)

Anthony Asquith, director of the first version, is well known for his contribution to the survival of the British film industry in the post-first war period, especially in the 1930s, when American cinema was advancing towards the hegemonic position that would last up to the present moment. The advent of sound was then offering new challenges to financial stability, and studios like London Films and British International Studios were beginning to train many of the most notable directors, writers, and cameramen of this period. Author of a broad and varied filmography both as a screenplay writer and as a director, Anthony Asquith would, in the 1950s, include in his work the adaptation of plays by British playwrights like Bernard Shaw, Terence Rattigan, and Oscar Wilde. His adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, made in 1952, already in colour, is a good example of the constraints still imposed upon the filming activity in this period, and of the related static conception of a spectacle that may well be classified as “filmed theatre”.

This fact is immediately signalled by the first shot of the film, which consists of the curtained stage in a theatre full of spectators dressed in the 19th century costumes. When one of the spectators opens a programme, we may read the title of a play—The Importance of Being Earnest—and the name of Oscar Wilde, as well as the first stage-direction on the page. This is followed by the rising of the curtain, so that the scene presenting the characters of John Worthing and his butler gives to the audiences of the film the impression of being about to watch a theatrical performance. Maintaining the same technique, the final shot consists of the fall of the curtain, once again reminding the spectators that they have been watching a play. Theatre within cinema is, therefore, the dialogical structure that characterises this version.

Indeed, Asquith’s style of adapting drama for the screen, in a role of “metteur-en-scène” rather than auteur, led some critics like Drazin (1998) to note: “He did not push his own vision, but became an interpreter of other people’s material” (p. 45).

Whether we agree or disagree with this opinion, we must certainly acknowledge the strong influence such a theatrical performance has on this film. And that sort of influence is verifiable in several aspects, namely in the maintenance of the interior sceneries in which, according to the stage-directions, most actions of the play take place. The few exceptions added are two brief shots, one of Algernon and the other of Lady Bracknell, who seem to be inside a train, whereas the only exterior settings consists of a street in London and the garden of John Worthing’s house in the country.

On the other hand, the use of colour, a novelty introduced after his first films, allows Asquith to suggest certain symbolic meanings, such as the combination of blue and pink in the costumes of Gwendolen and Cecily, as a subtle way of underlining their similarities.

As in a theatrical performance, emphasis is not put on the external actions of the characters but rather on their dialogue, accompanied by their facial expressions, which are predominantly filmed in close-ups and mid-shots. As Tanitch (1999) writes: “Anthony Asquith made no concessions to cinema (…) The film paid homage to both Wilde and Edith Evans, preserving her Lady Bracknell to posterity” (p. 279).

In another comment on the performance of the great theatre actress Edith Evans in the role of Lady


Bracknell, film director Karel Reisz would state:

Dame Edith demonstrates her utter contempt for those who would love their screen acting different from the theatre, and makes the other actors, with their more refined camera technique, appear a little thin-blooded when they are forced to share the screen with her. (Tanitch, 1999, p. 280)

In spite of its being closer to theatre than to cinema, or simply due to this reason, the fact is that, along with Pygmalion (the film directed by Asquith in 1938, still in black and white), this cinematic version of the play by Oscar Wilde has become a classic within British cinema, as is acknowledged in the following review published in The Times: “The Importance of Being Earnest, without possessing the specific cinematic virtues, sets a standard in style, elegance, and sheer acting genius which will not easily be surpassed” (Tanitch, 1999, p. 280). On the whole, it was certainly less controversial than the latest version, directed by Oliver Parker 50 years later.

The Second Version (Early 21st Century)

Born in London in 1960, Oliver Parker’s filmography as a director includes the adaptation of other works by Oscar Wilde, namely An Ideal Husband in 1999 and Dorian Gray in 2009. His version of The Importance of Being Earnest, produced in 2002, may be seen as a free adaptation of the play, by adding scenes, images, and settings which are not part of the original play. The predominance of image over word, as a signal of the cultural shifts that have occurred since the mid-20th century, is projected in the way the thoughts and imaginings of some characters, namely Cecily Cardew, are converted into images.

One of the best examples is the visualisation of scenes in which Algernon appears as a medieval knight in armour, and Cecily as a medieval maid being saved by her hero, in romantic sceneries full of old trees and multicoloured flowers, which clearly evoke the atmosphere of some paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The imaginings of Dr. Chasuble in his subconscious attraction for the puritanical Miss Prism are also translated into images which, in this case, consist of drawings and paintings secretly made by Dr. Chasuble himself, depicting the woman of his dreams in provocative poses.

Going even farther in his interpretation of the characters, Oliver Parker, who is also the screenwriter, adds a short flashback in which we may see Lady Bracknell as a young cabaret dancer, thus stressing her very low and very dubious origins. In the final scene of the film, she even adheres to Jack’s lie about his real name, which after all is found out to be John and not John Ernest, like in the play or in Asquith’s version. Looking at the name John on the page, she bursts out laughing, obviously set on hiding the truth. With the final shot, in which Lady Bracknell, cheerfully laughing, throws away the book with the real name, Oliver Parker is clearly willing to reinforce Wilde’s apology of lying, in epigrams like the following one: “The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society” (Wilde, 1975, p. 992).

As for the features clearly related to the development of technical and cinematographic conditions during the second half of the 20th century, one of the most noticeable is the process of editing the scenes that take place in London, alternating them with others that have the country as their setting, and thereby adopting a grammar and dynamics that are more in line with the cinematic medium. Another aspect is the transference of some scenes and sequences to exterior settings, or to public places, like the night-club in which Jack meets Algernon.

However, the first sequence of the film is perhaps even more significant, owing to the rhythm and suspense created by someone running and being chased in the dark through the streets of London—someone who we later


come to understand to be Algernon, persecuted by creditors. By adding this initial sequence, which is not part of the play, the director immediately catches the attention and curiosity of audiences who have got used to the exciting speed of films of action. As Hutcheon (2006) suggests, when writing about his version, “(…) Movie audiences expect the film to have local colour and to be shot on location, with characters moving through real space” (p. 124).

The expectations of audiences concerning “local colour” may also help explain the spectacular setting chosen by Parker for the “interrogation” scene in which Lady Brackbnell addresses John Worthing as a candidate to Gwendolen’s hand. Resembling a huge court of law, with sumptuous staircases in which photographers are strategically hidden in order to take photos of the candidate on trial, this intimidating setting also serves the comicality of the sequence, by being incongruous with a simple marriage proposal.

Besides the sensationalism of this sequence, the film also shows us some characters using means of transport of the epoch, such as Gwendolen posing as a “new woman” by driving a noisy and antique car, Cecily and Algernon gliding in a boat on a bright river, or Algernon unexpectedly landing in a balloon. Based on a reconstitution of the epoch in which the action takes place, these complementary scenes are undoubtedly controversial, especially for those who prefer the classic adaptation, with its absolute faithfulness to the play and the playwright. But the fact is that adaptation, especially in cases like this, must be seen as a transcoding with an intertextual dimension, and using a cinematographic language that tends to discard all the theatrical constraints of the original text.

On the other hand, the strategies to attract audiences to a comedy that might, otherwise, be considered as dated, lead the screenwriter to sometimes overlook historical accuracy, by introducing anachronistic devices. This is the case of the scene in which Gwendolen goes to a tattoo-shop to inscribe the name of her lover on an intimate part of her skin. Even though the first electric machine for tattooing had already been registered in England by the time the play was written, it is not likely that an upper-class girl like Gwendolen would dare go by herself to such a shop. Another example is the scene in which both male protagonists sing and play a ballad dedicated to their girlfriends.

Seemingly conceived to appeal, above all, to the younger generations, who may thus recognise affinities with their own culture in the attitudes of young characters of another epoch, these added scenes are also comic tools that tend to complement the wit and satire of the play text with a more immediate situational comicality. For all these reasons, this filmic version may, on the whole, be considered as typically postmodernist, in the sense of “postmodernism” as described by Harvey (1989), namely when he argues: “Eschewing the idea of progress, postmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity and memory, while simultaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever it finds there as some aspect of the present” (p. 54).

Conclusions

In cinematographic terms, and as Lipovetsky (2010, p. 160) underlines in his work on what he calls the global screen of our days, while traditional films glorified the past in its condition of past, postmodernist films tend to blur the differences between past and present, thus making the past more easily perceptible and more appealing to mass audiences, whose historical accuracy is not necessarily great.

According to these perspectives, we may thus conclude that the film by Oliver Parker is an obvious example


of the concessions made to popular and mass culture of cinema audiences in the early 21st century. In its defence, one could paraphrase something that Orson Wells stated about adapting a novel, and accordingly ask: If one has nothing new to say about a play, why adapt it at all? (Stam, 2005, p. 16). Or using the commentary made by Alain Resnais, one could argue that adapting a literary work without changing it, is like reheating a meal, one notion that Deleuze would express in terms of transformational energies, movements, and intensities.

Finally, one could go back to the title of this paper and suggest that all these controversial issues are just a clear manifestation of the vital “importance of being on screen”.

References Deleuze, G. (2005). Cinema1. London, New York: Continuum. Drazin, C. (1998). The finest years: British cinema of the 1940’s. London: Andre Deutsch. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Hutcheon, L. (2006). A theory of adaptation. New York: Routledge. Lipovestsky, G., & Serroy, J. (2010). O Ecrã Global (The global screen) (Trad. L. F. Sarmento). Lisboa: Edições 70. Stam, R., & Raengo, A. (2005). Literature and film. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Tanitch, R. (1999). Oscar Wilde on stage and screen. London: Methuen. Wilde, O. (1975). The importance of being earnest. In The works of Oscar Wilde (pp. 321-384). London: Collins.


Utilization Frequency and Distributions of Drama Language

Body Standard

WANG Jing-dan Fudan University, Shanghai,China

In this paper, through the analysis of the language characteristics and the employment of the method of

measurement statistics, the utilization frequency and distributions of drama language body standard are further

summaried. There are rhetorical question, switching, repetition, apostrophe, etc. in the drama language body

standard. Furthermore, the lower utilization frequency of the drama language body standard is revealed by

comparison with the literature and art style. The figures of speech in the drama language are open and unlimited.

The drama language is more emphasized on the using of the figures of speech than the colloquial style.

Keywords: drama language body, figures of speech, frequency

Introduction

Figures of speech are widely used in drama, the branch style of colloquial style and literature and art style. Meanwhile, compared with other styles, the utilization of the figures in drama takes on its own features.

On one hand, as we all know, styles have some selectivity against the figures of speech, that is to say, for certain figures, they are never used in some certain styles, while it is reasonable to be commonly used in another one or two styles. Besides, there are also a large amount of figures may be admitted by all varieties of styles, though, the utilization frequency in each style is varied. For example, the drama language body standards such as

repetition, switching, apostrophe, are almost never used in official documents, political comments, scientific and technological articles. On the other hand, the styles are compatible with these figures of speech. Although the styles’ selection towards figures is obvious, the cross-penetration among those styles does exist as well, especially with the continuous development and improvement of the style, this kind of compatibility is prevalent. For instance, as someone had made a point of cancelling serial verb construction, Mr. LV (1979) said in The Analysis of Some Questions in Chinese Grammar, “it looks that serial verb construction would still linger around and wouldn’t go” (p. 83), the “linger around and wouldn’t go” here is at first a personification in literature and art style, while now it is used and quite properly used in the scientific and technological style, which shows the compatibility of figures. Take another example, there was a paragraph in DENG’s article The Speech Made When Meeting With the Committee Members of HKSAR Basic Law Drafting Committee (1993), which said:

WANG Jing-dan, Ph.D., associate professor, International Cultural Exchange School, Fudan University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

UTILIZATION FREQUENCY & DISTRIBUTIONS OF DRAMA LANGUAGE BODY STANDARD 124

It’s gratifying to know that people adhere to the open policy of the Communist Party and Chinese government, but whenever they see wind sway the grass, whenever they see someone is against Bourgeois Liberalism, they would murmur whether there will be some changes in this society. (p. 217)

Here the “wind sways the grass” also shows the compatibility of figures. The application of metaphor and personification adds vitality and impression to official documents and technological articles and enhances the impact of those texts.

Compared with other styles, drama has its own characteristics in the use of figures, which provides an evidence for drama to be an independent branch style. As a branch style of colloquial style and literature and art style, drama shares some common features with these two styles. There are some figures commonly used both in drama and literature style, say, metaphor, parallelism, antithesis, synecdoche, quotation, pun, climax, palindrome, set-off, and anadiplosis. There are also some figures commonly used both in drama and colloquial style, such as, metaphor, switchings, repetitions, and rhetoric questions. Meanwhile, the use of metaphors in drama still has its featured and frequently used figures, for example, repetition, rhetoric questions, switching, and apostrophe.

It is of great significance for uncovering the characteristics of drama and then further deepening the research of stylistics to do intensive study on the features of figures application in drama.

The Major Features of Figures Use in Drama

Because drama is a branch style of colloquial style and literature and art style, the overall characteristics of figures’ use in it is consistent with that in colloquial style and literature and art works. However, it still exists some quite unique features, which would be discussed in the following part.

Relatively More Use of Figures Here “relatively more” has two aspects of meaning: On one hand, compared with official documents,

scientific and technological articles, political comments, and their branch styles, the use of figures of speech in drama is much more. However, it is not totally absolute, especially in some certain political comments, for sometimes there are a large amount of figures existing in that kind of articles. On the other hand, within the literature and art style, the use of figures in drama is few to some degree, compared with that in prose or verse. For instance, Mr. LI (2000) has done the research and statistics in this aspect and the sum of his samples is 22,275

words, including the following works: LU Xun’s work, The Native (from Complete Works of LU Xun, volumn 1) for 5,185 words; ZHAO Shu-li’s work, The Floor (from Selected Works of ZHAO Shu-li) for 3,278 words; LIU Bai-yu’s work, Sakura (from Selected Works of Prose edited by Department of Literature of Chinese Academy of Social Science) for 7,247 words; HE Jing-zhi’s work, Ode to This Ten Years (from Collection of Odes) for 3,320 words; Scene Two of Lao She’ s play, Longxu Ditch for 3,245 words (pp. 379, 382-383). The survey result is tabulated as follows in the aspect of figures of speech (see Table 1).

It is obvious to see that within the literature and art style, the order of the extent of figures’ application should be verse, prose, and drama (from many to few).


Table 1 The Use of Figures of Speech in the Literature and Art Style Name of the works Metaphor Analogy Exaggera-tion Meto-nyn

y Paralleli-sm and ntithes-is

Comparis-on and set-off

Rhetorical questions and rhetoric questions

Apostrophe and pun

The Native 8 0 1 2 2 3 5 2 The Floor 6 1 0 1 2 2 4 5 Sakura 28 11 3 2 11 5 6 2 Ode to this Ten Years 35 8 3 2 8 2 7 2

Longxu Ditch 3 0 1 0 2 4 2 0 Sum 80 20 8 7 25 16 24 11

Frequently Used Figures of Speech in Oral Expressions Drama is related to spoken language, which is reflected in the application of figures of speech. Such figures

of speech whicn are suitable for oral expressions are often used in drama, for instance, repetition, rhetorical questions, interruption, and abrupt continuance. However, such literary figures of speech as parallelism and antithesis are less used, and broad parallelism and antithesis are applied if it is necessary, not the ones in the strict sense. It is to make the language of drama more colloquial.

Its Own Features in Actual Application of Figures Drama has its distinct features different from other styles in terms of the use of figures, for instance,

repetition. “Repetition is defined as a way of showing intense feelings by repeating the same sentences” (CHEN, 1997, p. 199). In other types of articles, repetition is generally means duplicaion of the same sentence by the writer himself. However in drama, repetition is often achieved by two people. Thus, it is called reduplication and it is used widely in drama.

The Utilization Frequency and Distribution of Commonly Used Figures in Drama

The Regular Patterns of Figures Use in Drama In order to make clear of the utilization frequency and distribution of the drama language body standard, the

researchers choose those following plays to do the study: Scene One of CAO Yu’s work Thunder (1934), Scene Five of GUO Mo-ruo’s work Qu Yuan (1941), Scene One of XIA Yan’s work Under the Roofs of Shanghai (1937), TIAN Han’s work Plum Rains (one-act play) (1931), Scene One of WU Zu-guang’s work The Hand on the Latch (year), Scene One of Lao She’s work Teahouse (1956), MA Zhong-jun, JIA Hong-yuan, and ZHAI Xin-hua’s work Warm Waves Outside the House (one-act play) (1980). The following table is about the use of commonly-seen figures in these plays (see Table 2).

It is shown from table 2: (1) Frequently-used figures of speech applicable to drama. Frequently-used drama stylistics are rhetoric questions, switchings, repetitions, and apostrophes ,which

account respectively 34.30%, 29.11%, 13.30%, and 4.99%, reaching 81.60% in all. Resultantly, apart from the above-mentioned components, all the other figures of speech hold merely 18.40%. It is concluded that the mostly applicable figures in drama are rhertoric questions, switchings, repetitions, and apostrophes.


Table 2 The Use of Figures of Speech in the Drama Language Body

Play Figures

Thunder Scene 1

Qu YuanScene 5

Under the Roofs of Shanghai Scene 1

Plum Rains one-act play

The Hand on the Latch Scene 1

Teahouse Scene 1

Warm Waves Outside the House one-act play

Sum Percentage(%)

Metaphor 17 4 2 3 7 3 1 37 3.85 Parallelism 0 32 3 2 3 2 8 50 5.19 Antithesis 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0.1 Metonymy 0 0 0 5 0 1 1 7 0.73 Quotation 0 4 1 11 25 2 3 46 4.78 Pun 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0.1 Climax 2 1 0 2 0 0 2 7 0.73 Plalindrome 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.1 Set-off 1 3 5 3 5 4 3 24 2.49 Anadiplosis 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0.1 Repetition 23 18 12 34 21 2 17 127 13.20 Rhetorical Question 75 20 27 88 34 25 61 330 34.30

Rhetoric Question 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 0.21

Switching 49 9 88 32 48 9 45 280 29.11 Apostrophe 2 29 0 13 0 0 4 48 4.99 Sum 170 122 139 194 144 48 145 962 100

Rhetoric questions rank first among the four figures of speech. Its status lies in that drama language should unfold the plot actively, a feature posessed exactly by rhetoric questions, which also gains the preference of playwrights. Switchings take second place on the list, because the main techniques of it, namely interruption, abrupt continuance, snap finis, are in accordance with the oral expressions, while enabling audience to understand the unspoken words of a drama and unfolding the remaining plots in an appropriate way. Repetition can help make a sketch of the character of a certain role by highlighting the state of mind of him or her in a certain situation. Overused in other types of writing, repetition always gives readers a verbose impression, while used in dialogues of dramas, the uniqueness of its advantages can not be easily substituted. Apostrophe is also used in drama, although less frequently than the other three figures of speech. Its application is always related to the content of scripts. Generally speaking, when people feel elated, passionate, depressed, or miserable, dramatists will resort to apostrophe in their dialogues to unleash their feelings. So it is used less in dramas.

(2) Figures of speech commonly used in drama but with low frequency. Some figures of speech are less frequently used but can be spotted out in almost every drama. The tables

above show that they are mainly metaphor, parallelism, quotation, and contrast. These four figures of speech are so compatible in all kinds of styles that they are common in drama. This thesis mainly focuses on the analysis of their features in application in drama.

The analysis of metaphor comes first in this section. According to our observation, metaphor is mostly found in exposition, with a small proportion in dialogue and soliloquy. In other words, dramatists often use metaphor to describe the scenes and reflect character’s personality. Parallelism is the next target of analysis. Parallelism in drama is often found in monologue, especially in the emotional expressions. Moreover, broad parallelism is used


more frequently than strict one. As for quotation, whether it is applied or not is connected with the style and habit of the dramatist. For example, the dramatist WU Zu-guang (1917-2003) preferred quotation to other figures. Most quotations in drama are well-known archaism, adages, proverbs, and so forth, such as “in the long run, whatever you’re given, you pay for”, “To live is better than to die”, and “One may be poor but never ceases to be ambitious”. These short quotations are all suitable for oral expressions, thus commonly used in drama, while the long quotations are not. Set-off is also one of the figures of speech used commonly in drama. It is often employed to contrast two subjects, by this means, dramatists can highlight the characters’ personalities and unfold the development of the plot.

(3) Figures less commonly used figures in drama. As the table shows, these figures such as antithesis, metonymy, pun, climax, plalindrome, anadiplosis,

rhetorical questions, and irony are used with low frequency. Although these figures are seldomly employed in drama, they still give unique charming and freshment to the drama. Evidently, whether these figures of speech are used or not is usually related to the playwright’s writing habits and scripts’ content.

Horizontal Comparison Within Literature and Art Style This thesis would do a further analysis of differences in terms of figures applicaton in verse, prose and

drama. Mr. LI has done some researches and statistics in this aspect. As what is observed from Mr. LI’s work, the common feature of literature style is the frequently use of figures. The difference lies in the fact that the utilization frequency of figures in drama is lower than that in prose and verse. Besides, the figures application in verse and prose is more widely (to a certain degree, these two styles almost seldomly reject any figures), while for certain figures, they are never employed by drama.

Vertical Comparison With Other Styles It is obvious to spot out that drama, after all, is the branch style of literature style, compared with official

documents, political comments, scientific and technological article. The application of figures in drama is open and unlimited, while that in those styles like official documents, political comments, scientific, and technological articles is limited (certain figures such as metaphor, rhetoric questions, parallelism, antithesis, set-off, and climax are often used in these styles), which is the distinct feature of those styles in terms of figures. It is different for colloquial style in the aspect of figures application, for colloquial style is more random compared with drama, which is more concerned in the figures application.

This thesis above has discussed the regulations of figures application in drama and comparisons with other styles in terms of figures of speech. What’s more, the use of figures in drama is still subject to the contents of scripts, playwrights’ styles, and their habits. These two points should be taken into consideration on discussing this issue.

Conclusions

In conclusion, the regulations of figures application in drama and comparisons with other styles in terms of figures of speech are researched. Through the analysis of the language characteristics and the employment of the method of measurement statistics, the utilization frequency and distributions of drama language body standard are further summaried. There are rhetorical question, switching, repetition, apostrophe, etc. in the drama language body standard. Furthermore, the rules of the drama language body standard are revealed by comparison


with the other styles. Further study of the characteristics of the drama language body standard has very important meaning to deepening the study of language body.

References BAI, C. R. (1993). The literature rhetoric. Changchun: Jinlin Education Publishing House. CHEN, K. (1960). The substance of the article (Volume II of The principle of the article). Shanghai: People’s Literature Publishing

House. CHEN, W. D. (1997). Introduction to figures of speech. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. DENG, X. P. (1993). Selected works of Deng Xiaoping (Vol. III). Beijing: People’s Publishing House. LI, Y. H. (2000). Chinese stylistics. Guangzhou: Guangdong Education Publishing House. LOU, G. L., & ZENG, Z. G. (1987). The function of the rhetorical question (Vol. III of The rhetoric study). Shanghai: Fudan

University. LV, S. X. (1979). The analysis of some questions in Chinese grammar. Beijing: The Commercial Press. ZHEN, Y. H. (1998). The speech style. Wuhan: Hubei Education Publishing House.


Lêxis in Dionysius the Areopagite

José María Nieva University of Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina

In his Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, Damascius establishes a close relation between destination (lêxis), divine

Justice, and life dignity (kat’axían) of every soul. Among several meanings of destination, the most relevant one is

related to the condition of the soul after death. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to consider how this

neoplatonic term is conceived in Dionysius Areopagite. For that purpose, the author will analyze such term widely

used in the chapter 7 of Ecclesiastic Hierarchy in which Dionysius deals with the funerary rite and in which the

notes of the dionysian eschatology are found. In other words, Dionysius’ use of this term combines a spiritual and a

metaphysic perspective. The former is part of the representation of the dionysian universe in which even the angels

receive the name of lexeis and are distinguished by their never ending movement around the Thearchia; the latter is

present among humans as a call to imitate such angelic condition. Such imitation is not possible without the effort

needed to behave in agreement with an honorable lifestyle (kat’axían, neoplatonic expression also used by

Dionysius) that opens the door to a condition or rank granted to man after death.

Keywords: Neoplatonism, destination, dionysian eschatology

Introduction Everyone that reflects on the hidden threads that forge the fabric of existence, of life, and of the human

condition cannot stop recognizing that sooner or later one should be faced with the crucial question on the meaning of death as a turning point of a vital trajectory.

Undoubtedly, the application of a hyperbole or the reinforcement of a paradox in relation to the question of the meaning of death entails the question of the meaning of life as its counterpart. In other words, unraveling the meaning of life demands to consider death as a question of ethics. This consideration offers a broad perspective that turns the inquiry about the meaning of life more challenging, overwhelming, and moving. Questioning oneself about life leads to the inevitable question of what will happen to us, where that vital winding trajectory goes to, and sometimes it is difficult to find a lodge to make oneself comfortable. The feeling of unease due to the lack of certainties in search for responses can end in Nihilism, but in other cases, it may lead to expect that the journey of our life sails towards a secure harbor and “he may properly and worthily venture to believe; for kalòsho kíndynos, the venture is well worth while”, as Socrates says the Phaedo 114 d.1

It is precisely in the Platonic Phaedo in which the proposal of death as an ethic question can be found. The

José María Nieva, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Tucumán. 1 Salviat (1965) and Brisson (2005), who point out following Salviat that the adjective kalós should be understood not in a aesthetic sense but in an appraising and profitable one. Reale (2001) also supports that “it is evident that it is about a risk that does not imply a leap into the unknown, since the logos have demonstrated there is another way of being metasensitive and that man’s soul is in accordance with this type of being. In the same vein, the risk is truly beautiful in a Hellenic sense, i.e., good, gifted with great value. According to Plato, it is about the risk man has to face to become a perfect man” (Platon, 2001, p. 347; White, 1989; Ferrari, 2010).

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

LÊXIS IN DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

130

dialog and the thought carried out in a dialectic way revolve around death, but in fact the stress is placed on the way the soul has lived, on the actions and decisions carried out to shape life. The question on the immortality of the soul is tightly linked to the question about the best possible human life (Rowe, 1995, p. 290; 2009, p. 117; Bossi, 2008, p. 169)2. The belief in the immortality of the soul as one of “the two pillars of Platonism” strongly held in this dialog by Socrates has not been considered in vain.

Like Socrates, the Neoplatonics did not believe that death was the end. Then, the comments on Plato’s dialogs not only challenged them to interpret a text but also to discover solid bases to assert that there is something of us that survives death: the soul. (Gertz, 2010, p. 1)

Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that in the Platonic tradition or better said, in Neoplatonism, there is no critical questioning as regards the soul immortality and that the positions of the different representatives of this approach differ in their considerations in relation to the soul. Thus, the differences found in the reflections from Plotinus to Proclus and Damascius show divergences in this school of thought as regards the nature of the soul. Plotinus’ thesis about the soul that has not descended from the intelligible world (Enn, IV 8, 8, 1-4; V 1, 10, 17) unfolds a mystic dimension since it implies that as the human soul always remains bound to the divine she does not need salvation. Such thesis is criticized by Iamblichus as Proclus points it out in his Commentary on the Timaeus (III, 323, 2-6) and he discusses it in elements of theology (prop. 211). According to Steel (1978)3, Damascius agrees with Proclus’ argument though, from the author’s point of view it is necessary to revise such arguments when reading paragraph 548 of Commentary on the Phaedo.4

Even though the aim of this paper is not to trace back the history of the conceptions of the soul in Neoplatonism or show the different metaphysical bases that support them, we need to recognize that the way in which the soul is considered is important when thinking of the destiny of the soul after death. Thus, the eschatological myths of Plato’s Dialog in the architecture of Neoplatonic reflection, especially in the myths of Gorgias, Republic, and Phaedo become relevant. In these myths Plato conceives death as the separation of the soul from the body and places the soul in a different spot to be judged. If the soul has behaved well, especially in a philosophical way of life she obtains an eternal award. If not, she is punished being able to be purified or not.

Lêxis as Destination

In his Commentary on the Phaedo, Damascius states that “a destination (lêxis) is the position in this 2 Bossi (2008) sustains that when analyzing the Phaedo that “the central topic is enlightenment of the meaning of life from the impending presence of death”. 3 For Iamblichus’ conception of the soul, see Iamblichus (2002), Steel (1993), and Shaw (1995); For Proclus, see Trouillard (1972) and Gritti (2008). 4 “On the other hand, how can Iamblichus sustain that there is a permanent return to the original state?”… or third an account of an ideal life that leaves its descent free from the influence of the material world and its contact with the other intact world; this is what Iamblichus himself writes in his Letters where he supports his perspective in the third way mentioned” (Phaed I, p. 548) “It is impossible for a soul to remain in the intelligible world as Iamblichus believes it could be (if it has descended then, it should be in its nature to descend in some occasions) or to remain always in the Tartarus, … because it is in its nature to be sometimes above it” (Phaed I, p. 492). According to Gertz (2010), Iamblichus held that the souls that would escape to the genesis would be those which practice theurgy (p. 188). See also Gerson (2004): “So then, since man’s true essence lies in his soul, and the soul is intelligent and inmortal, and its nobility and its good and its end repose in divine life, nothing of mortal nature has power to contribute anything towards the perfect life or to deprive it of happiness. For, in general, our blessedness lies in the intellectual life; for none of the median things has the capacity either to increase or to nullify it. It is therefore irrelevant to go on, as men generally do, about chance and its unequal gifts” (Iamblichus, Letter to Macedonius, On Fate, fr. 7). Gritti (2008) observes that Bussanich supports, contrary to communis opinio, that the differences between Iamblichus and Plotinus have been exaggerated if it is considered that the theory of the divinized souls is the Iamblichean version of Plotinus’ superior self. She also sustains that Proclus remains in Plotinian philosophical perspective (p. 70, n. 7).


131

universe assigned (apoklerouméne) by Justice to each one according to one’s dignity (kat’axían)” (Phaed. I, 1977, p. 467). Such consideration is revealed in a particular way in the third part of the piece of work devoted to the interpretation of the Platonic myth.

According to the commentator, it is not pure and simply about a myth but it is believed that the state of the soul in the Hades is something like that or the like. This implies understanding the myth as telling something true. And such truth is not other than a divine truth. Then, if the notes in Damascius’ commentary often aim at summarizing and discussing Proclus’ commentary as Westerink (1977, pp. 16-17) observes “these notes are only digressions on a text of Proclus, that remain always as a point of arrival and departure” (Westerink, 1971, p. 254), if Damascius’ notes “complete Proclus’ commentary critically” (Pépin, 1990, p. 276) then, Proclean understanding of the myth should be considered to unravel what is stated here.

From the two interpretations of the myth for Proclus, the pedagogical and the hieratical, the latter is the most relevant in the Phaedo because it belongs to the most secret initiations with which Plato reinforces the credibility of his doctrines (Commentary in the Republic I, 1970, pp. 84.26-85.12). This second mode has higher efficiency because “it unfolds the landscape of an action that deifies because it invites to improve it by the theurgy” (Trouillard, 1982, p. 249; Beierwaltes, 1993, p. 267). This interpretation is justified by Proclus, by means of the same Socratic words that his account considers “the rites of sacrifice and ceremonial practices that prevail here” (Phaedo, p. 108a).

In line with Proclus, Damascius specifies such meaning by explaining that the speech about the destiny of the souls rests on the assumptions of its immortality and the belief in the Gods’ providence (Phaed. I, 1997, p. 469). Therefore, Damascius understands that the myth expresses the basic idea supported throughout the dialog: the immortality of the soul and the cosmic value of justice. He also shares with Proclus the tight interweaving stated by Proclus himself, among the Myths of the three dialogs mentioned above which results in a “masterpiece of a Neoplatonic interpretation of a Platonic text” (Finnamore, 1998, p. 50). This allows us to understand the close connection between the destiny of the soul and Divine Justice.

Consequently, the way in which man takes care of his soul or worries about her while bringing about an honorable way of life has a deep effect when descending to Hades.

One of the meanings of the term lêxis, which entails the notion of section, plot, lot, i.e., a territory assigned or sorted out by fortune, becomes important here. Nevertheless, when this notion is absent, i.e., when a distribution of territory is not mentioned it becomes an assigned position. According to Neoplatonism, it is an assigned position due to the condition of the soul after death in accordance with Divine Justice. Then, it is a place one arrives after having been worthily judged. In other words, it is not possible to take that place if one has not lived correctly or acted justly. The expression kat’axían allows to reinforce the ethical sense of the destiny of the soul and to understand the term “destination” as the point of arrival of a trajectory, as the end point of a journey or as the aim to which all the efforts required to take care of the soul are directed. The expression kat’axíanrestricts the sense of space and place of lêxis suggested in his eschatological sense. This condition has been obtained according to the way in which life has been carried out here in temporality or in the sea of unlikeliness in Proclean terms. The decision of a way of life does not circumscribe only to a definite time span but also to the whole time as Damascius points out following the Platonic Socrates since the Divine Justice does not allow everyone to share the same place or have the same destination if they have not lived worthily.


132

Dionysian Eschatology In chapter VII of About the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy by Dionysius, the ideas above become familiar. The

funerary rites of the ones who are asleep are described here according to the place of their bodies in the temple whether they belong to priest, monastic, or lay order. Such hierarchy in the material arrangement symbolizes the different ways in which they carried out their life and consequently this “saintly shows—according to Dionysius—that in the new birth they will receive the correspondent legacies” (tàs apokleróseis) in agreement with the ones to which they assigned (apeklérosan) their life here (p. 557a)5.

One of the main objections to Dionysian thought lies in highlighting its vague interest in anthropology. However, even though there is not a deep reflection upon the human condition in his writings, a clear interest for what we can call the meaning of human life can be appreciated in some passages6. One of these passages has been just quoted.

Does not he clearly show that it is not possible to live without any concern in relation to the end of life? Do not these lines reflect that our life demands taking decisions that imply the search for a blessed life? Does not this text suggest that the éschaton of our own activities is beyond the space-time condition and its occasional pleasures?

In Chapter II of the work mentioned in order to highlight that our hierarchy is found in the assimilation and union with God, Dionysius (1991b) asks:

Which is the principle of the sacred practice of the most venerable commandments, the one that shapes our soul habits in relation to the reception of the other sacred oracles and sacred operations, the one that leads our way towards elevation of the super-celestial condition? (… he pros tèn tês hyperouranías léxeos anagogèn hemôn hodopoíesis). (p. 392a)

Two aspects deserve relevance here. First, the soul requires a certain shape when she starts to live according to a certain mode. Such mode implies the practice of the commandments granted by baptism, which purifies and illuminates. Thus, a way of dignified life starts to show in continuous fight against the passions that disfigure the own capacities of the soul. That is to say, the election of a mode of life in which one gets stronger as long as one acts according to the aim proposed by the hierarchical activities. It is about acting according to dignity to receive the rewards granted by Divine Justice. It is in the chapter VIII of About the Divine Names that deals with the divine denomination of Justice, Salvation and Redemption where Dionysius states clearly that those who have chosen a pious way of life are not abandoned by Divine Justice which in its “function of cosmic and ontological principle” (Jones, 1999, p. 64) distributes to each one of the beings what is properkat’axían because they passionately look for what it really exists. And as they tend towards that aim “don’t they approach to the evangelic virtues every time it is possible due to the divine things that distance from the passion for material things and act manly concerning good?” (Dionysius, 1990, p. 896c). In this way, those who live piously are “truth lovers” and thus:

5 Dionysius (1991b) said at About Ecclesiatical Hierarchy: “… we, on our behalf with sensitive images are elevated as much as possible to the divine contemplations and to tell the truth, to only one thing towards those who are like the one and they participate by themselves of what is similar and one but they give the divine yoke to each one according to dignity, the “correspondant” inheritance (tà theîa dsygà dianémeikat’axían tèn apoklérosin)” (p. 373c). The author quotes Dionysius texts according to the critical edition of Corpus Dionysiacum I-II (1990-1991), the translation from Greek belongs to the author. 6 An interesting reading about this absence of anthropological reflection is supported by Stang (2012), who deals with an apophatic anthropology.


133

They distance from the passion for material things and they love peace and sanctity free from evil and with a divine éros for all the possessions; and they already enjoy in this life the novelty of a future one, acting among men as angels, enjoying the appellative of divine beings, kindness and of all the other possessions with complete impassivity. (Dionysius, 1991b, p. 1117b)7

In that way, they are:

Followers and journey companions of good angels here and there, (and) peacefully and free from the evil they will inherit the blessed conditions (tàs makariotátasapoklerósontai léxeis) in the ever existing eternity and they will always be with God, the greatest of all possessions. (Dionysius, 1991b, p. 1097a)

In the fight against passions, in the ideal of the apátheiamen have access to a different mode of life. An echo of the patristic spirituality for which angels lack passions, i.e., they are impassible by nature can be found here. With this model as a guide through the apátheiamen become celestial beings, isággelos, imitating the angelical purity (Colombás, 1958, pp. 184-200; Rist, 1992, p. 155; Lossky, 2009, p. 151)8. Such denomination is apparently applied here by Dionysius with certain restriction to the hierarch who “participates according to his own possibilities of the interpretative characteristics of angels and rises to the revealing likeliness with them according to what is accessible to men” (Dionysius, 1991a, p. 293b).

Having said that how this is equality among angels understood, is it possible to abandon our own mode of being for a totally different one? Is it possible to become another being? Is death from a Platonic conception conceived as the separation of the soul from the body so as to recover a pristine condition darkened by our carnality? Does not the qualification of this divine and pious man as truth lover resemble significantly the image of the Philosopher as described by Plato in the Phaedo, who certainly obtains through his own way of life, a destination, a condition, and a blessed lêxis? Isn’t it only the demand of elevation to a certain ideal of life and so, does not this equality imply the promise of future change in our way of being? (Golitzin, 1994, p. 97, n. 155; Lilla, 2002, pp. 37-38). If this is so, what does this new way of being consist of?

At the beginning of About Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Dionysius (1991b) points out that Thearchy has turned hierarchy into a gift to save and deify all the rational and intellectual essences and that as a special gift has been given taîs hyperkosmioís kaì makaríais léxesin in a more immaterial and intellectual way (p. 376b). A few lines above, Dionysius emphasizes that the same Thearchy has granted us the priest function thanks to which we are closer to these superior essences making us alike, according to our possibilities and to the stability and inalterability of its sacred foundation.

Here arises the second aspect that deserves to be highlighted. In the use Dionysius makes of the term lêxis to connote both the angelical essences and the condition to which a pious man accedes, there is a linking point that reveals not only the coherence of thought but also its Christian depth.

In other words, the use Dionysius makes of this term is combined in a metaphysical and spiritual perspective. The former is within the context of the representation of a Dionysian universe in which the angels

7 Dionysius said (1991b) at About Ecclesiatical Hierarchy: “If it is true that the totally divine man, worthy companion of the divine being, elevated to what is Godlike, according to him in a totally perfect contemplation is not going to carry out the performance of the flesh—but only what is necessary according to nature and this is so, if it is carried out superficially—he will be at the same time temple and companion of the extreme contemplation according to him and the Thearchic spirit” (p. 433c). The notion of the divine man or theîos anér has deep roots in Greek Philosophy and meaningful repercussions to posterity (Hernández de la Fuente, 2011, pp.19-28, 43-74). 8 In Dionysius, the angelic imitation means sexual renunciation as stated by the primitive monastic life. On the subject sexual renunciation, see Brown (1993).


134

also receive the denomination of léxeis and they are distinguished by their incessant movement. This never-ending movement draws a choral dance of celestial liturgy around Thearchy (Dionysius, 1991a, pp. 205b-212a; Dionysius, 1990, p. 704d). In chapter VI (p. 856c) of About Divine Names they are called hyperouraníais dsoaîs. Is it mere coincidence that such characterization also applies to the condition to which man yearns for his initiation in the mysteries of liturgical life? For our author, does not this characterization reveal that the aim of our lives is to imitate such movement? There is no doubt that this is Dionysius’ thought. In fact, he later emphasizes that Thearchy gives men this life similar to angels “as much as it can be received by them, mixed beings” and that “it has promised us the certainly most divine because it will lead us towards the totally perfect life and immortality: souls and bodies bounded” (Dionysius, 1990, p. 856d).

This sense of the term lêxis has not been appreciated by Roques, De Gandillac, Scazzoso and Caballero who translate it as a derivation of the verb légo meaning rest, peacefulness, and not from the verb lagcháno, that means to obtain something by means of luck or destination, being lucky, being appointed by luck and that denotes the idea of a condition or position assigned after death in a figurative sense used by Neoplatonism.

The author believes that the anthropological implications present in the Dionysian eschatology can be traced in the second meaning of the term, in which it is merely unexpected or distributive connotation is moved as it has been observed in Damascius to imply a condition or state of the soul. Actually, this Dionysian eschatology is revealed as clearly orthodox because the state of eternal bliss for man does not mean neglecting his corporality. It is true that our author does not state clearly the role of the body in the future state of the new birth. Nevertheless, Dionysius is highly consistent when he points out that our future condition continues being a compound condition. Thus the imitation of the angelical condition has a far reaching spiritual meaning and I believe it is not merely an occasional reference as Kharlamov (2009) sustains.

Such spiritual meaning is observed when emulating the incessant and unavoidable movement of the essences superior to us as regards Good. This choral dance image about Thearchy reflects the final aim our life expects to reach.

It is worth pointing out here the reception that Neoplatonism may have if it is considered that such image is fundamental in Proclus (Trouillard, 1977, pp. 162-175; Beierwaltes, 1991, pp. 252-255) who believes that the perfect movement of intelligence is present in the circular movement, in the choral movement about the One. This image is restated by Damascius in his Commentary on the Phaedo who explains that the perfection of intelligence is present when it tends towards what is intelligible and when it settles in its own action carrying out a truly intellective justice (p. 86).

Conclusions Dionysius’ Neoplatonic roots are always or nearly often highlighted here neglecting those passages that

show him as a real believer. This unilateral vision can only be reflected in Hornus’ judgement when he points out that:

The price of holiness is the divine communion, then the body of the just will be part of this communion. The church announces everywhere a complete and total resurrection. There is a Christian hint which is totally strange to the general structure of the Dionysian world beyond its philosophical system as an assertion of faith. (Hornus, 1946, p. 54, n. 54)

Is this assertion of faith totally strange to the deepest concerns of the Dionysian’s thought? On the contrary, such assertion of faith supports Dionysius’ effort to think of his faith in an unyielding manner.


135

Such judgement can only be admitted if texts such as the following are not considered:

On their behalf, others I don’t know how, lost in materialistic modes of thinking, have said the hagiotáten kaì makaristèn lêxin promised to the pious, is similar to life here and they threw away illegally nourishment typical of a changing life to those who are equal to angels. But none of the sacred men will ever fall in such error, but considering that all of them will receive the Christoeidê lêxin, when they reach the end of their life here, they will see the magnificent way towards what remains uncorrupted as something close to them and they will praise with hymns the kindness of Thearchy. (Dionysius, 1991b, p. 553d)

The configuration to Christ starts with the first steps of the initiation of the mysteries of liturgical life to consummate it definitely at the end of a vital trajectory that has lived under the image of an athlete of faith. This is clearly the message of the first chapters of About Ecclesiastic Hierarchy. Actually, this confession of truly ecclesiastical faith is not merely occasional or added to a Neoplatonic dominant structure which becomes a simple linguistic or formal vehicle without any relation with the foundation of its thought.

To give another example there is a text that shows clearly the fundamental role of Christ in the life of the thinker who is a believer and that objects perspectives as the ones mentioned above. In About the Divine Names I 4, Dionysius (1990) said:

… when we become uncorrupted and immortal and we reach tês christoeidoûs kaì makariotátes léxeos, we will always be—according to the Oracle—with God, on the one hand satisfied, with totally pure contemplations of its visible teophanythat irradiate us as well as disciples with luminous brightness in that divine transfiguration; on the other hand, participating of its intelligible donation of light in an impassible and immaterial intelligence, and taking part of the union beyond the intelligence in the unknown and blessed emissions of luminous rays. In a divine immitation of super-celestial intelligence, we will be similar to angels and sons of God as beings of resurrections, as it is said in the truth of the Oracles. (p. 592c)

This truth from which Dionysius has taken the pseudonym of the converse of Areopago is proclaimed by Pablo in his speech, not only as the unknown God but also as the resurrection of the dead and, is not this last truth the one that gives name to his work and identity? Is not this last truth the one that turns him into a thinker that deepens the mystery of the resurrection of the dead? And in line with the Platonic Socrates he believes that the advantageous risk of life does not lead us to the non existence but we rather go through it with the hope that we might inherit something according to the worthy mode in which we have assumed our life.

References Beierwaltes, W. (1991). Proclo. I fondamenti della sua metafísica (Proclus. The grounds of his metaphysics). Milano: Vita e

Pensiero. Beierwaltes, W. (1993). Pensare l’Uno. Studi sulla filosofia neoplatonica e sulla storia dei suoi influssi (Thinking the one. Studies

about Neoplatonic philosophy and about history of their influences). Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Bossi, B. (2008). Saber gozar. Estudios sobre el placer en Platón (Know to enjoy. Studies about the pleasure in Plato). Madrid:

Trotta. Brisson, L. (2005). Platón, las palabras y los mitos. (Plato the myth maker). Madrid: Abada. Brown, P. (1993). The body and the society. Christians and sexual renunciation. Barcelona: Muchnik. Colombás, D. G. (1958). Paraíso y vida angélica (Paradise and angelic life). Barcelona: Abadía de Montserrat. Dillon, J., & Gerson, L. (2004). Neoplatonic philosophy, introductory readings. Cambrigde: Hackett Publishing. Dionysius the Areopagite. (1990). About divine names. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Dionysius the Areopagite. (1991a). About celestial hierarchy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Dionysius the Areopagite. (1991b). About ecclesiastical hierarchy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.


136

Dörrie, H. (1973). La doctrine de l’âme dans le néoplatonisme de Plotin à Proclus” in Études Néoplatoniciennes (The doctrine of the soul in the Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus). La Bacconière: Neuchatel.

Dörrie, H. (1973). La doctrine de l’âme dans le néoplatonisme de Plotin à Proclus (The doctrine of the soul in the Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus). In Études Néoplatoniciennes (pp. 43-58). La Bacconière: Neuchatel.

Eliasson, E. (2012). L’anima e l’individuo (The soul and the individual). In R. Chiaradonna (Ed.). Filosofia tardoantica (Philosophy in Late Antiquity) (pp. 213-231). Rome: Carocci.

Ferrari, F. (2010). I miti di Platone (The myths of Plato). Milano: Rizzoli. Finnamore, J. (1998). What the Hades? Iamblichus and Proclus on judges and judgement in the afterlife. Mediterranean

Perspectives: Philosophy, Literature, and History, 1, 50. Finnamore, J., & Dillon, J. (2002). Iamblichus De Anima: Text, translation and commentary. Leiden: Brill. Gertz, S. (2010). Death and immortality in late Neoplatonism. Studies on the ancient commentaries on Plato’ Phaedo. Leiden:

Brill. Giovanni, R. ( 2001). Platon. En búsqueda de la sabiduría secreta (Plato. In search of secret wisdom). Barcelona: Herder. Golitzin, A. (1994). Et introibo ad altare Dei. The mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with special reference to its predecessors

in the Eastern christian tradition. Thessaloniki: Analecta Vlatadon. Gritti, E. (2008). Proclo, Dialettica, Anima, Esegesi. Milano: LED. Hernández de la Fuente, D. (2011). Vidas de Pitágoras (Lifes of Pythagoras). Madrid: Atalanta. Hornus, J. M. (1947). Quelques réflexions à propos du Pseudo-Denys l’Areopagite et de la mystique chrétienne en général (Some

reflections about Dionysius the Areopagite and about christian mistycal theology), Revue d’Historie et de Philosophie Religieuses, 27, 37-63.

Jones, J. D. (1999). Pseudo-Dionysius. The divine names and the mystical theology. Translated from the Greek with Introductory Study. Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.

Kharlamov, V. (2009). The beauty of the unity and the harmony of the whole: The concept of theosis in the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Oregon: Wipf & Stock.

Lilla, S. (2002). Introduzione, a Pseudo-Dionigi l’Areopagita, La gerarchia ecclesiastica (Introduction at Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the ecclesiastical hierarchy). Rome: Città Nuova.

Lossky, V. (2009). TeologíaMística de la Iglesia de Oriente (The mystical theology of the Eastern church). Barcelona: Herder. Pépin, J. (1990). Le plaisir du mythe (The pleasure of the myth) (Damascius, In Phaedonem I 525-526. II 129-130).

Neoplatonisme, Melanges offerts a Jean Trouillard (pp.275-290) (Neoplatonism. Studies in Honour of Jean Trouillard). Rist, J. (1992). Pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonism and the weakness of the soul. In H. Westra (Ed.), From Athens to Chartres.

Neoplatonism and medieval thought (p. 155). Leiden: Brill. Rowe, C. (1995). Philosophie et litterature dans le Phédon (Philosophy and literature in Phaedo). In M. Dixsaut (Ed.), Contre

Platon 2. Renverser le platonisme (p. 290), Paris: Vrin. Rowe, C. (2009). Plato and the art of philosophical writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salviat, J. (1965). Risque et mythe dans le Phédon (Risk and myth in Phaedo). Revue de études grecques, 78, 23-39. Schula, B., Heil, G., & Ritter, A. (1990-1991). Corpus Dionysiacum I-II. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Shaw, G. (1995). Theurgy and the soul. The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State UniversityPress. Stang, C. (2012). Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite (No longer I). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steel, C. (1978). The changing self: A study on the soul in later Neoplatonism: Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus. Paleis der

Academiën: Bruseel. Steel, C. (1993). L’ âme. Modèle et image (The Soul. Model and image). In H. Blumenthal, & E. Clark (Eds.), The divine

Iamblichus. Philosopher and man of Gods (pp. 14-29). Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Trouillard, J. (1972). L’une et l’âme selon Proclos (The one and soul according to Proclus). Paris, Les Belles Lettres. Trouillard, J. (1977). La figure du choeur de danse dans l’oeuvre de Proclos (The figure of choir of dance in the work of Proclus).

In Permanence de la Philosophie (Permanency of the philosophy) (pp. 162-175). Neuchâtel: La Baconnière. Trouillard, J. (1982). La mystagogie de Proclos (The mystagogy of Proclus). Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Westerink, L. G. (1971). Damascius, commentateur de Platon (Damascius, commentator of Plato). In Le Néoplatonisme (The

Neoplatonism) (p. 254). Colloques Internationau Royaumont: Paris: CNRS. Westerink, L. G. (1977). The Greek commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo II. Damascius. Westbury: The Prometheus Trhust. White, D. A. (1989). Myth and metaphysics in Plato’s Phaedo. Toronto: Susquehanna University Press.


Modern Pedagogy and the Ratio Studiorum∗

Ziba Ahmadian University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

This presentation discusses the requests of modern pedagogy, and a possible bridging between the traditional

teaching strategies drawn by the Ratio Studiorum of a unique and rare structure, and today’s learning process. It

will argue the practical application and philosophy of education widely accepted and recognized as a part of

curricular activities within the learning environments, though with no recognition of its origin. This paper aims to

examine the indisputable contributions of the educational methods of the Jesuits in our time, although, the

discipline has developed new fundamental, and new concepts such as self-esteem, self-awareness, and

self-determination among others.

Keywords: the Ratio Studiorum, Jesuits curriculum, Jesuits pedagogy, Jesuits self-esteem

Introduction

This presentation illustrates how the Ratio Studiorum (1599) that is the official plan for Jesuit education, in 16th century laid the principles of the curricular activities. The history of education in Europe confirms that education for the young has been offered by priests, whom made their services available to the higher class, royals, rich, and professionals such as administrators, or physicians. Researchers such as Knowles1 have agreed and admitted that until recently the only one model about learning and the characteristics of learners dominating secular schools was the 12th century Universities of Bologna2 and Paris3. In his The Modern Practice of Adult Education, From Pedagogy to Andragogy (1970), Knowles recognizes the remarks by the monks in teaching very young children mostly reading and writing throughout Europe and North America and much of the rest of the world, especially by missionaries in the 18th and 19th centuries. Though, the recognition of curricular activities set by the Ratio Studiorum in modern pedagogy is nowhere to be found.

In this presentation, firstly and briefly, we will take a look at the first Jesuit’s college established in Sicily in 1548, and will observe the learning practices within the Jesuits school.

The author will then introduce the Ratio Studiorum, and explain how it came to the existence. In conclusion we will look at the modern pedagogy and new concepts in learning process, and the

Jesuits practices.

∗ Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu (1599) that is “The official plan for Jesuit education”. Ziba Ahmadian, Ph.D. in Italian Studies, Department of Italian Studies, University of Toronto. 1 For a complete review see Knowles (1970). 2 University of Bologna was founded in 1088. 3 The foundation date of the University of Bologna can be established between 1160 and 1250.

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

MODERN PEDAGOGY AND THE RATIO STUDIORUM

138

The First Jesuits’ College The importance of the education for St. Ignatius4 brought some scholars to believe that the Society of

Jesus was founded merely to teach the catechism to the children and illiterates. When Ignatius of Loyola submitted the Formula Istituti (1538), that is the document containing society’s founding principles, to the Pope Paul III (1468-1549), he approved and recognized the duties of Jesuits, as O’Malley (2006) explains “by works of charity, and specifically by the education of children and unlettered person in Christianity” (p. XXXV). The Ratio Studiorum itself asserts the great importance of the education for the Fonder of the Society; as first article of “Rules for Provincial”5, emphasizes that as “The final goal of the Society’s studies” (Pavur, 2005, p. 7). First equip the members with a good education and other skills, and then provide them with the opportunity to share the fruit of their training with others whether in classroom or elsewhere.

While preaching and teaching of catechism was the key command of the Society, soon Ignatius had to face a real problem which was training of his own men. One of his companion, Laynez6 suggested him to open some houses in the cities where universities are located. This would facilitate young Jesuits to study properly. By 1544 there were seven of these houses in Europe. Meantime, some schools had been opened as well. The schools were a huge success, especially when in 1546 Ignatius allowed the school in Gandìa to offer the human science courses also to non-Jesuits. The success of this move was beyond belief.

Though, the greatest achievement reached when the first Jesuits College was founded in Messina. In 1548 St. Ignatius of Loyola decided to send Father Nadal7 to open and see the first Jesuit school in Sicily. Father Nadal arrived in Messina on April 8, 1548. Already a couple of weeks later on April 26 the lessons began with classical languages, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. The summer gave Jesuits’ brothers the time needed to get organized. The program, a circular letter on the school itself, and the curriculum for the next academic year were prepared. This was the first plan and the first bulletin ever prepared and distributed for a Jesuit school, in which was clearly indicated that the methods of the University of Paris would be followed.

From the very first day the Fathers observed any progress or any short come, and this was reported to Rome. After almost two years, in 1551 a second plan was ready to replace the first one. Father Nadal prepared the program having in mind the best of renaissance humanistic ideals and the methods of Paris; it was again circulated among Jesuits colleges that already had spread in Italy and other countries in Europe. Father Nadal laid the base of a phenomenal pedagogical program extremely efficient for the education of the members of the Society. It was not only aimed to shape the students’ character, and to strengthen faith in them, but also to secure in their heart love for teaching, as the “Rules for Rector” clearly indicates:

[75] Interest in education 1. The Society eagerly undertake secondary and higher education so that Jesuits can be properly instructed both in

doctrine and in the other matters that contribute to helping souls, and so that they can share with their neighbours what they themselves have learned. Therefore, after his rightly foremost concern for religious and essential human virtues, he should devote himself especially to achieving, with the help of God, this final goal that the Society has set before itself in allowing schooling to be part of its mission. (Pavur, 2005, pp. 30-31)

4 Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Society of Jesus (1541). 5 There are only a few editions in English of Ratio Studiourm: The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599 (Farell, 1970); Principles of Jesuit education in practice (Donnelly, 1934); The Ratio Studiorum (1599). For our study, the last edition of the volume has been chosen and all our references are made to this volume. 6 Diego Laynez (1512-1565). 7 Jerónimo Nadal (1507-1580). On Jerónimo Nadal, see: Bangert (1992).


139

Meantime, in Rome Fathers were to receive notes and letters from colleges and missionaries all over the world. They were meticulously to collect the information, classify them and examine every single aspect of the progress of the students and teachers within their mandates. Ignatius informs the principals that “no rule of studies was to be considered fixed or final until a program applicable to all the schools could be drafted and approved” (Pavur, 2005, p. 218).

The Ratio Studiorum The continues practice and reflections, led by classics, St. Thomas theology, Aristotle, and the practical

method of the University of Paris became the model for the Jesuits to draft and develop a unique and universal pedagogical structure for their college. The new method was arranged with a set of rules and regulations for principals, professors, administrators, and students to assure not only the order and studies, but also to guarantee the respect for students, to distinct, and to differentiate between the capabilities and potential of each student. The presence in the classroom, and abundance of the exercises were also extremely emphasized.

The Ratio atque institutio studiorum Societatis Iesu that is the Official Plan for Jesuit Education, issued in 1599 was the result of over 50 years of academic efforts, years of collaboration, committee work, and experience in Jesuit schools all over the world.

It provided Jesuits with the first uniform method to teach and to train the teachers. It allowed the members to use their mother tongue and the local language to learn some material such as mathematics and science, nonetheless Latin was the dominant language in the college; the students were expected to master in classical languages such as Greek and Hebrew as well. The Jesuits substituted supervision for compulsion and dissociated punishment from teaching. They also introduced a procedure to promote abler students to a higher grade after only half a session. They maintained their sever practices in sacramental confession and communion, case of conscience, moral, and religious matters.

The plan also was to educate the best preachers, professors, scientists, mathematician, philosophers, writers, and artists. It meant to discover talents and to prepare the members for the highest executive positions in the society, in commerce, in finance, or any form of cultural activities. Not to mention how this plan was successful in view of the time, and the battle between the Catholic Church and Protestantism.

What distinguishes The Radio Studiorum from other orders is the fact that Fathers of the Society of Iesu tried, for the glory of God, to faultlessness of their pedagogical rules. With no limitation, or internal barrier they drafted a program that would not be inflexible. They were perfectly aware of weak points hidden in the text, or unthinkable. Just so, open to the outcomes, for years the drafts were put into practice, and the results and the progress of students were carefully assessed. Finally after years of study, research and observation, since the original draft had been prepared, the first text of the Ratio Studiorum was approved and released to the print. The final text of the Ratio Studiorum, though, was no longer the imitation of the University of Paris, nor Quintiliano’s Institutio oratoria (circa 39-Roma c. 95).

As Scaglione (1986, pp. 82-83) point outs the Ratio Studiorum, was the distillation of the Jesuit educational experience in Italia, specifically Roman climate of the late 16th century.

James Dominic, Secretary of the Society, with his “Letter of Transmission” (Farrell, 1970, pp. xii-xiii) (see Appendix) dated January 8, 1599, explains clearly the procedures of the preparation of the Ratio Studiorum.

Soon after the publication of the Ratio Studiorum, some colleges in Europe argued about its originality. Farrell (1970) in his The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599 indicates:


140

[…] When the early Jesuit schools began to spread from Italy, Spain and Portugal to France and Germany, claims were made by several headmasters of rival schools, especially by Johann Sturm, headmaster at Strassburg, that the Jesuits had copied their pedagogical practices. As a matter of fact, however, when the manuscript of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria was discovered at St. Gall by the humanist Poggio in 1410, Quintilian soon became the favourite source of most of the school programs in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries at Liege, Strassburg and elsewhere. This was prior to the opening of the first Jesuit school. Ignatius of Loyola and his early followers, on the other hand took as their chief authority the University of Paris, their Alma Mater. Their preference for Paris resulted from their interest, at that time, in the practice rather than in the theory of education. The University of Paris undoubtedly absorbed a great deal of its pedagogy from Quintilian or from humanist adaptations of Quintilian, but it had reduced these ideas to order and to practice. […] (pp. ix-x)

In his work Farrell divides the Ratio Studiorum in four principal areas: (1) Administration by defining the function, interrelation, and duties of such officials as the provincial, rector, and prefects of studies; (2) It outlines a curriculum by placing their proper sequence and gradation courses of study in theology, philosophy, and the humanities; (3) It sets forth in detail a method of conducting lessons and exercises in the classroom; and (4) It provides for discipline by fixing for the students norms of conduct, regularity, and good order.

Let us just take a look and see how the Ratio Studiorum is structured. The Ratio Studiorum is divided into 40 chapters, and each chapter into many subchapters forming 527 articles in total:

[H1] Rules of the Provincial [H2] Rules for the Rector [H3] Rules for the Prefect of Studies [H4] Common Rules for All the Professors of the Higher Faculties [H5] Rules for Professors of Sacred Scripture [H6] Rules for the Professor of Hebrew [H7] Rules for the Professors of Scholastic Theology [H8] Catalog of Some Questions [H9] From the First Part of Saint Thomas [H10] From the First Part of Part II [H11] From the Second Part of Part II [H12] From Part III [H13] On the Sacraments in General [H14] On Baptism [H15] On the Eucharist [H16] About Penance [H17] On Matrimony Rules Resumed [H18] Rules for the Professor of Cases of Conscience [H19] Rules for the Professor of Philosophy [H20] Rules for the Professor of Moral Philosophy [H21] Rules for the Professor of Mathematics [H22] Rules for the Prefect of Lower Studies [H23] Regulations for Taking Examinations [H24] Regulations for Prizes [H25] Rules Common to All the Professors of the Lower Classes [H26] Rules for the Professor of Rhetoric [H27] Rules for the Professor of Humanities [H28] Rules for the Professor of the Highest Grammar Class [H29] Rules for the Professor of the Middle Grammar Class


141

[H30] Rules for the Professor of the Lowest Grammar Class [H31] Rules for Jesuit Students [H32] The Training of Those Who Are Reviewing Theology in Private Study for Two Years [H33] Rules for the Teacher’s Assistant, or the Beadle [H34] Rules for Non-Jesuit Students [H35] Rules for Academies [H36] Rules for the Prefect of an Academy [H37] Rules for the Academy of Theologians and philosophers [H38] Rules for the Prefect of the Academy of Theologians and Philosophers [H39] Rules for the Academies of Rhetoricians and Humanities Students [H40] Rules for the Academy of Grammar Students (Pavur, 2005, pp. xiii-xxiii)

What we are discussing in this paper refers mainly to the chapter 39 “Rules for the Academies of Rhetoricians and Humanities Students”, article 513 to 519. That is the part Farrell considers the method of conducting lessons and exercises in the classroom.

Already Father Nadal’s program—later approved in the Ratio Studiorum engaged students in the actual work of the classroom, while looking for specific and practical pedagogical guidance. Every activity had its own distinctive spirit and purpose, and as we mentioned, later was subjected to prolonged testes and experience.

These activities are quite familiar to all of us; the learning circle, and classroom activities from primary education to secondary, from post-secondary and further up, to organizing conferences, presentations, declamations and theatrical performances to boost students’ self-esteem, and burst their talent and artistic skills were all a part of curricular activities prescribed by the Ratio Studiorum. Students’ performance and participation in classroom, group activities, sharing ideas, and writing together were then, and are today a part of recommended exercises for the members.

According to the Ratio Studiorum—Article 356 Special exercises—“Special exercises were to cultivate not only the students’ memories but also their intellectual talents”.

Articles 514 and 515 [H 39] “What exercises are to be held by moderator”, respectively read:

[514] […] Just as he (moderator) judges the time to be right, the moderator will at some times give lessons or present questions on some chosen material or author; or at other times, he will give some rather unfamiliar rules for speaking taken from Aristotle, Cicero, or other rhetoricians; or again at other times, he will quickly cover some author and ask the members of the academy questions about that material; and at other times, he will set them problems to be solved, and the like.

[515] […] sometimes they should engage in speeches for the prosecution and for the defense in turn, with the moderator’s approval; sometimes they should present classes, with at least two in disputation against the presenter; sometimes they should defend thesis, arguing in a manner that is more oratorical than dialectical; sometimes they should fashion emblems and insignia on some designated subject matter, sometimes inscriptions or descriptions; sometimes they should contrive riddles or solve them; sometimes they should practice invention one at a time, coming up with loci to support a proposed theme, whether on the spot or after some study time; sometimes they should practice elocution by suiting figures of language or thought to the material that has been found; sometimes they should sketch dialogs, poems, or tragedies; sometimes they should imitate a whole oration by an illustrious orator, or a poem by a famous poet; sometimes they should construct certain symbols, in such a way that they produce their own sayings about a single topic that has been proposed for everyone individually; sometimes, after the books of some author have been distributed, they should each produce sayings or phrases gleaned from it. Finally they should practice whatever usually gives rise to eloquence and is produced by it. (Pavur, 2005, pp. 211-212)


142

Roberto Marzano8 cofounder and CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Centennial, Colorado differentiates instruction and uses inquiry as well as the application. Marzano claims that the child develops information-processing skills, such as attention, memory capacity, and learning strategies. Teachers can help students develop their capacities for formal thinking by putting the students in situations that challenge their thinking and reveal the shortcomings of their logic. Siegler’s9 (2002) approach is called “rule assessment” because it focuses on understanding, challenging, and changing the rules that students use for thinking.

Anderson’s research (Reznitckaya & Anderson, 2006, pp. 175-198) identified 13 forms of talk and argument that helped manage the discussion, get everyone to participate, present and defend positions, and handle confusion. The researchers found that the use of these different forms of talking and thinking snowballed—once a useful argument was employed by one student, it spread to other students, and the argument stratagem form appeared more and more in the discussion. He also proved that open discussions—students asking and answering each other’s questions-were better than teacher-dominated discussion for the development of these argument forms. According to Educational Psychology (2009) over time, these ways of presenting, attacking, and defending positions could be internalized as mental reasoning and decision making for the individual students. In fact what Educational Psychology focuses on is different strategies to develop students’ analytical thinking and to supply them with argumentation skills. In recent years, enormous amount of research has been dedicated to designing new methods purposely to assess classroom interactions, and evaluating the outcomes to finally adopt, quiet unknowingly, the Jesuits strategies within the learning environment.

The recent studies confirm the importance of activity and constructing knowledge. Piaget’s (1964) fundamental insight was that individuals construct their own understanding; learning is a “constructive” process. At every level of cognitive development, you will also want to see that students are actively engaged in the learning process. In his words:

Knowledge is not a copy of reality. To know an object, to know an event, is not simply to look at it and make a mental copy or image of it. To know an object is to act on it. To know is to modify, to transform the object, and to understand the process of this transformation, and as a consequence to understand the way the object is constructed. (p. 8)

In Jesuit colleges the goal was “Ad perfectam enim eloquentiam informat” (Ratio Studiorum, 1599, p. 155)10 that is “an education in perfect eloquence”; in other words preparing the base for the eloquence. The goal was reached by teaching Latin, Greek, and Hebrew while using constantly the Latin language. The students became masters in writing and speaking perfectly Latin, attending lectures on rhetoric. At the completion of studies, the student was already a maestro, a doctor, a teacher, or a professor in every sense. Mental faculties, intellectual capacities, habits, order, precision, imagination, comprehension, implementation, awareness, and other psychological qualities will be developed only if the student abandons the listener passiveness and participates actively in classroom activities creating with his own words what he is taught, translating and creating with his own imagination from his own experience some beautiful poems, phrases, or paragraphs, rivaling the model proposed in the classroom. As a method, once this phase was over, the Jesuits were endeavoring to critique and

8 Robert Marzano is cofounder and CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Centennial, Colo., and a former senior scholar at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning in Aurora, Colo. He has developed programs and practices used in K–12 classrooms that translate current research and theory in cognition into instructional methods. 9 See also Siegler (1976, 1981). 10 [H26] Regulae professoris Rhetoricæ, [375] Gradus.


143

evaluation. The best compositions in all forms of poetry and prose had to be rewarded. Since art is a skill, and skill is acquired through repetition, practice must dominate the classroom. The student must be constantly writing, reading, and speaking, so that simultaneous use of the five senses, along with imagination, sensibility and determination generate a unique piece of art.

In 2005, Gredler argued that this active experience, even at the earliest school level, should not be limited to the physical manipulation of objects. It should also include mental manipulation of ideas that arise out of class projects or experiments. In fact, Jesuit plan focuses on abundant exercising and memorizing. Learning of different languages, mandatory use of Latin during all activities, continuously exercising, writing compositions, preparing oral presentations, declamations or imitation of an eminent poet or author were only a part of practices in Jesuits learning environment. These activities, as Vygotsky11 calls them “imitative learning tools”, aside from providing the adequate amount of practice on a specific subject, were a real encouragement for the student who was, consequently, praised by the professor and colleagues.

According to Vygotsky there are at least three ways in which cultural tools can be passed from one individual to another: imitative learning (where one person tries to imitate the other), instructed learning (where learners internalize the instructions of the teacher and use these instructions to self-regulate), and collaborative learning (where peers strive to understand each other and learning occurs in the process) (Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993, pp. 495-552). Vygotsky was most concerned with instructed learning through direct teaching or through structuring experiences that support another’s learning, but his theory supports other forms of cultural learning as well. Assisted learning, or guided participation in the classroom, requires scaffolding-giving information, prompts, reminders, and encouragement at the right time and in the right amounts, and then gradually allows the students to do more and more on their own. Teachers can assist learning by adapting materials or problems to students’, demonstrating skills or thought processes; walking students through the steps of a complicated problem, doing part of the problem. Though, sometimes, the best teachers are other students who have just understood a particular concept. These “teachers” may be engaging in reciprocal teaching. This is exactly what Jesuits were doing.

In 1990, Marsh proved that students with superior self-esteem (Rosenberg, Schooler, Schoenbach, & Rosenberg, 1995) are more successful in school. In addition, scholars confirm that higher self-esteem is related to better approach toward school, more positive behavior in the classroom, and greater popularity with other students.12

So, what should schools do to promote students’ self-esteem?13 (Woolfolk, 2009, pp. 85-86). So far more than thousands of books, and articles on how to boost students’ self-esteem have been published and schools and mental health facilities continue to develop self-esteem programs. In 1991, Beane argues self-esteem and the school’s role in “enhancing self-esteem, and if so on what grounds and to which extent” (p. 25). He states the attempts to improve students’ self-esteem have taken three main forms; personal development activities such as sensitivity training, self-esteem programs where the curriculum focuses directly on improving self-esteem; and structural changes in schools that place greater emphasis on cooperation, student participation, community involvement, and ethnic pride.

11 On Vygotsky see: The Collected Works of Vygotsky (1987) and The Essential Vygotsky (2004). 12 See also Reynolds (1980) and Metcalfe (1981). 13 On “What should schools do to encourage students’ self-esteem?”, see Chapter 3 Personal, Social, Emotional Development in Educational Psychology (2009).


144

For that many views have been revealed superficial, money-making, and packed with trendy observations, the self-esteem has become a serious issue for study and critics. Though beyond the feel-good psychology of some aspects of the self-esteem concept is a basic truth: “Self-esteem is a central feature of human dignity and thus an inalienable human right”, Beane (1991) argues, “schools and other agencies have a moral obligation to help build it and avoid debilitating it” (p. 28). Practices that allow genuine participation, cooperation, problem solving, and accomplishment should replace procedures that damage self-esteem. The Ratio Studiorum seriously concerns about the students and teachers dignity, as for many articles refer directly to virtues, talents, awards, encouragements, etc.: articles such as “Virtue ought to be taken into account” (p. 26), “Talent ought to be taken into account, and” (p. 29), “How a decision about talents should be made” (p. 36), “Diversity according to the diversity of locales” (p. 72), “promotion to rank” (p. 17), “Special and General Acts” (pp. 106-107), public exercises, weekly, and monthly open disputations, etc., Articles 517 and 518 respectively read:

[517] It is worthwhile to have some of the more impressive of these exercises (such as the lessons, declamations, and defenses of theses) presented especially by the rector of the academy, occasionally with some formal ceremony and before a circle of guests.

[518] sometimes private awards can be given to those distinguishing themselves in composition or recitation or in solving riddles and problems. Likewise, the more formal awards can be distributed to all the members together once a year whether on the basis of a grant, or according to whatever scheme the rector of the college likes.

More than 100 years ago, “William James (1890) suggested that self-esteem is determined by how ‘successful’ we are in accomplishing tasks or reaching goals we value. If a skill or accomplishment is not important, incompetence in that area doesn’t threaten self-esteem” (Backley, 2012, p. 71; Woolfolk, Winne, Perry, & Shapka, 2009, p. 86). Students must have success on tasks that matter to them. But the way individuals explain their successes or failures is also important. For the students to build self-esteem, they must learn to attribute their successes to their own efforts, not to luck or to special assistance. Teachers’ evaluations, comments, advice or criticism, grading practices, and praising can make a difference in how students feel about their abilities in particular subjects. The growth of the intellectual capacity, judgmental autonomy, reasoning, imagination, attention, selection, evaluation, expression, and so on—if in one hand can flourish and bring to mental development of the student, in the other will precipitously cause fatigue and the collapse of the student. Jesuits soon discovered that the only remedy for such exhaustion was encouragement in form of public praise to the student. Experience shows that the praise is the most effective way to improve student’s ability and therefore classroom work. The public—in this case, the applause of classmates, teachers, and school officials—will not only be the most important motivation, but it will also be of immense comfort to the student’s exhausted soul. Within the curricular activities of Father Nadal readings, of especially the compositions in the classroom, followed by the declamations in the college at the beginning and at the end of the academic year, aimed to encourage students in public, saving his soul, stimulating his confidence and self-esteem.

But the greatest increases in self-esteem probably come when students grow more competent in areas they value—including the social areas that become so important in adolescence. Thus, a teacher’s greatest challenge is to help students achieve important understandings and skills, and that is exactly the curriculum and practices set by the Ratio Studiorum.


145

Conclusions Without a doubt, in recent years the educational programs have progressed significantly. Scholars,

researchers, and experts have constantly worked and continue to work to develop new strategies enriching learning methods. The pedagogy, the science of education, in terms of training of teachers and teaching of students, curricular activities, class setting, and the whole learning environment is improving without stop. Hence, this paper intends to recognize the strong link between the Jesuits’ practices set by the Ratio Studiorum and the educational practices defined by various scholars in modern time. The paper indicates that the teaching techniques which require direct participation of students in different activities intended to encourage students to enhance learning, to provide access to educational opportunities, or to create learning environment were mostly implemented by Jesuits and had been in use long before they could be considered as conditions external to the learner’s success: skills, performance, practice methods, modelling, coaching, reflecting, creating, exploring, evaluation, and feedback, etc.. From this point of view, the profound influence of the Jesuits’ practices on the educational system in our time cannot be denied. An in-debt look to the today’s educational norms will find some of these practices unchanged and perhaps unchangeable through time.

References Backley, P. (2012). Motivation and self-esteem. Learning in early childhood (pp. 65-79). London: SAGE Publications. Bangert, W. V. (1972). A history of the society of Jesus. St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources. Bangert, W. V. (1992). Jerome Nadal, S. J. 1507-1580 (edited and completed by T. M. McCoog). Chicago: Loyola University Press. Beane, J. (1991). Sorting out the self-esteem controversy. Educational Leadership, 49(1), 25-30. Brodrick, J. (1940). The origin of the Jesuits. London: Longmans Green and Co Ltd.. Cathrene, M., Connery, V., John-Steiner, P., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2010). Vygotsky and creativity: A cultural-historical

approach to play, meaning making, and the arts. New York: P. Lang. Conwell, J. F. S. J. (2003). Walking in the Spirit (A reflection on Jeronimo Nadal’s phrase“Contemplative likewise in action”).

Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources. David, L., & Fleming, S. J. (1996). Draw me into your friendship: A literal translation & a contemporary reading. Saint Louis:

The Institute of Jesuit Sources. De Aldama, A., Antonio, M., Bottereau, G., Gioia, M., Dumeige, G., Dezza, P., & González, L. (Eds.). (1977). La formula

dell’Istituto, S. J (The formula of the Institute). Roma: Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis. Dixon-Krauss, L., & Plains, W. (Eds.). (1996). Vygotsky in the classroom: Mediated literacy instruction and assessment. N.Y.:

Longman. Donnelly, F. P. (1934). Principles of Jesuit education in practice, 1869-1959. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons Publishers. Donnelly, J. P. (Ed. & Trans.). (2006). Jesuit writings of the early modern period 1540-1640. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing

Company Inc.. Farrell, A. (1970). Introduction. The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599 (pp. I-XIII). Washington, DC: University of Detroit. Frawley, W. (1997). Vygotsky and cognitive science: Language and the unification of the social and computational mind.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Freedman, S. W. (1994). Crossing the bridge to practice: Rethinking the theories of Vygotsky and Bakhtin. Berkeley, CA:

National Cetrer for the study of writing, University of California; Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for the Study of Writing, Carnegie Mellon University.

Gredler, M. E. (2005). Learning and instruction: Theory into practice (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Knowles, M. S. (1970). The modern practice of adult education: Andragogy versus pedagogy. New York: Association Press. Marsh, H. W. (1990). Causal ordering of academic self-concept and academic achievement: A multiwave, longitudinal panel

analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(4), 646-656. Metcalfe, B. (1981). Self-concept and attitude toward school. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 66-76. O’Malley, J. W., Bailey, G. A., Harris, S. J., & Kennedy, T. F. (Eds.). (2006). Jesuits II cultures, sciences, and the arts 1540-1773.

Toronto: University of T Press.


146

Piaget, J. (1964). Development and learning. In R. Ripple, & V. Rockcastle (Eds), Piaget rediscovered (pp. 7-20). Ithaca, NY: Corrnell University Press.

Reynolds, M. (1980). Self-esteen abd ckassriin behaviour in elementary school children. Psychology in the Schools, 17, 273-277. Reznitskaya, A., & Anderson, R. C. (2006). Analyzing argumentation in rich, natural contexts. Informal Logic, 26(2), 175-198. Ribble, R. E., & Rochcastle, V. N. (Eds). (1964). Piaget rediscovered. New York: Ithaca. Rieber, R. W., & Carton, A. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (prologue by J. S. Bruner: Translated and with an

introduction by Norris Minick). New York: Plenum Press. Rieber, R. W., & Robinson, D. K. (Eds.). (2004). The essential Vygotsky (in collaboration with Jerome Bruner (Selections,

English, 2004)). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Rosenberg, M., Schooler, C., Schoenbach, C., & Rosenberg, F. (1995). Global self-esteem and specific self-esteem: Different

concepts, different outcomes. American Sociological Review, 60(1), 141-156. Scaglione, A. D. (1986). The liberal arts and the Jesuit college system. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Siegler, R., & Chen, Z. (2002). Development of rules and strategies: Balancing the old and the new. Journal of Experimental

Child Physiology, 81, 446-457. Smith, L., Dockrell, J., & Tomlinson, P. (Eds.). (1997). Piaget, Vygotsky and beyond: Future issues for developmental psychology

and education. London: Routlege. Ratio Studiorum (The official plan for Jesuit education) (Translated and Annotated by C. Pavur (2005)) (1599). St. Louis: The

Institute of Jesuit Sources. Tomasello, M., Kruger, A. C., & Ratner, H. H. (1993). Cultural learning. Behavioral and brain. Sciences, 16, 495-552. Vygotsky, L. S. (1971). The psychology of art. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, (Ed.). Cambridge: Harvard

University Press. Woolfolk, A. E., Winne, P. H., Perry, N. E., & Shapka, J. (2009). Educational psychology. Toronto: Pearson Canada.

Appendix

A comprehensive program for our course of studies began to take shape about 14 years ago. Work on it has now been

completed and copies of its final form are being sent to the various provinces of the Society.

On account of its great potential value for our schools, our Very Reverend Father General had hoped that the program would

have been completed and implemented long before now. This, however, proved to be impossible. The undertaking was so

ambitious and was fraught with so many problems that it was felt to be unwise to put it in force until the provinces would have an

opportunity to study its implications and suggest improvements. Father General decided that it would never do to impose a set of

regulations on the whole Society until every effort had been made to insure willing acceptance on the part of all concerned.

The six priests to whom the task of formulating a program of studies was entrusted spent long and arduous years in research

and discussion. They finally completed their work, and the results were forwarded to all provinces of the Society to be weighted

and evaluated by our teachers and educational experts. These men were requested to examine the document for the purpose of

noting and eliminating defects or of introducing improvements. They were then to make a report expressing their views on the

plan as a whole and to explain the principles which supported these views.

All of the provinces cooperated eagerly and resolutely, and forwarded their criticisms and their suggestions to Rome. There

the chief professors of the Roman College and a special committee of three Fathers edited these reports and submitted their

findings to Father General. In conference with the Fathers Assistant, he carefully scrutinized the new version of the plan of studies,

approved it, and forwarded copies to all the provinces with orders that it was to be scrupulously followed.

Father General reminded the Provincials that since new procedures to be reliable, must be tested in the light of actual

experience, they should note the day-by-day results of the new plan and make a report to Rome. He himself would then be in a

position to put the stamp of his final approval.


147

When the Provincials came to Rome for the fifth General Congregation, they brought with them the memoranda of defects

which daily experience in the classroom had detected in the second draft of the Ratio. The chief complaint was that the new plan

was too cumbersome. Hence it was decided to face the huge task of reviewing the whole project. This required that the members

of the Roman committee study the reasoning which prompted the various suggestions, that they ponder well what decision to

make in each instance, and finally that they endeavor to reduce the whole document to smaller and more manageable dimensions.

Finally the task was completed and we have good reason to hope that the final version will meet with the approval of all.

This revised edition of the Ratio which is now being sent out is to supersede all previous experimental editions and is to be

followed faithfully by all members of the Society. It is therefore incumbent on all our teachers to carry out all its provisions. I am

quite convinced that if the members of our Society realize how much this project means to our Father General, they will comply

cheerfully with his wishes.

Since responsibility for the success of this Ratio Studiorum lies squarely on the shoulders of superiors, Father General urges

them to make every effort to secure from their subjects ready and complete dedication to this program which breathes the spirit of

our Constitutions and promises to be of untold advantage to our students.

2014.2 journal of literature and art studies

Documents

journal of literature

david publishing company

usa tel

usa soo

david publishing d

university of nigeria

contents literature

jacksonville university