Juvenilia ✔/ a Nonfiction Undergraduate University Collection

Late Renaissance Poetry & Prose Final

ENGLISH 3284

Poetry and Prose of the Later Renaissance

December 21, 2020

Late Renaissance Poetry & Prose Final

I. PART I

*There was a choice of five passages where we had to choose three of the five and identify the title of the work, the author of the work, and then explain the significance of the given passage.

i. 'Why Must I Thus Forever Be Confined,' Hester Pulter

In "Why Must I Thus Forever be Confined," by Hester Pulter, rhyme scheme and meter play a major role in the flow and continuity of the poem. In heroic couplet, (rhyming lines of iambic pentameter with 10 syllable lines), Pulter explores the ways in which she is trapped in her life, and she uses natural symbolism to explore how everyone and everything else seems freer by comparison. 

The poetic form is strict and unyielding, which could have been employed to signify a symbolic entrapment inside of her status quo/routine as a woman in her time. The style of the poem is taut, like the chains she feels she has, and the fact that she chose to write it with such a strict form and combined with the length of the poem, seems to suggest the ceaseless torment she feels at the 'duty' she feels she has as a woman.

We have seen poems that are more free-form, or if not free-form, stylistically changed, (ones written by women that is) so it's not like it was a situation of not having the choice to do that. The form is symbolic of her own struggles, an embodiment in every way.

In the poem's entirety, a plethora of creatures are used to symbolize "freedom", but in the passage provided, it is limited only to the birds: birds in general, the halcyon, the swan, the ravens, and the ostrich (though there is a singular mention of a horse at the end). The birds can fly and escape wherever they so desire and the horse can run free in the field, all while Hester Pulter was presumably staring from a window, in the proverbial cage of her house. 

ii. 'Areopagitica,' John Milton

In Areopagitica, by John Milton, he explores the nature of truth and employs rhetoric to do so, or the art of persuasion to further his own political beliefs on freedom of speech. The passage provided is one of the most important passages in the entire argument. 

In the passage, Milton outlines why coming to your own conclusion is essential. To only believe in something because someone else told you to is a cheap substitute for exercising one's brain. If one does not do the work and instead relies on others to form their own opinions, it is not one's own opinion, and thus, they become an unthinking sheep. 

The brain needs exercise and flow, or it stagnates and rots. Milton equates the seeking of knowledge to the flow of water from a fountain—employing metaphor and imagery to further his point, to make it crystal clear to readers (or on-lookers to the speech) what exactly he means.

If a person speaks only of what others think, they are not employing their own opinions and thus are not being truthful. Milton further states that to rely on other people's opinions to form your own is actually a form of heresy, heresy being 'contrary to religious standards' in this context. 

As an example, simply believing in God because a pastor tells you to, and not because you, yourself, truly believe that, is actually at odds with yourself and the church because it is a form of disbelief in not seeking that truth on your own and confirming it within one's self.

iii. 'Of Studies,' Francis Bacon

In the passage supplied by Francis Bacon, in, "On Studies," Bacon explores the different ways books should be read, depending on the quality and merit of the book in question. In addition, he uses epexegesis to further examine what he means when he speaks in metaphor.