Milton's Ideal Day: Its Development as a Pastoral Theme

PMLA ◽  
1942 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 404-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Ruth Watson
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Pastoral Tradition ◽  
Pastoral Literature ◽  
The Ideal

Two of the dominant motives in pastoral literature are the “come-live-with-me” theme, which offers to the loved one as inducements gifts generally of a pastoral nature, and the ideal of the “golden age,” which is based upon a personal desire for a patterned idyllic life. The former has been carefully traced by R. S. Forsythe, but the latter has lain neglected in spite of the fact that two of the best known lyrics in the language, Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, utilize this theme. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that the description of the ideal day is a significant and deeply rooted theme which developed gradually during the whole course of the pastoral tradition. Milton's two days derive from this evolution rather than from a few scattered lyrics which immediately preceded his work, as is generally stated.

Virgil and Arcadia

1989 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 26-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Jenkyns
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
New Developments ◽  
True Shape ◽  
Pastoral Tradition ◽  
Pastoral Literature

There is an obstacle to our natural appreciation of Virgil'sEclogueswhich looms as large in their case as in that of any poetry whatever. TheEcloguesform probably the most influential group of short poems ever written: though they themselves take Theocritus as a model, they were to become the fountainhead from which the vast and diverse tradition of pastoral in many European literatures was to spring. To use them as a model was in itself to distort their character: it is one of the greatest ironies of literary history that these elusive, various, eccentric poems should have become the pattern for hundreds of later writers. Moreover, the growth of the later pastoral tradition meant that many things were attributed to Virgil which are not in Virgil. Sometimes they were derived from interpretations which were put upon Virgil in late antiquity but which we now believe to be mistaken; sometimes they are misinterpretations of a much later date; sometimes they originated from new developments in pastoral literature which their inventors had not meant to seem Virgilian, but which in the course of time got foisted back on to Virgil nevertheless. It is hard, therefore, to approach theEcloguesopenly and without preconceptions about what they contain, and even scholars who have devoted much time and learning to them have sometimes continued to hold views about them for which there are upon a dispassionate observation no good grounds at all. No poems perhaps have become so encrusted by the barnacles of later tradition and interpretation as these, and we need to scrape these away if we are to see them in their true shape. My aim here is to do some of this scraping by examining the use of Arcadians and the name of Arcadia in Virgil's work.

Caring for the family of the critically ill surgical patient

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
JA Stanik
Keyword(s):  
Critical Illness ◽  
Patient Outcomes ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
Surgical Patient ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Life Crisis ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Ideal

Surgery and the critical illness of a loved one can be a situational life crisis for family members. Establishing a meaningful nurse-family relationship is critical to the success of all other interventions. Close contact with families, and an awareness of the impact of the family on patient outcomes make nurses the ideal professionals to provide care to families during this crisis.

Pastoral Geography and Utopistic Considerations in Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 195- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 115-129
Author(s):  
Melinda A. Cro
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Foundation Myth ◽  
Pastoral Mode ◽  
Pastoral Setting ◽  
Pastoral Literature

That setting is important to most novels is self-evident, yet this is particularly true of pastoral literature. Pastoral, a popular mode of writing that underwent renewal in the Renaissance, relies on the setting of Arcadia. An idyllic golden age where shepherds contemplate love, Arcadia is intrinsic to the pastoral’s identity. However, the pastoral landscape is renewed and reconsidered in Honoré d’Urfé’s monumental Astrée (1607–27). The author relocates the pastoral setting from ancient Greece to fifth-century France and the region of Forez. Because this was a popular mode at the time, the change of setting drew the reader’s attention to the authorial choice. In the novel, the author distinguishes his work from tradition by relying upon geographic specificity and the motif of the voyage to establish a foundation myth for France. Moreover, the importance of setting raises questions of the nature of the landscape and considerations of the utopistic ramifications for the pastoral mode as d’Urfé conceives it.

Frenetic footwear and lively lace-ups: the spectacle of shoes in Golden Age Hollywood animation

2021 ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Christopher Holliday
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Formal Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Ideal

The character “Mammy Two-Shoes,” a faceless African-American caricature of a housemaid who co-starred in seventeen Tom and Jerry shorts between 1940 and 1952, was visible only by her imposing footwear, which stomped and scurried through absurd cat-and-mouse narratives. Yet the history of popular animation reveals a range of cartoon media that have explored the medium’s ‘illusion of life’ credentials via the narratological possibilities of sentient and spectacular shoes. This chapter seeks to outline this longstanding representational tradition of prescribing agency, authority and motion to footwear in animation, examining how animated shoes provide the ideal place to explore some of the fundamentals of the medium’s distinct rhetoric and unique formal language.

“The Days When Ideals Shined”: Journalistic nostalgia and the myth of golden age in China

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongtao Li
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Interpretive Community ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Ideal

This study explores Chinese journalists’ discursive practices of nostalgia in the context of transition and “crisis” of media and the journalism profession in order to understand how the journalistic community looks back and forward at such a historical juncture. I conduct a textual analysis of writings of nostalgia produced by journalists and media commentators in a wide range of settings: the commemoration of diseased journalists, resignation letters by former journalists, celebration of media organizations’ anniversaries, and reflections on scandals and crises in the media. The analysis reveals that golden ages emerging from such writings refer to the period of the press reform and the rise of market-oriented media in the mid-1990s and through the early 2000s. Within the interpretive community, the ideal of golden age is constructed to serve as a benchmark for critiquing the state of journalism, enhance the legitimacy of those journalists who embrace the new practices in the new media era, and chant a requiem for both the press reform and the decline of traditional media.

scholarly journals Queen Elizabeth and the “Judgement of Paris”

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erzsébet Stróbl
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Virgin Queen ◽  
Pastoral Tradition ◽  
Royal Women

The antique story of the Judgement of Paris was adapted to the language of courtly praise of royal women in sixteenth-century England. Absorbing the early modern interpretation of the tale as the praise of a balanced life (triplex vita), the motif lent itself well to the flattery of Queen Elizabeth appearing in the genres of poetry, pageantry, drama, and painting. However, within the Elizabethan context, the elements of the myth were slightly transformed in order to fit the cultural and political needs of the court. From the mid-1560s onwards, the elaboration of the theme became part of a broadening classical discourse within the praise of Queen Elizabeth, and the introduction of a fourth goddess, Diana, from the early 1580s foregrounded the emergence of her Virgin Queen cult. Furthermore, the tale of the Judgement of Paris represented a synthesis of the flattery of female excellence and the growing popularity of the pastoral tradition in English literature which highlighted the conceit of praising Elizabethan England as the land of a new Golden Age.

Calculus in the High School

1923 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
J. M. Kinney
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Mathematical Formulas ◽  
The Ideal

Primitive man began to think quantitatively as soon as he made a conscious attempt to adjust means to an end. Thus the Egyptians developed quite a bit of mathematical lore before historic times. They, together with other prehistoric peoples, employed their mathematical knowledge in surveying land, building temples, carrying on commerce, in navigation, astronomy, and mechanics. From prehistoric times to the present mathematics has been employed increasingly in the solution of problems in widely different fields. Today is the golden age not only of theoretical, but of applied mathematics. It is being employed in all fields of scientific investigation. It is employed not only in physics, mechanics, and chemistry. but in such fields as biology, psychology, medicine, geology, economics, pedagogy, sociology, and business. In fact it is the ideal of every science to formulate from the mass of data it has collected, laws which may be expressed by mathematical formulas. Let me cite an example of and a quotation on the use of mathematics in fields which most of us have felt to be nonmathematical.

From Sephardi to Oriental: The ‘Decline’ Theory of Jewish Civilization in the Middle East and North Africa

2007 ◽  
pp. 125-148
Author(s):  
Daniel Schroeter
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter reveals that the 'orientalism' of European Jewish scholars was more than one dimensional. It discusses Western Jewish historians from Heinrich Graetz to Shlomo Dov Goitein who typically cast Islam as more tolerant and more enlightened than Christianity, facilitating the unique Judaeo-Arabic cultural symbiosis that nourished the 'golden age' of Spanish Jewry. It also recounts the wake of the Spanish Jewish expulsion in 1492, when oriental Jewry embarked upon a cultural decline. The chapter investigates this 'rise and decline' model of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewry while revealing questions about the Eurocentric character of the 'contribution discourse'. It reviews the biological argument on the ideal Sephardi type that was adopted to counter antisemitic charges of Jewish degeneracy.

A National/Transnational Genre: Pornography in Transition

2015 ◽  
pp. 217-229
Author(s):  
Mariah Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Sex Communication ◽  
National Imagination ◽  
Pornographic Film ◽  
Historical Image ◽  
The Ideal

The most (in)famous Swedish pornographic film from the 1970s is perhaps Fäbodjäntan (Come and Blow the Horn, 1978). In the national imagination, it has become not only iconic of an era clouded by myth and legend of Swedish sin and a golden age of porn and erotic cult movies, but also of a half-jokingly celebrated Swedishness as well. Partly this has to do with the title and the setting, as Mats Bjorkin notes in his essay on the film ‘Fäbodjäntan: Sex, Communication, and Cultural Heritage’ (2005): the fäbod is a place away from farming villages where, historically, farmers brought their animals for summer pasturage. Women followed the herds to the fäbod to watch them. Although Come and Blow the Horn takes place in contemporary times, it still plays upon this national historical image, and it is shot in the county of Dalecarlia (Dalarna) which is particularly associated with the fäbod practice. Although perhaps not the ideal of Sweden, through its director’s use of national iconography – summer, the fäbod, an alleged Viking artifact (the horn itself), skinny-dipping – and more or less unintentional comedy, the film has through the years become a part of the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) of Sweden.

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