Rhetorical Analysis of Isocrates' Areopagiticus

For the Children

Isocrates, in his Areopagiticus, seeks to influence deliberation on issues in political realms; specifically, the manner in which officials are elected and held accountable in Athens.  After illuminating the problems in Athenian politics, Isocrates smoothly transitions to the core of the problem, hiring the common topic of conjecture to accentuate the calamitous and deplorable nature of administrative policy and behavior in the immediate past, along with the employment of the common topic of degree in conjunction with the sophistic topic of contrast to compare the quality of the Athenian administration in the past as opposed to that of the present day. He stresses the fact that he is not a proponent of oligarchy; he simply advocates stricter criterion for the election of public officials. Isocrates leads his audience through the logical progression of time, prompting his audience to fill in various commonplaces, such as the imperative to leave a virtuous legacy, to fill out his pervasive enthymemes. Isocrates attacks the stasis issue on the translative level; “make your choice between the two constitutions” (Isocrates 5).  He uses a barrage of the common topics of both degree and conjecture to arrive at his purpose:  the advocacy of the reinstitution of the former constitution, along with an accounting of the actions of the present government, an objective that attempts to subdue a rhetorical quarry that occupies the deliberative genre of rhetoric.

While there are evidently political problems in Athens at this time in its history, it is also clear that Isocrates had to establish his right and reason to be heard before he presented his argument: “from accurate knowledge, it is your duty to give an earnest attention to what I say”(5).  This is indicative of the stiff opposition he may have been facing during the delivery of this piece of rhetoric.  Isocrates himself is heavily responsible for the illumination and presentation of the kairos, which is the sorry state of the Athenian political system. He devotes a sizeable chunk of parchment endeavoring to convince his audience that, although "we might reasonably be of good courage as being out of reach of danger" (1), there are, in all actuality, serious problems in Athens, hence the kairotic moment for his rhetoric. Since Isocrates bears the responsibility of illuminating the troubles of Athens as he speaks to his audience, he has a certain power over his audience: he has had a head start in his endeavor to conquer the issue.  While the audience is only just discovering the gravity of the problem, Isocrates has already found the solution. Urgency bleeds from his enthymemes, seeking the induction of the audience to mentally implore him for the answers. In this way, he is not only the rhetor, but the deliverer.  

Isocrates’ enthymemes progress through Areopagiticus, as if starting from a tiny mountain spring and slowly gathering more juice for his logical current as enthymemes gather more speed due to feeder premises, and finally lead to the Amazon of Isocrates’ rhetorical target. Shortly into Areopagiticus, Isocrates introduces the problem he wishes to combat in enthymemic form: the most prosperous and confident cities “adopt the worst counsels…fall into the greatest dangers” (2).  The implied premise inserted hypothetically by hearers of Isocrates is applied: “Athens is both prosperous and confident,” which leads to “Athens will adopt poor counsel and fall into the greatest dangers.”  This enthymeme is based upon common topics of both degree, due to the element of the greatest dangers, and conjecture, as is evidenced by the past fact that cities have behaved in this manner in the past and suffered ominous consequences.  

Isocrates details a short history of Athens, specifically the administration that had worked under the former constitution that he is advocating in this piece of rhetoric, the constitution of the Council of Areopagus.  Paragraphs 4-15 in Areopagiticus are percolating with the common topic of conjecture, documenting the prosperity during the time of the Council of Areopagus, and drawing non-parallel lines between the former council and the deplorable behavior exhibited by the council-members at the present time:

The young men did not pass their time in gambling-houses, the company of female flute-players, or in society such as that in which they now spend their days, but kept to the manners in which they had been trained, respecting and striving to emulate those who were distinguished for their adherence to them (13).

This sophistic topic of compare and contrast not only harmonizes with the common topic of conjecture, but the common topic of degree simultaneously in successful amalgamation.  The men of the council in the former times are shown to have been of far superior moral fiber than those of the present time.  Furthermore, this display plays on a commonplace of the audience; the commonplace of legacy, and the responsibility that goes with that legacy.

Isocrates steeps his’ Areopagiticus in the commonplace idea that legacy is something to be revered.  There is a universal responsibility to:  not only honor ancestors through the stewardship of what they have passed down, but to leave a favorable world behind for one’s descendants.  This much is commonplace to Isocrates’ audience, and they are thus prompted to subscribe to Isocrates’ notion that Athenian principals are being compromised to the current administrative system.

    This phenomenon is also put into enthymemic form, although it is spread amid a slew of other complimentary ideas. The first premise is the one implicated rather than stated, as it is a commonplace:  
A legacy of virtuous living and prosperity is of the utmost importance.
The Council of Areopagus, under the former constitution, propagated virtuous living and prosperity, and bequeathed this legacy to their ancestors.
Therefore, resuscitation of the former constitution is of the utmost importance.  

Isocrates uses the analogy of the body politic to illustrate the importance of having virtuous men in office.  “For a city’s soul is nothing else but its political principle, which has as great influence as understanding in a man’s body” (4).  He documents the desirable characteristics for the “head(s)” of state and occasions an integrity pool in which to find such characteristics:  “For our ancestors paid such attention to virtue that they charged the Council of Areopagus…only those were admitted who were of noble birth, and who had shown distinguished virtue and sobriety” (10).  Juxtaposed with the current administration, the former appeared heavenly in contrast, which argument falls into line with the common topic of both degree and conjecture that once again surfaces to reinforce Isocrates’ argument.  Isocrates furthermore displays a psychological ability to predict his audience’s misgivings, and is careful to be plain that he is not proposing an oligarchy:  “I strongly object to oligarchies and privileges, and approve of equal rights and democracies,--not, however, of all, but of such principles of justice and reason” (16).          

Continued dalliances into both the past and present condition of Athenian politics ostensibly suggest that Isocrates is attempting to either castigate present political figures or defend past ones. Isocrates does spend considerable time censuring the present holders of political office. His stance toward present officials is far from coddling, and he subsequently loiters around the epideictic genre of rhetoric, citing the current administration’s lack of discipline, delivering an implied imperative to his tribunal audience: “praise is due to those who show themselves worthy of the virtue of their ancestors, blame to those who disgrace their noble birth by their own laziness or vice” (15).  Isocrates also delivers a nimbus of forensic evidence considering the justice of the Council of Areopagus, writing of their nobility in both in fact and deed. However, these are simply provisionary phases passed through en route to the salient query: in what state should we hand Athens down "to leave as a legacy for our children?"(2). This question can only be answered and fulfilled in the future tense, painting it as deliberative rhetoric, to be realized as philosophy for the future benefit of Athens.

Isocrates delivers a rhetorical masterpiece fortified with a collage of concurrent rhetorical doohickeys in unity to result in a message designed to be transformative in his audience.  Isocrates does not immediately blurt out his rhetorical purpose, but predominately uses a circumspect painting of the outline of his purpose, trusting the commonplaces held by his audience to connect the dots.  This way, his argument is less imposing, and he gives the allusion that he is demanding less of his audience.  The glaring differences between the administrations of the Council of Areopagus and that of the present are inescapable as told by Isocrates, so that he barely has to mention his purpose of reinstating the former constitution. At that point, he only has to tip one rhetorical domino, and he can sit back and watch his audience’s former presuppositions topple.

A Bakhtinian View into Jane Austen's Persuasion

Innerly Persuasion

In Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” Anne is initially represented as “Anne Elliot.”  Anne is a product of the Elliot family, and that is a large part of what defines her in the beginning of the novel.  However, as Anne progresses, she begins to question her surroundings and her place in her family.  To borrow Bakhtin’s view on the analysis of a novel, what has been unquestionable authoritative discourse to Anne shifts to something subject to scruple, or innerly persuasive.  What Anne has been spoon-fed from childhood comes down to her inability to move outside of her restrictions.  Her restrictions include her expected propriety, her representation of her family’s social standing, and her altruistic tendencies toward those around her.  As Anne weathers her condition as a sheep in the Elliot family, she seems to be a victim of her own selflessness.  Eventually, she questions her reality and begins to take hold of new truths that are innerly persuasive to her.  This takes place when options that had been imposed upon her become options that are proposed to her.  When the innerly persuasive takes over, the future is unplugged of its former restrictions, and her prospects open wide.

In the beginning of the novel, there is a narrator that lays the foundation of the Elliot family particulars with impartiality.  This takes place before Anne can take up the role of narrator, so that the groundwork is laid in a way that is accurate.  Were Anne to describe her family, she would most likely represent them in such a way as to skim over some of their less desirable traits.  This is due to Anne’s good heart and her relative inability at this early point in the novel, to identify negative characteristics in people.  This is revealed through Austen’s use of Anne’s free indirect discourse.  Through free indirect discourse, Anne’s consciousness reveals her abstinence from condemnation toward people she is surrounded with.

When the Elliot household is forced to face the reality of their financial situation, Anne contributes by composing her own ideas regarding the actions necessary to right the monetary course and spell their financial problems.  Her revered mentor Lady Russell’s ideas concerning the situation are vehemently denied by Sir Walter, and Anne’s more drastic measures are not even brought up, because of Anne’s suspicion that they would be further repudiated by Elizabeth and Sir Walter.  She is consequentially forced to eventually retire to Bath, a social circle she is opposed to, due to her introverted nature.  However, before she is forced into “captivity” in Bath, Anne is obligated to attend her sister Mary, who is “ill.”  Elizabeth, being the thoughtful sister she is, facilitates Mary in her distressing situation:  “Then I am sure Anne had better stay, for nobody will want her in Bath” (Austen, 27).  Alas, Anne is eventually compelled to remove to Bath.  Since Lady Russell, her most honored authority, could not hold back this storm, her migration to Bath is imposed upon her.  “Its inertia, its semantic finiteness and calcification, the degree to which it is hard-edged, a thing in its own right, the impermissibility of any free stylistic development in relation to it-all this renders the artistic representation of authoritative discourse impossible” (Bakhtin, 344).  Of course, Austen is not artistically representing authoritative discourse; she is only representing Anne in her struggle against it.  Not only is the authoritative artistically impossible to convey, it is also impossible for Anne to accomplish her potential while this authority holds sway over her.  In this manner, Lady Russell’s opinion serves as authoritative discourse to Anne, and since it is unalterable, it is a prison for Anne.

Upon the renewed introduction of Captain Wentworth to Anne’s social circle, her naive and demure mind leads her to believe that Wentworth despises her.  In conjunction with her heightened sense of propriety, this notion is what keeps the two apart.  These are Anne’s thoughts upon her meeting with Capt. Wentworth for the first time since their disengagement: “Her eye half met Captain Wentworth’s; a bow, a courtsey passed; she heard his voice...’’the worst is over’” (Austen, 50).  The forced propriety of the drawing room scene, along with the standoffish nature of her family’s mark on her compels them to uphold an aloof separation from each other.

Anne’s upholding of social norms is but another part of the propriety that she is shackled by.  She is often forced into an undesirable circumstance, simply by following the propriety that is expected of her.  When she wants to go to the play rather than assiduously vie for the attention of the rich and powerful, she cannot, but she gives Mrs. Musgrove an explanation: 

If it depended only on my inclination, ma’am, the party at home (excepting on Mary’s account) would not be the smallest impediment.  I have no pleasure in the sort of meeting, and should be too happy to change it for a play, and with you.  But, it had better not be attempted, perhaps (Austen, 194). 

Through free indirect discourse, it can be noted that Anne is forced into an unfavorable situation with Mr. Elliot during the concert.  While Anne’s imagination is occupied by thoughts of Captain Wentworth, Mr. Elliot sees fit to interrupt because “she must be applied to, to explain Italian again…Anne could not refuse; but never had she sacrificed to politeness with a more suffering spirit” (Austen, 163).

Anne, although not one to continually flout her family’s name, is no slouch when it comes to the obligation not to disgrace the glorious legacy of Elliot.  Anne abides under the social restrictions she is placed under due to her membership in the Elliot family.  Her social obligation to marry someone of means is a foil to her happiness with Wentworth.  “Lady Russell, whom she had always loved and relied upon, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain.  She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing” (Austen, 22).  Lady Russell, whose advice possesses considerable sway over Anne’s judgment, persuades Anne that Frederick is not worthy of someone of her familial status.  In this way, Lady Russell’s counsel is once again authoritative discourse to Anne, and Anne is lassoed by Lady Russell’s unyielding advice.

Captain Wentworth, who is an exemplary model of all that is right in the novel, provides an explanation of an admirable character.  Although, not addressed to Anne, Wentworth’s speech provides a signpost to light the way, and rid Anne of her beguilement of the authoritative discourse she is entrapped by:  “A beautiful and glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of autumn.  Not a puncture, not a weak spot any where.  This nut… while so many of its brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazel-nut can be supposed capable of” (Austen, 75).  The Captain’s conception of a firm character is synonymous with the objective that must be reached by Anne before she can find her fulfillment, and be released from the authoritative discourse that holds her in captivity.         

The innocence (or naivety) of Anne keeps her partially immune to the recognition of the negative traits in others.  Her own good nature and perception of the world around her holds her back.  Since Anne is so conscientious, this trait is something she attributes to others as well.  That is, until she learns the full story behind the dubitable Mr. Elliot.  Although quite intuitive, Anne cannot fully understand the evil in others because it does not exist in her.  Then returns Mr. Elliot, the man whose character was such that “they had not a fault to find in him” (Austen, 117).  That is, in the estimation of Sir Walter and Elizabeth.  Anne’s plebian acquaintance Mrs. Smith, who is considered beneath the attention of her family, is ironically able to provide Anne with the truth.  When Elizabeth and Sir Walter are deceived in this manner, they are indirectly disregarding the veracity of reality.  Although Anne suspects all along that there is something not quite right with Mr. Elliot, she is unable to take condemning action against him, because of her nature and her lack of any proof.  However, now she has the unique advantage of truth over Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Lady Russell.  In this way, Anne is partially freed of authoritative discourse, due to her vision of the truth, and the contrast of that truth from that which has been authoritative in the past.

            Anne’s unelevated position in the Elliot family keeps her in the background to a certain extent.  Her respect is solely advocated by Lady Russell.  When Elizabeth is quickly replaced by Anne in the affections of Mr. Elliot, Elizabeth loses some of her potency as alpha-female.  Elizabeth’s scorn for Capt. Wentworth holds Anne down initially, and “she had the pain of seeing her sister turn away with unalterable coldness” (Austen, 151).  Elizabeth is in command of all the selfish pretensions of the Elliot family, and she was already at liberty to use her inner persuasion:  “It was a struggle between propriety and vanity; but vanity got the better, and then Elizabeth was happy again.  These were her internal persuasions.”  However, during her family’s party, Anne meets Wentworth with Elizabeth and Sir Walter standing behind her, and “their being in the background was a support to Anne; she knew nothing of their looks, and felt equal to every thing which she believed right to be done” (Austen, 155).  Both Sir Walter and Elizabeth give their acknowledgement to Wentworth, which is significant because Anne now possesses an amount of authority over her future.  This condoning of Anne’s relationship with Wentworth marks a shift from authoritative discourse to the innerly persuasive.  It commences a situation for Anne which is open ended, not set in stone.  The possibilities are of a wider scope than her previously confined predicament.

            When Anne Elliot becomes Anne Wentworth, not only does this metamorphosis fulfill the deepest desire of Anne’s heart, it also signals a change in authority.  “Elliot” is a memory to Anne, and she is no longer held under the same restrictions that applied when she was under the governance of Sir Walter.  Her obligations are at an end, and she is able to direct her rudder as she will, not as her father would have her:  As a piece in his baronetage.     

Skipping the obvious marriage details that must take place, Austen uses the shift from the authoritative to the innerly persuasive to sail the uncharted territory of the future, which is subject to change.  “The semantic structure of an internally persuasive discourse is not finite, it is open; in each of the new contexts that dialogize it, this discourse is able to reveal ever newer ways to mean” (Bakhtin, 346).  Anne has migrated entirely to the area of the innerly persuasive, which opens up possibilities.  This is reflected in the end of the novel, with Anne sailing the ocean (the ultimate allusion to the unexplored) with Captain Wentworth.  This is a distinct difference from Austen’s other novels, which tend to err towards the side of the “happily ever after.”

            Anne, initially in the custody of the restrictions of her propriety, familial obligations, and altruistic tendencies, is finally liberated through a series of events that makes her question authority.   The persuasions of Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Lady Russell are exposed as being flawed.  Progression of the novel’s plot is made possible only through the dissolving of the authoritative discourse that had held Anne.  When this happens, the future is ship, taking her into the undiscovered.

Dante's Inferno With the Residual Aura of Hope

Black is the Absence of Light, and Hell is the Absence of God

            Victims of God’s perfect anger are continuously desirous of having their fame spread in the land of the living.  Even upon the receiving of their punishments, the damned in Hell tend to feel an affinity to temporal, earthly things, rather than dwelling on their miserable state.  This is a tangible indicator of the ceiling that those in hell are placed under.  This is the ceiling of purpose for all the condemned in Hell:  To be proud of the fame they acquired during their time living in the world.  Dante presents this concept in a way that makes it easy to have eyes for eternity.  The levels in Hell idea also brings to mind the levels of heaven, and the implications regarding a closeness with God, and how that idea should subsequently be applied in life.   

Dante sheds light on the way the world goes ‘round in Hell, speaking of the shade in the second ring of the seventh circle in Hell, the ring of Hell for those condemned for their own violence against themselves:  Virgil, in Canto eight, knowing how things are done in Hell, knows the currency the damned use and let’s Dante know:  “But tell him who you are, so that his praises / May make amends by freshening your fame / When he returns again to the world above” (Qtd in R. Pinsky, N. Pinsky 103).

Dante, en route to making amends to the tree/man, must listen to the shade and convey his message to those yet living on earth, that he had not been guilty of treason toward his lord, and should therefore be remembered well:  “If you return to the world above / Either of you, please comfort my memory” (105).  The hope for the vindication of his name on earth is the highest thing that this soul can hope for, which, all things considered, is completely trivial when that is his highest hope for all of eternity.

Capaneus, likewise, is only concerned about keeping up his reputation as a bona fide rebel.  He defied God (Zeus really, but an analogy pointing to God), and is still worried about preserving his own honor.  There is no hope for him because there is obviously no sense of remorse or despair in him.  He receives pain, but does not cognitively accept his place because of his own pride, which is the one thing he is able to hold on to. 

The Guelph Florentines who now dwell in the fourth ring of the seventh ring, who are condemned for their sodomy, have only one request:  “if you escape from this dark sphere/ To see the beauty of the stars, and relish / The pleasure then of saying ‘I was there’ - / Speak words of us to others” (Alighieri Canto XVI 72-75). 

Even in death, and personal suffering, all the sufferers can desire is fame in the world above.  They could have spent their message from Hell by warning their loved ones or descendants about the reality of Hell, and how terrific God’s judgment really is, but instead they are restrained by the ceiling imposed upon them by their earthly pride.

Side-stepping the obvious personal imperative to be good so I don’t go to Hell, I try to think of Heaven.  The incentive of Heaven is active: not passive.  We get to experience God’s light for an eternity in Heaven, rather than: we get to escape Hell and not have to burn for eternity.  The reading of Paradiso just the other day struck me in a very deep way.  The idea of levels of heaven struck me as something to look forward to, rather than something to be resentful of.  Having recently discussed the gothic perspective on stained-glass windows, and God’s light shining through the saints, I was struck in multiple ways.  The stained glass windows in the library are nice, but also the reading by Mitzi Ganelin put a period at the end of my sentence of revelation.  Someone of her age, especially a woman of faith, shining from the sunlight through the stained-glass windows, reading Paradiso (and with such conviction!) painted a picture of someone close to God.  I understood the idea of God’s light shining through the saints, and I was able to see God’s Light in that moment, through Ms. Ganelin.     

A Different Look Into A Midsummer Night's Dream

Strutting and Fretting Ours upon the Stage?

As God, the Creator of the universe, often uses the most lowly of His creation to deliver His divine message, so Shakespeare, the creator of A Midsummer Night's Dream uses the most awkward and bumbling character to channel his message. Bottom, after his swift recovery from the convalescence of ass-hood, delivers his role as Pyramus with a somewhat less convincing art than that of a method actor, accomplishing the delivery of Shakespeare's message with an exact manner of profound meaning stemming from Bottom's mis-articulation, which is Shakespeare’s method to convince his audience of Bottom’s foolishness. Knowing Shakespeare for who he is, one could read into the phenomenon of Bottom's quirky soliloquy as a sure-fire sign of some deep, hidden meaning. Even without the reader, as interpreter, assigning infallible knowledge to Shakespeare's purported intent, A Midsummer Night's Dream seems to have a purpose far beyond that of the capricious episodes of passion-ridden professions of love that are evident at face value. It is quite believable that Shakespeare is subtly condemning the fickle frivolity that is characteristic of man, using the ironic voice of an idiot to convey a message to his audience that the joke is on the Athenian lovers, and not on Bottom and his cohorts: this message highlights an inescapable discrepancy between the way the world is and the way it should be.

"The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen" (135 Line 220-221). This is Bottom's poorly articulated rendition derived from I Corinthians 2, featuring Paul's explanation of God's love: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him...the deep things of God" (NKJV vs. 9-10). Bottom, it seems, has gotten to the bottom of it, but is rendered incapable of disseminating this knowledge to his counterpart mechanical pals: "man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream" (135 line 216-217). Even in his folly, Bottom, it seems, has received a revelation of significant gravity, and has at least enough discernment to know that he himself is incapable of describing it.

Steven Doloff unravels a new idea concerning Shakespeare's purpose in the act five "play with-in a play" spectacle. He cites the fact that the scripture right below the previously quoted by Bottom in Act Four (I Cor. 2) contains a passage so relevant that it is difficult not to authoritatively label this passage as the motive behind the entire play:

Where is the wise?...Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but...the foolishness of God is wiser than men (I Cor. 1:20-25).

Bottom's acting and diction may be a poor vessel, but this is the salient point of the parallel to "real" life as it applied to the Athenians. His feeble attempt at grasping an ability to produce any semblance of adroitness in his role as Pyramus is indicative of a complete fool. The tomfoolery exhibited by the troupe of mechanicals would make the humblest troubadour blush. What better advocate for God's truth than an utter fool? This is the perfect orator for this statement, and Bottom follows through with the depiction, or even personification, of imbecility.

If this is the message that Shakespeare is covertly emitting, then the melodramatic seriousness of the young Athenian lovers can be labeled as the true folly in this comedy. Of course they would be laughing at Bottom during his performance, when the "Greeks seek after wisdom" (22). They are simply taking themselves too seriously to be able to understand the simple message presented unwittingly by Bottom in its atrocious form: the Athenian lovers' love has shot out in several directions, as a parasite seeking a host. It is a condemnation of the lovers' superfluous manner of flinging their affections at one another, and Bottom is inadvertently labeling this arbitrarily berthed love as whimsical, an indication of the ridiculous nature of their "dream."

The Athenian couples seem to go through one problem to the next; indeed, their fictional existence is almost entirely made up of distress.  The object (person) that would resolve this distress is near throughout, but impossible to grasp until the fairies intercede.  Given all the ludicrous declarations of love spewing from the Athenian characters, it is natural to view the resolution of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with an air of indifference.  It is a fulfilling story in the plot sense, but without some concrete validation of the Athenian’s love borne towards each other, it is hard to put much stake into all of the flowery words, words that profess love but are not substantiated for lack of concrete action to indicate that love, and no real struggle. Their love is given, not fought for. Owing to this reality in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I think Virgil Hutton’s take on the Athenian’s reality is a legitimate prognostication: 

If one could choose which world to live in, one certainly… [would] prefer the world of benevolent fairies to the fairyless world of “Pyramus and Thisby.”…If our world is a world with fairies or gods, none of our beliefs or actions can make it otherwise, any more than Lysander’s or Theseus’s lack of belief in the fairies prevents them from existing and operating... just as the godless world of “Pyramus and Thisby” would not be changed by any appeals for godly aid Pyramus or Thisby might have made.  The only choice we have is one of belief, and through A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare does seem to offer us this choice, after hinting at his own belief concerning the reality (Hutton 290).

Even from a secular perspective, heeding the caveat that we are not to take too many liberties in defining Shakespeare’s intent, this idea of (D/d)ivine providence is indicative of a reality that cannot be completely controlled.  Therefore, we should not take things so seriously.

            “Let go and let God” sounds pretty bumper-sticker, but it is, in essence, a believable interpretation of what Shakespeare’s message is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Else wise we have to stick “let the fairies handle it” on our bumper.  All of the painstaking endeavors endured by the lovers are made ridiculous due to the fact that they have absolutely no ability to initiate a relevant change in their own reality.  Far from a fatalistic approach, the “foolish” words of Bottom can evoke a functional understanding of child-like faith, prompting us as Christian readers to “Consider the lilies of the field” (Mt. 6:28).    

On Augustine's City of God

Love of Self = Love of Death

            Augustine's indignation at the postulations of the ancient Romans is evident through his writing in The City of God.  Much of his indignation stems from the Roman idea that human existence has already achieved its culmination, and that this idea radiates a hollowness of life owing to its temporal nature, leading ultimately to death.  Ovid's Metamorphoses follows the mythical progression and regression of mankind, bringing history to the ultimate pinnacle of human achievement:  man's "metamorphoses" into a god, as man should be per Ovid. Ovid's presuppositions about the earth indicate an attempt to confine the creator to his own creation, while Augustine glories in the eternal presence of God, and the implications given the presence of an eternal Creator God.  Augustine, while granting that man is indeed a superior specimen and indeed, creation’s finest, and that many great things are possible for man on the earth.  However, the earthly city is temporal, and man’s real hope should lie in the eternal.  While Ovid deems human purpose to be realized when man becomes god, Augustine adopts the biblical imperative to thereby intimate that the objective of man should be to become like God, because self-idolatry is death, whereas God is eternal.

            Metamorphoses is a history of mankind that finishes with the birth of a god, indicating Ovid's "all's well that ends well" perspective on humanity.  The journey to realize the full potential was a long one, according to Ovid, as mankind had to come within two persons of being exterminated because of his impiety.  Caesar Augustus is the ultimate achievement of the creation, the god that all the history has been leading to, and therefore all is as it should be.  Ovid is essentially saying that mankind has reached its pinnacle with the birth of Caesar Augustus, born of Julius Caesar, who upon being taken to heaven achieved eternal god-ship, "so each is both a father and a god" (Ovid, 33).    Ovid is in essence celebrating the time and place where the progression of man has led to a god.  Man has become god, and fulfilled his destiny that was his very birthright, as he had been "given a lofty countenance" (Ovid 23). 

            Lofty countenance or no, Ovid has still placed man under a ceiling of achievement.  That ceiling is creation.  Since the unknown "god, or kindly Nature" (Ovid, 21), in Ovid’s account, formed the earth, but did not create it, he is not greater than it.  If Ovid’s gods are not greater than the creation, then man’s highest achievement is to become a sub-omnipotent god.

The personal implications behind City of God are that the completing of the individual is only fulfilled through God.  The God-given imperative to mankind is to become like God.   Pointedly different from Ovid's conception of man actually becoming a God, Augustine takes a humbler road.  He is simply suggesting that man espouse God's orderly guidelines as given in the bible, which dictate that man strive to emulate Christ rather than following the ways of man:  "because man was made upright, that he might not live according to himself, but according to Him that made him" (Augustine, 39).  The alternative, illustrated in Romans 1:21-22 is that "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like to corruptible man" (qtd in Augustine, 39). 

            Since Ovid’s view is that mankind has reached its peak, it is obligatory to note that Augustine’s outlook on mankind is far from bleak in contrast to Ovid’s.  Throughout Metamorphoses, Ovid's diction conveys his celebratory attitude.  It is not only an achievement for mankind due to the birth of a god in Caesar Augustus, but a celebration in the immortalization of himself through his work:  "Yet in my better part shall I be borne immortal far above the stars on high...I shall be read by lips of men" (Ovid, 34).  Augustine’s view initially comes off as a downer compared to Ovid’s:  "life eternal is the supreme good, death eternal [is] the supreme evil...we must live rightly" (Augustine 44).  Upon further evaluation, however, it is necessary to see the world as it actually is according to Augustine: condemned because of sin. Augustine considers the blessing of the beauty of man along with the creation as it is presently, and then wonders:  “What then shall these [future] rewards be, if such be the blessings of a condemned state” (Augustine, 51).

The condemned state, of course, is a result of the fall of man, and more directly, man’s desire to become like God, stemming from his love of self.  “The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die!  For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Genesis 3:4-5 New American Standard Bible).  Eve surely died, and all those who have practiced the love of self in the future have died.  If we are our own idols, God kills our gods that had no life or legitimacy in the first place.  To love ourselves is to love something that is an empty vessel, and temporal in nature, ultimately leading to death.  Therefore, love of self is equal to love of death.   

The relevance of Augustine’s writing not only turns Ovid’s writing upside down, but it is in stark contrast to man’s typical believe that he is autonomous.  Evaluating these two authors simultaneously has led me to a further understanding of God’s intricate plan.  ”You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 3), is not only because God is a jealous God, but also because our own “deification” is ultimate death, both in the temporal world and the eternal world:  death in the temporary world because the love of self is not conducive to harmonious living, and death in the eternal world because we have no existence outside of creation without God, who alone is external to creation in light of His being the creator of it.  Creation is not greater than the Creator – how could it be?  Therefore, in view of God’s greatness, I now have a better understanding of God and am more readily able to take Augustine’s advice: “We do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously” (40). 

 

Some Perspectives on Dylan: How Much Credit can We Afford Him?

Heavenly Graces vs. Literary Criticism

            “Music and history don't exist for Ricks' own metaphorical convenience” (Yaffe 28).  David Yaffe, in “Tangled up in Bob,” takes a hard line in describing Christopher Ricks’ Dylan’s Visions of Sin.  Yaffe claims that, while Ricks has made profound discoveries in the realm of Dylanology, he takes too much liberty in his comparisons between Dylan songs and the Bible, Donne, Keats, Milton, and Homer.  Ricks has acknowledged his presumption to a certain extent, but defends his work by stating, “I certainly don't make many claims for allusion” (Yaffe 27).  Ricks work is exploratory, simply trying to make comparison, not claiming that Dylan had an elaborate scheme to follow a labyrinthine progression of the seven deadly sins, four cardinal virtues, or three heavenly graces.  There are simply elements of such sins, virtues, and graces in Dylan’s work.  Yaffe particularly criticizes Ricks’ lyrical leaps to compare other poetry in his description of “Blind Willie McTell,” claiming Ricks takes too much freedom in his comparison, dancing around the actual meaning behind the words.  Both Yaffe and Ricks accede that Dylan “has a way with words” (Yaffe 27), but while Ricks make the jump to the scholarly, Yaffe hesitates to read beyond the cultural context of the song.

            Christopher Ricks, an Oxford professor of poetry, writes to an audience inside a belvedere of vast knowledge of poetry.  His ideas are largely concerning the potential parallels of “Blind Willie McTell” to other literary works of varied antiquity, namely the Bible.  Ricks assays the line in the song:  “But power and greed and corruptible seed/ Seem to be all that there is” (qtd in Ricks 71).  Ricks proceeds by pointing a finger at the Old Testament:  “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (qtd in 71), and then jumps to its New Testament counterpart:  “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible” (qtd in 71).  Enter the heavenly grace hope, per Christopher Ricks:  “with the New Testament offering its hope” (71).  Ricks has clearly put a lot of thought into this connection, squeezing so much out of two lines.  The sin Ricks had been dealing with in the chapter was envy, a close cousin to the deadly one:  greed.  Fortunately, Ricks possesses a heavenly grace in his corner to counter the envy:  hope. 

            Yaffe makes a point of returning to the basics in “Tangled up in Bob:”  “Over twenty pages of precious wordplay and meta-Dylan references (to “Gotta Serve Somebody”), Ricks does not even mention that Dylan was not merely summoning up William Tell” (28).  In Yaffe’s view then, Dylan was simply tipping his hat to William Tell, and Ricks tried to read too much into the lyrics of the song, which is a part of, after all, a song.  A song is meant to be listened to, not read.  Yaffe’s opinion does not dismiss Dylan as completely non-literary; he simply opines that Ricks uses Dylan’s work to play out an elaborate spiritual battle through his explanations.  Therefore, the disagreement is not on the level of Dylan’s literary prowess, rather Yaffe’s altercation lies in Ricks’ interpretation, or Ricks’ analogous tone in extrapolating meaning in the words.

            Ricks, on the other hand, is writing for the purpose of putting “Blind Willie McTell” into a literary context.  He refrains from making a blanket statement of absolute authoritarian purpose.  Ricks does not claim that all of the allusions to the Bible are intentional, merely that they are there.  Although out of this context, Ricks makes the statement to the Boston Globe:  “I don't think that 'Lay, Lady, Lay' is an allusion to 'Come, Madam, come’ I think that there are an extraordinary number of affinities between the Donne poem [“To His Mistress Going to Bed”] and the Dylan song, and the affinities…are very illuminating” (Yaffe, 27).  Ricks, in general, would have audiences listen to Dylan with a more acute ear, rather than writing him off as a pop icon. 

            Ricks and Yaffe are on the same page in regards to Dylan possessing a viable literary savvy.  However, Yaffe contends that Ricks uses Dylan to suit his own agenda, rather than letting Dylan’s words speak for themselves.  Ricks would say that his explanations are simply to be used to grasp the gravity of Dylan’s work, and place a Dylan record on a shelf a little higher up than it had been.            

Bob Dylan as Traveller on Bakhtin's Concept of "The Road"

Bob Dylan:  Don’t Judge a Song by Its Cover

            Dylanologists have been transfixed by Bob’s word-slinging style and his vagabondesque life for nearly fifty years now.  Many have come to see that Dylan’s words are not accidents; they are constructive collisions of meaning.  The road he travels through life is a similar one to that which yields emission through his lyrics.  Dylan bids us remember with him a time when words were spoken more often than written.  Roland Barthes might view Dylan’s poetry through the lens of the “writerly” (616) rather than the “readerly” (616), due to the fact that Dylan’s lyrics inspire thought (and subsequent writing) far past the initial sensation of thought and sound.    Throughout his work, there is a sense that Dylan is travelling down the road to both new places and new identities alike.  Although Dylan is a singer and not a poet by trade, his lyrics warrant contemplation from a literary perspective.  A straight line may be drawn starting from Dylan’s use of “moving from place to place” in his lyrics, to his self-reinventions.  Dylan’s enlistment of Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotopic motif, specifically “moving on,” or “the road,” is directly illustrated by his use of character masks, and this motif is paralleled in personae by his frequent redefinitions of himself. 

            Meanings in words are slippery, especially when the words of Bob Dylan are those in question.  Noam Chomsky’s basic view on language considers that all speakers are creators.  If all speakers are creators, the subsequent implication is that any search for “face value,” in reference to words, is arbitrary.  There is context to contend with stirred in with intonation.  Words strung together such as Dylan sings must be evaluated in the right manner, that is, with the provision for multiple meanings.  Dylan’s use of semiotics provides multiple topics for evaluation in his work:  “Yonder stands your orphan with his gun / Crying like a fire in the sun” (It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue).  Your orphan: a bastardized version of “your”self?  Like a fire in the sun:  to “you” because “you” won’t listen?   The “meaning” of a word at one point in time often becomes something entirely transformed in the next stanza.  This happens at a near-constant rate in Dylan lyrics.  Dylan is the facilitator of the acorn who would become an oak.  Roman Jakobson would put this phenomenon into words: 

Ambiguity is an intrinsic, inalienable character of any self-focused message, briefly a corollary feature of poetry.  Let us repeat with Empson:  ‘The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.’  Not only the message itself but the addresser and the addressee become ambiguous…Virtually any poetic message is a quasi-quoted discourse with all those peculiar, intricate problems which ‘speech within speech’ offers to the linguist (167).

Is it possible to put a song on repeat for an entire hour without becoming bored?  After a couple hours of Desolation Row, the question answers itself.  Aside from Desolation Row’s presence in the Oxford Book of American Poetry, it is validated as poetry even through its title.  The title begs the question:   What is a desolation row?  Desolation implies lonely, uninhabited, barren, devastated, or hopeless.  Row can mean what happened before the desolation (a quarrel or fight), but this is seemingly antonymous with desolation (emptiness) in the present sense, because, as the idiom informs us, “it takes two to tango.”  Row, in the “ducks in a row” sense, suggests order, whereas desolation designates past chaos.  If the title of the song is an epigram that can stand by itself, then the poetry begins before the poem even starts.

Christopher Ricks alludes to Dylan’s use of metaphorical, multi-meaning epigrams in Dylan’s song It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue:  “The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense” (Dylan). Exhortations to pound the pavement are widely strewn throughout Dylan’s lyrics, in this occurrence, it is more than happenstance, and the ambiguous nature of the phrases are also more than happenstance.  Gamblers are the same as bettors, and they use cents.  On the other hand, those on the highway had better use their sense.  Not only is this phrase generously filled with meaning, it follows suit with Dylan’s propensity to use “moving on,” or “the road,” as described by Mikhail Bakhtin as a chronotopic motif: 

Time, as it were, fuses together with space and flows in it (forming the road); this is the source of the rich metaphorical expansion on the image of the road as a course:  “the course of life,” “to set out on a new course,” “the course of history” and so on; varied and multi-leveled are the ways in which road is turned into a metaphor, but its fundamental pivot is the flow of time.  (244)

The flow of time is present in the title of the song; It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.  When is it time to hit the road?  Now is the time to hit the road, and now is also the time for the rich expansion of meaning in Dylan’s lyrics as they metamorphose into something metaphorical.

            Of course, “moving on” brings to mind why it was necessary to leave in the first place.  Nick Smart sheds light on place, and Dylan’s predilection to provide employment for place in his lyrics:  ‘‘‘Oh, Mama, can this really be the end/to be stuck inside of Mobile/with the Memphis blues again.’  Place, this lament tells us, is where you should leave from” (qtd. in Smart 179).  Smart alludes to place as a literary theme, citing Dylan’s allusions to the Bible, specifically Adam’s departure from the Garden of Eden. 

Dylan similarly refers to this dis-habitation, this time in reference to his emigration from the folk music scene:  ‘‘Adam had to leave the garden. It was just too perfect’’ (qtd. in Smart 184).  Dylan had a tendency to do exactly what his fans and critics didn’t want him to do.  Howard Sounes captures the reaction of hippie folk fans at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Amid the war protesters, revolutionaries, and civil rights activists, Dylan’s presence came crashing in: 

Nothing could be more shocking than what happened next.  Bob came on stage wearing a black leather jacket… “It was the antithesis of what the festival was supposed to be doing,” says Oscar Brand.  “The electric guitar represented capitalism…the people who were selling out.”  (Sounes 182)     

Dylan constantly runs against the grain, even if the place he runs against is as unassuming and peace-loving as the Newport Folk Festival.

Dylan has an antagonism to critics, probably because they are always trying to wrap their brains around him.  The definitions that critics tagged Dylan with stuck for years before he was able to shed them and pick up the next.  In 1967, Dylan was tagged “voice of a generation,” and he responded by obscuring himself from the public eye for three years, and then releasing Self Portrait (a facetiously named album consisting of cover songs), “so people would just at that time stop buying my records, and they did” (qtd. in Kitts 302), Dylan explains.  There is a feeling that Dylan was wordlessly criticizing the counterculture movement, who had ostensibly been caught conforming in their nonconformity.

Later, when the birth of postmodernism (in music specifically) yielded a rear of an ugly head in music on a wide scale in the early 80’s, Dylan shifted to Christianity.  The remainder of his leftist following that had remained after his fall-out from folk music was appalled.  This return of Dylan back to tradition (although not his own) was a violation of art at the time, and Dylan was considered a traitor to the realm he had once reigned in.

Ben Child similarly points out Dylan’s tendency toward modernity over postmodernity:  “the peculiarly modern work of offering an imagined space where not only do different strands of culture meet but also discrete temporal cultures overlap and interact” (Child 202).  In the mind of Child, Dylan’s production of Love and Theft in 2001 was another example of the actual Dylan as opposed to the supposed Dylan.  He traversed from the “step ahead of the game” position to “two steps behind the game” on his road to nowhere that led to him somewhere.  Perhaps it was a different kind of place, one of the “secret places which material reality conceals but art will reveal in time” (Smart 179), as Nick Smart suggests of Dylan.                

Dylan’s constant redefinitions of himself are reflected in his lyrics through his use of character masks (even represented by an electric guitar or a Bible in hand).  These masks provide insulation from the pursuing definitions that are always dogging close behind him.  Dylan calls on a cast of characters as widespread as it is rich in Desolation Row. 

The blind commissioner…Lady and I…Cinderella…Romeo…Cain and Abel…Hunchback of Notre Dame…Ophelia (a probable reference to Hamlet)…Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood…Dr. Filth…The Phantom of the Opera…Casanova…Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot (Dylan, Desolation Row).

These characters (not character masks) are all able to meet on “the road” or “the row,” specifically in this case, because roads bring people together.  The conglomeration of space and time is in harmony on this road, and one could even add the third and fourth dimensions of fiction married to reality, which also seem to have met on this road (Cinderella meets Romeo).  Richard Elliot brings to mind the byproduct of being on such a road, engaging in Dylan’s “theme of moving on and its association with accumulated experience” (251).  Perhaps Dylan’s accumulated experience is a product of Shakespeare, Eliot, Einstein, and Hugo more than the harrowing counterculture hippie culture that has often attempted to hijack his identity.

            Dylan’s identity can only be described as here and there.  The “here and there” nature of Dylan’s nomadic lifestyle is a parallel to the occupation of double entendre regularly employed in his lyrics.  Meanings in words are similarly ambiguous, or “here and there,” and the “here and there” meaningfully describes the vast amount of meanings that can come out of various laconic quips recurrent in his work.  One of the more controversial examples of ambiguous meaning is his repeated exhortation of “Everybody must get stoned” (Dylan Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35).  Stoned in the Biblical capital punishment sense, or stoned in the stimulation of the senses sense?  Is it possible that in the search for the “here” or the “there” will always be inconclusive?  Dylan is running from the “here” to get to the “there,” because it neither in the here nor the there that he wants to be. 

            The sense of Dylan’s identity is clouded by its shifting camouflage of hitch-hiking hobo, transient troubadour, and revolutionary rock and roller.  He invites interpretation:  “Come writers and critics who prophesy with your pen” (The Times They Are A-changin’), but he also sends a warning:  “I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken” (Dylan A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall).  Critics have submitted their ballots, and the outcome is not an outcome.  Those who would audit Dylan’s elucidation of himself, or lack thereof, will cite his lost-sheep tendency to stray from their own preconceived fold.  Some will miss the old Dylan.  Others will acknowledge that life is too short to be the same person for its entirety, and Dylan provides exhibit A for this persuasion.