figurative language in the phoenix and the turtle
Closest to Shakespeare, however, both in time and in poetic diction, is a poem which has often been mentioned in more recent discussions of The Phoenix and the Turtle, Matthew Roydon's Elegie in The Phoenix Nest, published in 1593, upon Sidney's death. And there due adoration still she finds. 75+ Examples of Figurative Language University University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Alliteration. In the metaphysical vein the phrase would permit of translation in terms of such love as that celebrated by Donne in his "Valediction," love so completely and purely a union of minds and souls that it rests not in physical union, which is the essence of "sublunary love." It invites no ascent along the well-known ladder leading up to the contemplation of the Heavenly Beauty, though a ray of it may flash through the flaming eyes of the Phoenix, her earthly reflection. Augour of the feuers end, In righteous flames, and holy-heated fires . Ed. Grace in all simplicity, After the burning comes a series of cantos which have been cited as proof of Chester's superficial concern with the theme of chastity.10 Dismal as they are, these cantos illustrate the main theme and are designed to be read in two ways so that conventional love verses can be seen, through the use of acrostic, as something transcendent. Then clearest fire, and beyond faith farre whiter Propertie was thus appalled, The anthem stresses the triumph; Reason, without denying triumph of a sort, stresses the tragedy, and this emphasis, though it must inevitably appear derogatory after the anthem, is rather a way of establishing a balanced view of the event. / But thou some baseborne Haggard mak'st a wing,/ Against the Princely Eagle in his flight' (pp.75-6). 2Loves Martyr: or, Rosalins Complaint. Here we find the double negation, the Scylla and Charybdis upon which modern interpretation breaks up into contradictory splinters. Ambiguity may be functional. Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. 11Ben Jonson, ed. 6Boutell's Heraldry, revised C. V. Scott-Giles (London and New York, 1954), p. 60. Out of the fire, but a more perfect creature? They might have departed and still remained, remained in a child, a visible sign of their unity, but they chose otherwise and common sense cannot commend their choice. The person the Turtle grieves for, according to Brown, is not a woman but a man: this is Sir John's brother Thomas, executed for treason in September 1586, three months before John and Ursula were married.16 This works perfectly well in terms of dates and significant events: Chester writes (in 1587) a poem of private consolation which expresses hope for future good cheer. B. Grosart (London 1878). Such was the 'occasion' of The Phoenix and the Turtle; now to say a word about its genre. That Destinies foule wrath should thee controule. On the one hand, it is of kin to Phoenix-Laura as a symbol of the beloved, the male turtle's 'queen'. F.T. That wondrous rarenesse, in whose sweete The negative makes the difference: it turns an intellectual paradox into an unintelligible mystery. Much criticism of The Phoenix and Turtle has tended to focus on Shakespeare's concern with themes connected to love, chastity, and desire in the poem. The birds who sing the Anthem evoke troth in its second aspect, sacrifice, the destruction of two bodies to create one flame. Only the transference of a liturgy in praise of chastity to the praises of Amor should perhaps be noted here. ', reads almost like a sequel to Shakespeare's. If poetry has power the Paphian Dove will appear; the union of the two birds will occur; such a union will be a marriage because it is a vow of mutual love and creative responsibility; it will be chaste because entered into without regard to the perishable bodies of the two birds. This is not feminine rhyme, but simple repetition, which would result in monotony rather than freedom if it were not that the identical suffixes receive so little stress. . Whatever his personal response to the occasion, he offered his poems simply as poems. Neoplatonic ideas of earthly and heavenly love elucidate this prayer, but the bond of allegiance best explains why subject and monarch are first doves and then, together, Phoenix. John was now the sole representative of his branch of the family, and the ancient legend of the Phoenix, the only one of its kind, was apposite to this situation. It would be tempting, therefore, to assume that Shakespeare was reaching out towards the genuine Platonic identification of the good, the true and the beautiful. In their search for hyperboles the Elizabethan love poets on the whole were surprisingly chary of the phoenix symbol to heighten their praises of their ladies. That due to thee, which thou deseru'st alone. Yet Reason calls on those "That are either true or fair. There he enters the great double doors, and is received by the goddess of wisdom. Because of its uniqueness within the Shakespearean canon, it is hard to establish stylistic parallels between The Phoenix and the Turtle and his other work. Since we hardly expect criticism, we shall choose the explanation which adds to the praise. Excellently figured out in a worthy Poem. And the Turtles loyall brest, And chiefe obedience that thou owst to me, That thou especially (deare Bird) beware The complex nature of The Phoenix and Turtle has also been perceived as a challenge by many positivist critics who hope to unravel the poem's secrets by examining it in the light of historical evidence from Shakespeare's time. Jove describes Blenerhasset's iconographie isle, Lyly's Utopia inhabited by elves, angels, Diana and Venus, the island of the poets where magic and supernatural forces can resolve all personal and political evils. So to one neutrali thing both sexes fit, Be that as it may, this bird, this unharmonious prefigurement of evil, is excluded from the company of "chaste wings.". The Turtle explains to the Phoenix the nature of pure love-unto-death, and she sees such love as the source of perfect wisdom. Within my heart is the sweet-tongued 3, 113-15. The bird sits 'on the sole Arabian tree' chiefly to arouse wonder, to suggest remoteness and a towering isolation above a deserta world left desolate by the Phoenix and Turtle's departure. 34 Donne, First Anniversary, 216-18; Phoenix, f. 42r. But in the Elegy for Astrophil love and the phoenix myth are unconnected. Have in their sweetnes sang you golden theames; 'Danielle' in a poem in Christ Church MS 184 refers to Ursula Salusbury as 'of egles brood hatcht in a loffie nest'. His theme is the power of troththe bond of homage and allegianceand its iconography: These foure attired in rich ornaments, The Threnos, then, is a lyrical complaint which works with the Summons to dramatize Petrarchan ambivalence, a dilemma arising from two contradictory attitudes to sexual love, the vulgar and the sublime. In Othello, to my mind the most pessimistic of the tragedies, a noble but deeply flawed lover is led to destroy his most precious gift, the love of Desdemona. XIX (1952), 265-76. The ninth stanza turns from logical contradictions to the nature of the relationship. 55-6. Shakespeare expresses this exquisitely: Beautie, Truth and Raritie, Anima Mundi, united to Ratio, is also the full perfection and actualisation of the human anima. Vol. Much criticism of The Phoenix and Turtle has tended to focus on Shakespeare's concern with themes connected to love, chastity, and desire in the poem. On Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' and 'The Phoenix and the Turtle' (1955); F. T. Prince, Introduction to the new Arden edition of The Poems (1960). 3, Symbolism in Religion and Literature (Summer, 1958), pp. The last date is today's If the latter, if the lines are "praise," the poem commemorates the death of the Phoenix and the Turtle (possibly, though not at this point necessarily, allegorical figures), whose relationship may be said to have embodied Love and Constancy. It must be remembered that the transference of such language to human love was itself traditional. Figurative language is the opposite of literal language, where the words convey meaning exactly as defined. We might arbitrarily assign it to the swan, or consider it a song arranged by the poet for a choir of birds, the heart of his carefully planned ceremony. Certain symbolic birds are being commanded either to attend, or to keep away from, a ceremony. [In the following essay, Dronke discusses the imagery and literary contexts of The Phoenix and Turtle, as well as the poem's theme: "that pure, unwavering love can find its perfect fulfilment in death, and that its power can extend even beyond death. University University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Daughter to John Salusbury Esquier and heire of lleweny was baptized the xth daye of October.'. 19 This depends, of course, on the assumption that the bird of the opening stanza is the Phoenix. The Phoenix and the Turtle are unitedfusedby one mutual flame which transforms them, raises them to a new level of being to which the terms of human individuality and unity do not apply. SOURCE: An introduction to The Phoenix and the Turtle, in The Poems, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. Sewanee Review 63, No. Where in Lactantius and Claudian the 'foules of tyrant wing' become mild in the Phoenix's presence, in Shakespeare they are excluded from it. What of the world? 363-73). Of the 1601 contributors, Shakespeare was undoubtedly the feather in the Chester-Salusbury cap. 8 See Roy T. Eriksen, ' "Un certo amoroso martire": Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle" and Giordano Bruno's De gli eroici furori', SpS, 2 (1981), 193-215. Most specifically, the bird is not the phoenix. 6 See Loves Martyr, pp. With poignant urgency, she must proclaim the lamenting-celebratory purpose of the funeral service.2. Despair is inherent in the obscurity which Reason creates as it seeks to extol the lovers in the only way it knows how. The central part of the poem quoted above refines in exact, technical, scholastic language the relationship of the lovers. And again from Hakluyt in 1599: "Nor the seventh day onely, but the seventh moneth and yeere, within their owne houses they renue this obsequie.". So too in Alain's Anticlaudianus the ascent of Prudentia in the chariot, whose horses are the senses, is followed by receiving in a state of ecstasy the idea of human perfection, and by bringing a copy of it down to the world. overcomming all bodily substance' and rising to heaven. But thou, shrieking harbinger, Foul pre-currer of the fiend, Augur of Divine unity is reflected in the human soul, 'Qui ne dement que peu d'un plumage mortel Le plumage admir du Phoenix immortel' (f. 16v). As soon as she realises that her companion is absolutely intent on death, the Arabian Phoenix feels completely one with him (pp. Nature laments Cupid who beguiles men's senses, while Phoenix sings of perfect love which is pure beauty 'Loue is a holy, holy, holy thing' (p.88); it is a power of divine majesty. On the contrary, recent commentary has found that it possesses great resonance; the quarrel turns rather on matters of emphasis. Essays in Criticism XV, No. I think that in Shakespeare's poem, with particular sensitiveness, this structure is reflected in and furthered by the very way in which the poem is conceived and executed. . To Christian interpreters of the myth the time would be three days as for the resurrection of Christ. See my article 'Shakespeare's Heroic Elixir: A New Context for The Phoenix and Turtle ', Studia Neophilologica 51 (1979). 1 'Verbal interanimations', rev. With heavenly substance, she herself consumes. Neither the notes of nightingales, nor songful flute He would be hesitant about incurring ridicule as the patron of Chester's stuff: it might be acceptable in North Wales, but scarcely in London. Fall thou a teare, and thou shalt plainlie see, 4). The subject of the poem is therefore not Truth or Beauty or any such abstraction; its subject is the death of the two lovers who are spoken of in the guise of the Phoenix and the Turtle. The Anthem will attempt to recreate all that has been witnessed of the incredible union. For the reason of Reason is the understanding that comes with common sense, and the logic of the anthem, though identified as Love's reason, is casuistry. . While the identification appears to strike him as so obvious as not to require proof, he was soon challenged by Furnivall, who, in rejoinder to Grosart's sentimental observation of 'the great Queen's closing melancholy and bursts of weeping with the name of Essex on her lips', pointed out that she did not stick at ordering the earl's execution.3 Even if we were to accept such death-bed accounts as authoritative, they could not have been anticipated two years earlier. [In the following essay, Bonaventure dismisses tragic or paradoxical readings of The Phoenix and Turtle, highlighting instead the poem 's final "harmony of. The present study is an attempt to focus the chief points of divergence in studies of the last decade and perhaps carry the current Phoenix dialogue one step farther in its logical progression. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. as complete and perfect as a sphere. 323-31. The story of Phoenix and Turtle Dove became what its authors had predicted, a remarkable chapter in a book of Britain's Monuments. This is not only to say that the whole of 'kinde' is united in mourning a poet's death (a theme that spans from Moschus' Lament for Bion to Lycidas), but that emblematically the birds can give an exemplum of love, and an insight into death and immortality, which has a purity and self-sufficiency beyond what human images of grief could convey: The skie bred Egle roiall bird, To paraphrase stanza eleven, then, Reason, confounded "in itselfe"both within itself, and by means of itself (that is, by means of reason)saw this contradictory situation: what was, and what remained, separate became one.17 The Phoenix and the Turtle were "to themselues" each either itself or the other, and yet, apart from the other, neither the other nor completely itself. Ben Jonson's name occurs twice, each time after two poems. This ceremony is all very well, the line says in effect, but what is the meaning of it all for us, the living? . Hooker employs it in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,19 and so do Bacon and Donne. 1. At the same time the poet's dominant concern is with 'the truth of love'. I would maintain that the three lines are part of the anthem, and that the ambiguous punctuation of the 1601 printing might be clarified by placing a colon after the first line of the stanza. . Into your flame, of whom one name may rise. . Students are also required to explain their responses. "The Dead Phoenix." 559-61). (fol. Its gloating obsession is with the grief its news causes. So too, in Ficino's and Pico's mythography of the Graces, Castitas and Voluptas are completed by Pulchritudothe end of the ascent is not in the rapture, but in the fructifying return to the world. I will beare 6 J.V. Whose truth shines most in her forsaken state; Maid. WebInstitution Rights and Document Citation. . 12 W. Ong, S. J., "Metaphor and the Twinned Vision," Sewanee Review, LXIII (1955), 199-200. But Shakespeare is unlikely to have waded through the poem with what French he had. For these reasons, anyone predisposed toward a particular reading of the poem is usually able to discover what he wishes (though only at the expense of overlooking important details). Furthermore, this interpretation is consonant with Shakespeare's own Phoenix symbolism in Timon (II, ii, 29), Antony and Cleopatra (III, ii, 12), Cymbeline (I, vi, 17) and the Tempest (III, iii, 23).21 On the otherhand, Shakespeare is at one with Donne in availing himself of the Phoenix symbol to celebrate a mutual flame rather than an unreturned passion. His poems are not about the occasion, they are for it; and the kind of questions which have endlessly been asked about them are as irrelevant to our understanding of them as Sir Calidore's questions to Colin Clout. Thus in the last resort they do give their bodies to each other ('I will embrace thy burnt bones as they lie'): in their self-surrender they find themselves in each other. At this houre reigning there. Now the love between the Turtle and his Queen is described in language used by lawyers and poets for their phenomenon of the king's two bodies: Though there be in the king two bodies, and that those two bodies are conjoined, yet are they by no means confounded the one by the other.13. Intellectually, Shakespeare is less inventive, less witty than Donne: he rings the changes on one idea instead of striking out fresh conceits from the traditional 'two-in-one' paradox. Critics protest that the bestiary phoenix is not usually remarkable for its powers of song.11 More to the point is Chester's identification of the loyal poet as Dove, Swan and Phoenix. On Phillips soule have pyte! His God is the One of Plotinus. All uses of hitherward (s) and thitherward are locational. Du Monin aimed at writing metaphysical poetry. Professor Prince is more concerned to dismiss Loves Martyr as 'rubbish', 'grotesquely incompetent and tedious' (p. xl), than to understand it or ascertain its relation to The Phoenix and the Turtle. What is Figurative Language? | Merriam-Webster Achilles turns out to be a cutthroat, slaughtering Hector ignominiously. It is this that appals Propertie. His very subject, the Phoenix and the Turtle, was a modification of the Phoenix myth which implied disbelief in, or at least disregard for, the time-honoured legend. The Phoenix and her new-found love have now been brought together. Vol. 30, 222. An excellent essay on the poem is by Walter J. Ong, 'Metaphor and the twinned vision' Sewanee Review LXIII (1955) 193-201. Or if they are made to apply, it can only be analogically, and hence can be expressed only by negation of logical meaning. . I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, 24 V. NED, s. v. mine 1 c, citing this example. The originality of Shakespeare's handling of the Phoenix theme stands out more clearly from a comparison with other Phoenix poems in his own and previous ages.35 The compositions of Lactantius and Claudianus were narrative and pictorial. To the Phoenix and the Doue. SOURCE: "The Phoenix and the Turtle," in Orbis Litterarum, Vol. Beautie, Truth, and Raritie, In discussing the line, I suggested that we should perhaps avoid this possible belittling of the lovers in a context of praise. It rests on the assumption that the bird sitting 'on the sole Arabian tree' must be the Phoenix since that tree has been described by Lyly, Florio and Shakespeare himself as 'the phoenix' throne' (Tempest, III, iii, 23). If this seems at all strange or far-fetched, consider for a moment a contemporary poem which likewise tells of a love-death, or consummation of love, under the image of the Phoenix, Donne's The Canonization: The Phoenix ridle hath more wit With me those pains for God's sake do not take. Death is a nest; something is born. Yet the 'abstract allusiveness' of his approach (Alvarez, p. 13) brings him no nearer to Donne. Whatever one is to say about topical allusionsand it would be foolish to deny their existence out of handmust be said after we have considered what is manifestly the writer's main intent, and the scheme of his book or poem as a whole; we are likely to find that the more sure and satisfying the imaginative work, the less important will become the topical references, or autobiographical scaffolding.1. When she came to the throne in 1558, a coin was issued which featured Elizabeth on one side, a phoenix on the other. This two-in-one death manifests to the society in which the lovers had lived the destructiveness of its discord and thereby allows that society to win a vestige of the lovers' perfect concord. Neither of these forms of eight-syllable line is the norm. Troth is audible in the sigh of those 'true and fair' who come to mourn and wonder at the urn. Stated more simply, it is important to recognize the dramatic form even of a poem which might seem to be spoken by the author. So rare creation? Out of the cinders of her peerless plumes. But, as a subject of controversy, the myth could still arouse perplexity and wonder. An other Bird her wings for to display, Amidst a ring most richly well enchaced, The dark smelly pipes that run under the city are your res9ng place. The lover who is possessed by vulgar passion seeks the sensation of sex in order to avoid confronting the kind of desire that calls for emotional maturity. 11 Peter Dronke, ('The Phoenix and the Turtle', Orbis Litter arum, XXII [1968], 208), however, points out that Phoenix is described as 'the bird of greatest lay' in Lactantius's De Ave Phoenice (lines 45-50). Similarly in Chapman's poem, the Turtle sees the whole world contracted in his Phoenix'She was to him th'Analisde World of pleasure'and the poet, in imitation, sees his beloved as the one 'That is my forme, and gives my being, spirit.'. The derogation implied by this view rather heightens than lessens the tragedy: the situation is the more tragic for their having remained childless. One major source of confusion in reading Love's Martyr is the pronounsthe curious shifts of person, identity and gender. All praise begins and endeth. What this pervading moral tension enacts is Reason's sense of its own failure to understand what has really happened. About that time Sir John may have casually mentioned Chester's earlier poem of celebration, composed at the outset of his climb back to reputation,16to Jonson or some other of his Court-beautifying poets, who then saw in the theme of the Phoenix and Turtle unrealized possibilities for poetic exploitation. . Controversy is a reproach to her careful provision for the future. The Phoenix, 'the bird of Araby', is there among more familiar fowl, and pronounces the Absolutio super tumulum. where reason can revolt From the ordering (in both senses) of a future event, we come to present praise for a past situation. And its second cry, its admission of defeat, rests on a stressed conditional. 21 These devices emphasize the poet's detached attitude to what he is making. . Course Creative Writing (ENG 203/204) Academic year: 2022/2023. SOURCE: "An Anatomy of The Phoenix and the Turtle," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearian Study and Production, Vol. A. Richards, TLS, 5 Sept. 1975, p. 985. Than sayd the dove, 15 The spirit in which this occurs is not far removed from Shakespeare's poem, and it is easy to suppose that he sifted through Chester's laboured poem, organizing its dissipated drift into his own gnomic stanzas. And from her ashes neuer will arise Simple were so well compounded. The lovers who are all-in-all to each other 'create their own world'. "Requiem" reinforces the idea that the ceremony is to be a commemorative service rather than an actual burial. Figurative language is a common technique in narrative writing, where the author strives to make emotional connections with the reader. Vol. To this urne let those repaire, "Metaphor and the Twinned Vision (The Phoenix and the Turtle)." Sidney himself and Dyer were satisfied with brief and random allusions, stressing, like Petrarch, beauty and rarity.16. The consistent emphasis upon the line-unit would be thoroughly monotonous if the stress-patterns within the linesthat is, the patterns of voice stress imposed upon the pattern of metrical accentwere not frequently varied by means of extra syllables and the effect on the rhythm of the shifting requirements of sense. 13The Poetical Works of John Skelton (ed. It will thus be 'married chastity'. 15 (1962), 99; Prince, p. xliv; Peter Dronke, 'The Phoenix and the Turtle ', Orbis Litierarum 23 (1968), 220. And to the end your constant faith stood fixt. He has moved toward Donne in the paradox of unity in duality. Of greater importance in creating this effect of inevitability is the change in rhythm. In the ende of the verse, Probably Pembroke was seeking to restore the balance between rival factions in North Wales.14 Clearly John Salusbury was succeeding, by means other than the indefatigable begetting of a large family, in his efforts to revive the house of Salusbury; and on 14 June 1601 the Queen set the seal on his success by conferring on him the honour of knighthood.15 The Salusbury Phoenix had assuredly risen again from the ashes of Thomas's disgrace and death. If what parts can so remainif what breaks apart elsewhere can here to such an extent remain inseparablethen Reason must admit her defeat and yield to Love. But she is taken to Paphos in Phaethon's chariot, while Nature regales her with a long account of the cities of Britain and the deeds of King Arthur. 8 King Arthur and, among the nine women worthies, Matilda, the mother of Henry II. I would think that a poet might, then as now, choose an imperfect rhyme in order to achieve such an effect as I have described. Shakespeare presumably formed it (if it is not a felicitous error of the typesetter) from "precursor" for the sake of the insistence on the harsh r. Grosart warns against thinking the word means "procurer. Antony's unique, phoenix-like vigour gives a new dimension of reality and meaning to sexual love.9. Reygnyng above, This agrees with the various tributes to Chester's She-Phoenix: 'Nature long time hath stor'd up vertue, fairenesse, Shaping the rest as foiles unto this Rarenesse' (Loves Martyr, pp.
