Sonnet 147: This works better if you sing it with the originally pronouns, but...

She drives Will crazy! Oh Oooooh!
Like no one else.
She drives Will crazy! Oh Oooooh
But he can't give her himself.


There doesn't really seem to be any message here other than the standard Shakespeaean sonnet theme of our hero, the author, trying to persevere in love against all logical thought, this time possibly going mad in the process. His lust for this girl is feeding his fever (The old addage about starving a cold would seem to oppose his rationale here) and he is ignoring all the intelligent "perscriptions" that could cure him of this love (or insane infatuation). He also mentions being past cure, which could be read either as him just being super-duper-high-school-girl-in-love, or that his unsuccesful pursuit of this girl as weakened his mental state to the point where he is too damaged to return to his previous life unaltered. The second interpretation seems to be confirmed by the very end of the poem which would have us believe that the woman in question has a malevolent agenda. Usually, an ending line like this means the girl turned the guy down.

This primary difference is this sonnet as opposed to the others is in these final two lines which usually only go to reaffirm his love for her, but here seem quite bitter and biting. Perhaps he is still in love, but realizes that she is bad. Perhaps he is bemoaning the fact that she rejected him despite all these painstaking efforts he went through to love her. Or perhaps, Shakespeare used his masterful technique in the first 12 lines to construct the illusion that he loves a girl who he abhors. Following that theory, the whole sonnet was written to give you that uber-amplified flashbulb moment in line 13 when you realize what Shakespeare's true feelings are.

Holy Sonnet 5:

Moving from Shakespeare's sometimes love-infatuated, sometimes homoerotic, and sometimes just plain cocky sonnets to these reverent, religious works almost made me want to change into a nicer shirt and improve my posture.

In Sonnet 5, Donne seems to plea with God to cleanse him, with a "holy fire" of sorts, so that he can be born again in a religious sense and see his sin-marred world in a new light. He wants to see "new spheres and new lands" that his sinner's eyes were unable to see before. He admits that sin has taken both parts of his world, and that both parts must die; referring to his physical body and his soul. He seems to be willing to give up his physical body to death when his time comes but also realizes that his soul should die also, deserving the burning fires of hell in retribution for his ghastly sins. He ends by pleading with God to burn him with cleansing fires of zeal, concluding a humble, well-written plea for salvation.

Another interpretation here is that Donne literally wants to bring on the Apoclaypse. Now sure, had the Apocalypse occurred during his writing of this poem, no one have known that he had been the one to request God's termination of the Earth. And thankfully, it seems as if God had ideas other than Donne's. In the first two lines he makes an illusion to the belief that the human form is a smaller version of the cosmos, afterwards saying both must die. Sure, humans will die, but for the Earth to "die," wouldn't Donne have to be referring to an Apocalypse? It seems as if he's genuinely abhorred with the state of affairs on Earth and just wants to see it washed away, mentioning that he could flood Earth with his tears of sorrow, making good use of the double-entendre with regard to the Biblical flood story. So basically, it trumpets started sounding and angels came down from Heaven and started burning stuff, he'd be the guy in the front row cheering them on.

Sonnet 106 - Catch 22

Early in the poem he seems to feel as if the Pertrarchan love poems of the past, which extensively detailed all the breathtaking features of their subjects must have been speaking of his love. This aura of perfection could only be accomplished by her, as if she was in fact literally one of a kind when it came to beauty. But sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Basically, Shakespeare is trying to say that the English language is unable to portray the beauty exuded by the subject of this poem, and that to truly comprehend how gorgeous she is, you have to see her. You can't do her the injustice of describing her in mere words. In doing so, he takes a knock at some poets of the past, saying that to truly give your audience a sense that someone is perfect, you have to manipulate your words to place that person above the highest level of beauty that you can achieve through your own writing. Shakespeare seems to be mock ing earlier Petrarchan poets for well... "over-writing."

Hence the Catch-22: In this poem, Shakespeare says that to truly be a great writer, sometimes you can (or should) not write. However, writing sonnets like this one is what helped make Shakespeare arguably the greatest writer in human history. The moral? It's nice to be able to sign your work: "William Shakespeare."

Faerie Queen passage
Page 738, Stanza 25

At last it chaunced this proud Sarazin
To meete me wandring who perforce me led
With him away, but yet could never win
The fort, that Ladies hold in soveraigne dread.
There lies he now with foule dishonour dead,
Who whiles he livde was called proud Sans foy,
The eldest of three brethren, all three bred
Of one bad sire, whose youngest is Sans joy,
And twixt them both was borne the bloudy bold Sans loy.

Before anyone gets started on this:

1. I apologize for submitting it late

2. It turns out I wrote a history/race relations paper. My fingers moved without independent of my head and without the realization that this class is designed more for literary critique than historical analysis. I feel like I need to cite sources.

3. That being said, this is worth reading. Enjoy and please comment.

I chose this portion of the text mainly because I thought such a ruthless blasting of the Saracens was both intriguing and uncomfortable to read, bred as I an in today’s era of acceptance and (relative) cross-cultural harmony. Does this go far enough to qualify it as religious propaganda?

On the surface, it takes the dreaded Saracen, enemy to Christianity in each of the Crusades, and clearly establishes a number of stereotypes about them. It should be noted that the speaker in this passage, the Sarazin’s former companion, is a whore.

1. They are without faith:

The literal translation of ‘Sans Foy;’ this really deals with the heart of the issue. Anglo-Saxon Catholicism and Saracen Islam are personified by these two characters in an earlier stanza, in which Sans Foy, unsurprisingly is killed by Red Crosse. In the Faerie Queen Christianity triumphs over the Saracen savages and the antagonist gets his due. This would appeal to the common view among Europeans at the time that the Knights were doing God’s work, cleansing the world of heathens. The pope even declared indulgences to anyone killed in battle. There is no mention, however, about the fact that the equally pious Saracens had declared a jihad against the Christians. According to Islam, anyone killed serving Allah on a jihad receives what amounts to… an indulgence. So basically, God was letting the Christians into heaven for killing the Saracens who went to heaven for killing the Christians who… hmm… Anyway, thank goodness for the separation of church and state. The point here is that neither side was acting in God’s interests. And you didn’t see European Knights stopping to pray six times a day. The Saracens were equally pious at worst.

2. They are without law:

The literal translation of 'Sans Loy.' Baghdad might have been one of the most sophisticated cities in the world at the time of the crusades. Due to bias, misinformation, and the limited exposure Christian Europe had with the Middle East, (they only heard horror stories of raids) the common image of the Saracens was one of wild, uncivilized barbarism. No one in Europe questioned this theory or cared to verify it.

3. They are without joy:

'Sans Joy' is self-explanatory. So at this point we have an antagonist who has no god, no laws, and no emotion. For better or for worse, the author has done a damn good job of giving the reader a reason to hate the antagonist. And sadly, this image is exactly what most of Europe

pictured for years and years.

4. They are kidnappers:

The common belief is that Saracens merchants may have kidnapped thousands of 'warrior' children during the Children’s Crusade, but even at this point in European history, Vikings and other Western barbarian tribes were kidnapping people by the boatload and selling them as slaves. No, they were not under the thumb of the Pope, but civilized Europe would end up purchasing and owning many of these slaves.

5. They desire intimacy with whores:

In every culture you’ll find people who are willing to buy and sell sex. By social standards however, the average Saracen woman was not allowed to show as much of her body in public as the average European woman. Whores were considered the lowest rung on the social ladder though, so by association this is a powerful putdown.

6. They are not 'worthy' of previously mentioned whores:

So the bottom rung of European culture was still higher than the Saracen culture as a whole. Ouch. They’re being equated to animals at this point. As little as 150 years ago, White Americans by and large referred to the African-American race as animals. They were officially counted as 60% of a person for a while until the U.S. finally got their shit together. Hopefully that thought process is as hard to follow as a Doctor Seuss book. Stereotypes like these based on race and religion, have possibly been the single greatest source of strife in human history. Throughout our history, we’ve killed off people we had never met due to confused notions and a lack of understanding of other cultures. How has it taken us so long to start fixing this?

Got my info from http://www.umich.edu/~eng415/timeline/detailedtimeline.html and wikipedia (Search 'Crusades' and 'Saracens').

I found the symbolism in Lucifera's entourage interesting: Six "counselors" riding Six animals representative of Six sins. The number six carries many symbolic connotations, especially in Biblical interpretations, including but not limited to the well known mark of the devil (666). However, the fact that Lucifera's primary usher, 'Vanity,' seems to take precedence over the other six traditional "deadly sins" (Idleness, Gluttony, Lechery, Avarice, Envy and Wrath) piqued my interest.

Vanity's role could just be a simple tool used by Spenser to personify the Queen, because Vanity is a much easier target than Gluttony for a figure like Lucifera. Royal figures, like most people with wealth or power, have a reputation for being very conceited. While, it is not completely clear in the reading (or at least not to me) why Vanity took this position within the group, it definitely was meant to grab the reader's attention. Why not Wrath or Lechery? Vanity, would generally seem to be one of the lesser evils by comparison, and would not generally take precedence over the rest unless Spenser was trying to magnify Lucifera's vanity, powerfully portraying her as a superficial, conceited type.

Vanity, be definition is excessive pride in one's character or qualities. Thus, one who is vain would set him/herself away from these other qualities, claiming to be pure of all wrongdoing. Basically, vanity is a Catch-22 in that to be overwhelmingly Vain, one would deny any vanity whatsoever. The other deadly sins, bad as they may be, carry no accompanying denial within the subject's psyche.

Given that potential reasoning for his creation of this scene, I think it's very intriguing that Spenser chose to have the Queen and her personified Vanity dragged to her destination by the other sins: even though she may deny association with them, they choose her final destination and will accompany her the entire way. Even if you believe that Lucifera originally had noble intentions, she was doomed to do more harm than good, due to the misleadings of her closest advisors and her unwillingness to admit having done anything wrong herself.

If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do? While searching for common answers to this issue online, I found many answers similar to one man’s, who we’ll simply refer to as Every-American, who said he’d “get a new Credit Card, fly to Amsterdam, fly to Egypt to see the pyramids, get drunk, and get laid.” I think of the movie Se7en and wonder what Kevin Spacey’s character wouldn’t kill Every-American (or Queen Latifah’s character in Last Holiday) for. Basically, it seems as if our culture feels that death condones committing whatever vice or “deadly sin” we wish, simply because we won’t have to answer to it or face the consequences of ordered life. This of course depends on whether or not you are religious and how much trust you put in the physician that has figuratively just signed your death warrant, but the overall theme in uncomfortable.

Sadly enough stories like this reflect our culture for what it is, really giving insight to the true nature of so many of those people who have developed the core of our society. I think of an old Twilight Zone episode where a neighborhood turns on one another in a violent fit of self-preservation when they incorrectly assumed that the uneasy peace of the Cold War had been breached and that a nuclear holocaust was eminent. I also think of the movie Groundhog Day, which in a strange twist of fate, seems to be about this issue at first glance until you realize that the protagonist of that motion picture actually has infinite time as opposed to a very limited amount of time. The message behind that film has been expanded beyond Every-American’s carnal vices and seems to tell us that we should try to brighten as many people’s lives as we can, hoping that they will, in turn, brighten yours, creating an upward spiral of joy and contentment.

Groundhog Day’s message doesn’t make you cringe at the immorality of your own culture but it still lacks something. Why does it matter after you’ve died? Everyman lacks the broad, slapstick humor of many morality plays that portray as clowns the vices that try to lure the Everyman figure away from salvation – from the intro in the Norton Anthology. The question is, given his situation would we do the same, or welcome those vices with open arms? All good things end, so why attempt to experience life in some sort of glorified final vacation when you’ll be dead soon afterwards. This is where Everyman hit it on the head. I don’t care if you’re religious, semi-religious, an atheist, or someone who feels as if God or our religious factions on Earth have destroyed your life, you have to try. You need to beg to God to let you live on in Heaven with eternal happiness, because if he doesn’t exist you’ll still be in the same boat in a couple weeks but if God does indeed exist…