20th February 2023

LETTERATURA INGLESE 2

LEZIONE 3

ARTHUR O.LOVEJOY THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

Lovejoy sees philosophy's history as one of confusion of ideas, a prime example of which
is the idea of a "great chain of being"--a universe linked in theology, science, and
values by pre-determined stages in all phases of life.
From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers, and
men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional
view of the plan and structure of the world.
Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles—plenitude, continuity, and
graduation—which were combined in this conception; analyses their origins in the
philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their
diverse ramifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and
aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the
influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded,
upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.
Lovejoy's view is one of dualities in nature and society, with both error and truth as part
of the natural order of things. The past reminds us that the ruling modes of thought of
our own age, which we may view as clear, coherent, and firmly grounded, are unlikely to
be seen with such certainty by posterity.

The Great Chain of Being is an excursion into the past, with a clear mission--to
discourage the assumption that all is known, or that what is known is not subject to
modification at a later time.

Lovejoy reaffirms the "intrinsic worth of diversity," as a caution against certitude. By this
he does not mean toleration of indifference, or relativity for its own sake, but an
appreciation of mental and physical process of human beings.

As Peter Stannis notes in his introduction: "Faith in the great chain of being was finally
largely extinguished by the combined influences of Romantic idealism, Darwin's theory of
evolution, and Einstein's theory of relativity." Few books remain as alive to prospects for
the future by reconsidering follies of the past as does Lovejoy's stunning work.
SCALA NATURAE
Scala Naturae is a vertical orientation stretched from God , it can be seen in the range of
mapper. This idea was influenced also by Aristotle and each step represents a different
category : God, Angels, Mankind, Animals , Plants and Minerals.

LEVELS AND RAMIFICATION

Each group parts to God and the human and the animals had their place while minerals
are different from all.
It is a concept derived from Plato , Aristotle , Plotinus and Proclus and the chain has God
at the top above angels which are spirits without bodies, they change and they die.
Lower we find animals and plants , at the bottom are the mineral materials of the earth.
The minerals are a possible exception to the immutability of the material beings in the
chain.
Moral and political ramifications are in ordered by God and the Pope, James I wrote the
State of Monarchy, which is the most supreme thing upon earth.
It is a conception of the structure of the nature of things considered indispensable, and
widely accepted by most European scholars from the time of Lucretius to the final
development of the Renaissance and disputed only with scientific revolutions from
Nicholas Copernicus to Charles Darwin.

It is part of the attempts to construct a natural history,

and is commonly recognized in the history of biology
as an itinerary of the studies made by man since
antiquity around living organisms. It starts from the
highest summit, represented by God, descending
through the hierarchy of Angels, whose order is
reflected in the cosmic structure of the celestial
spheres, up to the sub-lunar spheres, stratified
according to the four elements, fire, air, water, earth,
corresponding to the degree of evolution of the living
and the progressive solidification of matter.
Conservative views of social life are different and this
idea constituted the ideological justification for the exploitation of perceived inferior
people and nature.
Its main feature is the rigid hierarchy between levels. In the history of natural philosophy,
from the origins in ancient Greece to contemporary developments, it has been a
particularly enduring model.

JOHN DONNE
John Donne (January 1572 -1631 ) was an English poet, religious, and essayist, and a
lawyer and cleric of the Church of England.

He wrote sermons and poems of a religious nature, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies,
songs, sonnets and satires. He can be regarded as the greatest English representative of
metaphysical poetry during the Jacobean period.

His poetry was new and vibrant in terms of language and the invective of metaphors,
especially when compared to his contemporaries. The style of Women is characterized by
initial sequences abrupt and various paradoxes, dislocations, and ironic meanings. Its
frequent drama and speeches by daily rhythms, His tense syntax and eloquence of thought
were both a poignant reaction to the conventional uniformity of Elizabethan poetry and
an English adaptation of European Baroque and Mannerist techniques.
Famous is his sermon No Man is an Island (meditation XVII) quoted by Ernest
Hemingway in the epigraph to For whom the bell tolls, and from which he draws
inspiration a book by Thomas Merton.
He was the most important metaphysical poet , who knew how to give his works strongly,
he lost his father when he was 4 years old and the he converted to Anglicanism.
A lot of his production is dedicated to his beloved and after having doubted of the
Catholic faith , he decided to become puritan , in the last part of his life he approached to
the Anglican faith and then he was elected as Member of Parliament.

THE FLEA ( LA PULCE )

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Traduzione in italiano di “The flea” (La pulce)

Osserva solamente questa pulce, e guarda
che cosa piccola è quella che mi neghi;
Prima, ha succhiato me, e adesso te:
In lei si è mescolato il nostro sangue;
Tu sai che questo non può essere chiamato,
un peccato, una vergogna, uno sverginamento;
Lei però ne trae piacere, ed ha fatto niente più
che nutrirsi di un sangue che era fatto di due,
E questo, ahimè! È più di quanto vorremmo fare.
Oh rimani, risparmia in questa pulce tre vite!
In lei siamo, già, più che sposati.
Questa pulce sei tu, e questo è il nostro
letto e il nostro tempio di nozze.
Nonostante il muso dei tuoi, e te, ci siamo incrociati, —
e chiusi in queste mura viventi di giaietto.
Anche se lo stare con te potrebbe uccidermi,
non lasciare che sia aggiunto questo suicidio,
e sacrilegio, pecchi tre volte, perché ne uccidi tre.
Impulsiva e crudele! Hai già colorato
Di sangue innocente la tua unghia?
Di che questa pulce potrebbe essere accusata,
Se non di quella goccia a te succhiata?
Tu stessa trionfi e trovi che più deboli
non siamo ora io e te. Questo è vero,
quindi impara quanto siano false le tue paure:
Proprio molto onore verrà perduto
– Quando mi darai – quanto di vita
Ti sottrasse il morir di questa pulce.

The poet claims in the first stanza that since the flea has bitten them both, this means that
their blood is already mixed as a precursor to being together in life. But alas, in the final
line of the stanza, Donne laments that the fleas has achieved more then himself in getting
intimate with his loved one.
In the second stanza, Donne implores his lover not to kill the flea, since their blood is
mixed by the two flea-bites. The flea is compared to the state of marriage and sharing a
bed. So the poet imagines that if his lover would just take guidance from the flea, she will
succumb to Donne’s advances.
But in the third stanza, it seems that the lady in question kills the flea, unmoved by the
poet’s ingenuity. Donne takes her task, for crushing the insect with her nail. But there is
silver lining as the poet suggests that his lover’s honour will not suffer from yielding to his
seduction, just as she was able to kill the flea without bringing weakness on herself.

Summary

The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note “how little” is
that thing that she denies him. For the flea, he says, has sucked first his blood, then her
blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called
“sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead.” The flea has joined them together in a way that,
“alas, is more than we would do.”

As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking her to spare the
three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea’s own life. In the flea, he says, where
their blood is mingled, they are almost married—no, more than married—and the flea is
their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their parents grudge their
romance and though she will not make love to him, they are nevertheless united and
cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she
not kill herself by killing the flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would
be sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.”

“Cruel and sudden,” the speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, “purpling”
her fingernail with the “blood of innocence.” The speaker asks his lover what the flea’s
sin was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood. He says that his
lover replies that neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says,
and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If she were to sleep with him
(“yield to me”), she would lose no more honour than she lost when she killed the flea.

Form

This poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic
pentameter, a 4-5 stress pattern ending with two pentameter lines at the end of each
stanza. Thus, the stress pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 454545455. The rhyme
scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the
final couplet: AABBCCDDD.

Commentary

This funny little poem again exhibits Donne’s metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude
for turning even the least likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance. This
poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an
amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital sex. The speaker wants
to, the beloved does not, and so the speaker, highly clever but grasping at straws, uses the
flea, in whose body his blood mingles with his beloved’s, to show how innocuous such
mingling can be—he reasons that if mingling in the flea is so innocuous, sexual mingling
would be equally innocuous, for they are really the same thing. By the second stanza, the
speaker is trying to save the flea’s life, holding it up as “our marriage bed and marriage
temple.”

But when the beloved kills the flea despite the speaker’s protestations (and probably as a
deliberate move to squash his argument, as well), he turns his argument on its head and
claims that despite the high-minded and sacred ideals he has just been invoking, killing the
flea did not really impugn his beloved’s honour—and despite the high-minded and sacred
ideals she has invoked in refusing to sleep with him, doing so would not impugn her
honour either.

This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as
an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at
the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt
as to exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem’s humour as the silly image
of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent “sin, or shame, or loss of
maidenhead” gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity that Donne’s later
religious lyrics never attained.