Virtue Of Temperance Research Articles

Temperance and the End of Time: Emblematic Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra both delights and bewilders with its extraordinary diversity. Classical mythology, biblical apocalypse and thematic insistence on the virtue of temperance meet in enlightening combinations and puzzling disjunctions. Critical analysis, precisely because it is analysis, tends to isolate one or two aspects of the play and to discuss them to the exclusion of others. Perhaps it is time to ask whether one should attempt a synthesis that makes some attempt to see the dominant motifs in the play in relation to each other: is there any way that we can begin to see this play whole? And, if we can, can we test our impressions against likely overall responses among members of Shakespeare's first audience? For if this play meant anything in particular when it was first performed, its mysteries will only be yielded up to those who are prepared to inquire what those particularities were. In short, what I am proposing here is the study of Antony and Cleopatra as a cultural artefact that can be reliably interpreted only in terms of the broad cultural context from which it emerged. Literary attempts to consider texts contextually have flourished in the last twenty years, but the dominant modes of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have tended to employ the relationship between text and context in order to demonstrate that each subversively deconstructs the other. In drama, subversions are frequently important because, as Mikhail Bakhtin and others have demonstrated, carnivalesque inversions of norms lie at the heart of the Western cultural experience in the theater.1 It is not always useful, however, to follow the pathways of subversive irony, anomaly, and cultural contradiction to the exclusion of what is cohesive. To be more specific, alternative readings of Shakespeare are valuable and to be welcomed as long as they admit that alternatives to the alternatives have at least equal validity.2

The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages.

The later Middle Ages saw the emergence of an integral theory of human sexuality, a systematic account of its origins, role, and significance in the divine plan. Instead of simply dismissing medieval views of sex as misogynist and guilt-ridden, Pierre Payer urges a re-examination of medieval writers' understanding of sexuality within the context of their cosmological perspective. He traces the developing consensus about what was thought to be the nature, purpose and morality of sex as conceived by writers and theologians during this period.Concentrating on the positive dimension of medieval thought on sexuality, Payer first examines views on Paradise, the Fall, and original sin and its transmission. There follows an extended discussion of marriage as the sole outlet for legitimate sexual intercourse. He then turns to the broader question of the control of sexual impulses and desires through the virtue of temperance. The book concludes with a description of virginity, which was seen to be the apex of temperance and the ideal of Christian living.Payer has assembled a vast number of textual sources from the late medieval period, presenting to the reader a variety of opinions, their development, and underlying presuppositions.

Spenser's Wanton Maidens: Reader Psychology and the Bower of Bliss

In creating an evil Bower of Bliss which is imaginatively more appealing than its good counterparts in “The Legend of Temperaunce,” Spenser shapes his poetics to expose the reader's own status regarding the virtue of temperance. The first eleven cantos of Book II presumably provide an education in properly temperate behavior, until the beauty of the Bower suddenly reveals that the reader prefers the seductive attractions of the wanton maidens and the leisurely raptures of Acrasia's bed of roses to the moderation and rationality of Alma's House of Temperance. As the reader responds to the descriptions of Acrasia's garden, he shows how easily he can be seduced by the apparent beauties of earthly bliss—even though he knows the consequences of such intemperate actions. In the Bower of Bliss, the reader discovers that knowledge of evil and declared preferences for abstract virtue offer no protection against temptation. Through his response to the poetry, he finds himself in an embarrassing confrontation with his human nature.

Guyon the Wrestler

Mr. A. D. S. Fowler's article in Modern Language Notes, of April 1960, ‘The River Guyon’, makes the interesting suggestion that the name of Guyon, Spenser's Knight of Temperance in Book Two of The Faerie Queene, may be derived from Gihon, one of the four rivers of Paradise mentioned in Genesis 2:13. Mr. Fowler cites the commentaries of Philo and Ambrose, which allegorize the rivers as the four cardinal virtues, to prove a definite relationship between Gihon, later written Geon or Gyon, and the virtue of temperance. Other authorities for this equation can be added: Bede's Commentary on the Pentateuch, the Glossa Ordinaria, and Alexander Neckham's De naturis rerum. It seems very likely that Spenser meant the name of Guyon to recall this traditional association.