Perfect Love Research Articles

Detachment and Engagement in Shakespeare's Sonnets : 94, 116, and 129

Sonnets 94, 116, and 129 are unique in their mode and function. They are general, impersonal, deliberately detached from the conflicts explored in surrounding sonnets. However, the model created in each sonnet breaks down, resulting in heightened conflict in ensuing sonnets. Sonnet 94 creates a hypothetical “they” who share the conventional Petrarchan beloved’s incorruptible beauty and self-possession. But as the sonnet proceeds, the model collapses, and the corruption of the friend is painfully confronted in Sonnets 95 and 96. Similarly, the abstract model of perfect love in 116 is qualified in the couplet and destroyed in Sonnet 117. Sonnet 129 begins by defining lust as, like the love of 116, absolute and inalterable, but concludes in paradox, thus serving as a paradigmatic introduction to the dark lady sonnets. These three sonnets, however detached and immobile, participate in the ceaseless flow of the sequence, reacting to or acting upon the surrounding sonnets.

From Holiness to Healing: The Faith Cure in America 1872–1892

One of the more interesting features of American religious life in the years following the Civil War was the renascence of perfectionist or “holiness” teachings among evangelical Protestants. Declaring that the scriptural Baptism of the Holy Spirit brought entire sanctification, perfectionists held that all Christians should seek and expect a “second blessing”, beyond the conversion experience, which would bring complete and instantaneous purification from sin and perfect holiness toward God. Beyond the “new birth” of justification, there lay the “higher life” of sanctification. These doctrines were first promulgated in the United States by the evangelist Charles Finney in the 1830s. Finney drew upon the theology of John Wesley and the early Methodists whose doctrine of “perfect love” paralleled his own religious experience. In the antebellum decades a proliferation of perfectionist devotional literature and a wave of perfectionist-oriented revivals bore witness to the appeal of the doctrine. Although Methodists were in the vanguard, the movement was thoroughly interdenominational. In this period perfectionism also had strong social connotations, and many social reforms of the era drew freely upon perfectionist impulses.

The Parallel Structure of Troilus and Cressida

i ForORE than any other play in the canon, Troilus and Cressida has been the subject of apparently limitless disagreement. Critical controversies surround almost every aspect of the play. Did Shakespeare portray the Trojans more favorably than the Greeks? Is Troilus a sensualist deceiving himself with the posturings of an outworn code of amour courtois or an idealist in a corrupt world, an embodiment of human striving for perfect love and honor? Is the play Shakespeare's experiment with the new genre of comic satire or is it an attempt at tragedy? Why is the conclusion of the play so inconclusive, ending neither in death nor in triumph for Troilus? Does Troilus and Cressida satirize decadent medieval values or does it reflect Shakespeare's disgust with love and honor, idealism and sensuality, reason and emotion? Is the play a statement of despair of all values-an image of chaosor is it an indictment of abuses and corruptions of enduring values? All of these questions, the problems of character, of genre, of the conclusion of the play, and of its moral vision, are ultimately asking about Shakespeare's attitude toward his material in Troilus and Cressida. In spite of critics who propose to settle these problems once and for all, readers, audiences, directors, and actors will continue to find in the complexity of the play justification for a variety of emphases and approaches, as doubtless Shakespeare s contemporaries did. I do not intend to provide a definitive solution to all critical problems. My thesis is that we can agree on the basic tone of Troilus and Cessida if we attend carefully to the distinctive design of the play. The deliberate paralleling of characters, scenes, and ideas provides a subtle, but clear and dramatically effective guide to audience response.1 Shakespeare abides our questions because he did not neglect to furnish us with their answers. The shape of the play defines its meaning and controls its tone. The play opens with parallel scenes between Pandarus and Troilus and between Pandarus and Cressida. In the first scene we meet the lovesick Troilus and hear him extol Cressida's charms to Pandarus in good Petrarchan fashion. In the next scene we meet the pearl of Troilus' eulogy capably exchanging bawdy jokes with her servant and Pandarus. By placing together scenes which are similar in form but contrasting in tone, Shakespeare created a basically satiric situation. As 0. J. Campbell has pointed out, the vehicle of Shakespeare's

LYDIA MARIA CHILD ON THE MANAGEMENT OF GIRLS DURING THEIR TEENS

Lydia Child (1802-1880), an American author and reformer, was one of the most prominent women of her day. Her advice to mothers on the management of their teen-age daughters would be exceedingly difficult for contemporary mothers to follow. She wrote: The period from twelve to sixteen years of age is extremely critical in the formation of character, particularly with regard to daughters. The imagination is then all alive, and the affections are in full vigor, while the judgment is unstrengthened by observation, and enthusiasm has never learned moderation of experience. During this important period, a mother cannot be too watchful. As much as possible, she should keep a daughter under her own eye; and, above all things, she should encourage entire confidence towardr herself. This can be done by a ready sympathy with youthful feelings, and by avoiding all unnecessary restraint and harshness. I believe it is extremely natural to choose a mother in preference to all other friends and confidants; but if a daughter, by harshness, indifference, or an unwillingness to make allowance for youthful feeling, is driven from the holy resting place, which nature has provided for her security, the greatest danger is to be apprehended. Nevertheless, I would not have mothers too indulgent, for fear of warning the affections of children. This is not the way to gain the perfect love of young people; a judicious parent is always better beloved, and more respected, than a foolishly indulgent one. The real secret is, for a mother never to sanction the slightest error, or imprudence, but at the same time to keep her heart warm and fresh, ready to sympathize with all the innocent gaiety and enthusiasm of youth.

The Imagining Self in the Eighteenth Century

IN CREATING HIS WORLD, the writer's imagination takes its shape not only from the theses and explosions and portents of his time, the genres provided by the past, and the enduring myths and archetypes, all of which constitute public experience, but also from his private ways of conceiving reality and dealing with it. No doubt to confute our critical pride, none of these can be precisely defined as an influence on any writer or single work, much less on the literature of an age. Intellectual currents wash over millennia, wars tap undying responses, and genre, myth, and individual psychology merge and separate in the cloudy region of ultimate sources. But if the angels suspect the footing, all the best authorities tell us not to despair. If I cannot pretend to settle each element in its place in eighteenth-century English literature, I can try to look freshly at one, the idiosyncrasies of the author, which tends to be minimized in the continuing reaction to a century of dubious biographical criticism. Without doubting the fundamental importance of the generic in Pope's stance in his Epistle to Arbuthnot, we know that the speaker is related to the Pope of the other poems, and we know that Pope could have chosen other genres and other stances.' If in the narratives of the period we find the universal public dreams of perfect omnipotence and perfect passivity, of perfect love and perfect hate, of serene heaven and restless hell, of passionate heaven and frozen hell, which sensitive writers and philosophers

The Damnation of Othello

Of Shakespeare's four great tragedies the Christian overtones of Othello have been least apprehended. Critics have seen in. it a noble soul caught in the toils of a diabolically cunning being, who tempts him to doubt the divine goodness of one in whom he has absolute faith, but they have failed to see the symbolic force of the characters and the action. For the Elizabethans, however, the noble soul of Othello, the diabolic cunning of Iago, and (he divine goodness of Desdemona would not have had a loosely metaphoric meaning. Desdemona, who in her forgiveness and perfect love, a love requited by death, is reminiscent of Christ, would have represented Christian values; Iago, who in his envious hatred and destructive negativism is reminiscent of Satan, would have represented anti-Christian values. The choice that Othello had to make was between Christian love and forgiveness and Satanic hate and vengefulness. When he exclaimed (III.iii.447—149), “Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow celli / Yield up, 0 love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate,” he was succumbing to the devil, and, like all men who succumb to the devil, his fall was reminiscent of that of Adam.

Notices

On the Power of God. Quæstiones Disputatæ de Potentia Dei. By St. Thomas Aquinas.Die Geschichte der katholischen Theologie seit dem Ausgans der Vaterzeit von Dr. Martin Grabmann.Studies in the Gospel of St. John. By the Very Rev. H. Erskine Hill, D.D.The Evangelical Approach to Rome. By Stanley B. James.A Second Sheed and Ward Anthology.L'Ave Maria avec Bernadette. By R. P. Piacentini.Antonito: A Spanish Boy of 1'0‐DAY. By Fr. Benedict Williamson.Thoughts from St. Benedict. Edited by Maurice Leahy.A Newman Prayer Book. Compiled by Ada F. Clarke.O Perfect Love and other Religious Verses. By Dorothy Gurney.God's Garden and other verses. By Dorothy Gurney.Your Hidden Powers. By Alan Macey.House of Faith. Verses by James O'Hanlon Hughes, F.R.I.B.A.

Purpose of Commemorations

MR. TEOTTER'S remarks, however, on the practice of commemorating the eminent dead, seem to us somewhat to obscure the main point of such commemorations by the curious psychological data which he suggests. There is a Freudian touch about it which, true as it may be genetically, is ontologically now invalid. Because primitive man did sacrifices to appease the ‘manes’ of the departed and was in actual fear of his ghost, it does not follow that there is any such dread of the reappearance of Hunter. His ghost would, we are sure, have been most cordially welcomed at Mr. Trotter's discourse on Feb. 15. Admiration as well as perfect love casteth out fear. Nor does the ancient practice of partaking of the bodily remains of the dead hero now prompt us to any really analogous act. We commemorate to instruct ourselves, to inspire others to act in a way similar to that of the men we revere; perhaps, most of all, to impress the fact of the debt of the living to the past. The continuity of primitive savage instincts in the civilised is a plausible but misleading fallacy in psycho-analysis, and at the best a grave exaggeration. However, in Mr. Trotter's address these allusions only add a quaint flavour of romance. We sympathise with him in his hope that the truly great may be recognised in their lifetime, but we would not have this at the cost of diminishing the respect and remembrance of them after their death. The growth of the latter practice is one of the best features of the age, and offers hope that we may be able to combine our vertiginous progress with the continuity of order.