Volume
Editors-in-Chief
Emma Martel
Caroline Belbin
Editors
Caroline Jones
Bronwyn Turnquist Layout Editor
Emma Martel
Caroline Jones
We recognize and acknowledge that all the work and scholarship at the University of King’s College, including Babel, takes place on K’jipuktuk, in the third district of the Mi’kma’ki, which is Eskikekwa’kik. This is the unceded, ancestral, and unsurrendered territory of the Mi’kmaq people. Additionally, we publish in English, a language of colonialism and oppression. The Peace and Friendship Treaties struck in the early modern period between the Mi’kmaq and British Nations are unique in that they grant uninhibited use of land resources to First Nations, rather than outlining a surrender of land. Canada, however, continues to violate the spirit peace and friendship and the letter Mi’kmaq access to land and resources of these treaties. This is an important reminder to include at the beginning of a journal that publishes scholarship on the period that gave rise to contemporary colonial frameworks.
For more information on these treaties, visit: www.migmawei.ca/negotiations/ migmaqtreatyrights/
We are all treaty people.
Vermeer, Johannes. 1660. The Girl with a Wine Glass. Oil on Canvas.
Foreword
Emma Martel...........................................................................................v
Hubris, Empathy, and Responsibility in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Lauren Konok .........................................................................................1
“Nullae sunt inimictiae, nisi amoris, acerbae”: Scorned Lovers and Latin Poetry in Montaigne’s “On Some Lines of Virgil”
Maggie Fyfe .............................................................................................5
Friendship Under the Vampiric Influence: Aubrey’s Oath in The Vampyre
Merrick Carr ............................................................................................9
Sanguine Sin: Sacramental Metaphor in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus
Raphael Chipman..................................................................................12
Candide’s Guide to Life: Meliorism and Faith in Voltaire
Zephyr Atkins-Mitra.............................................................................17
Daniel Konopelski ................................................................................21
One of the loveliest things about a student journal is that it is written, collected, edited, and assembled entirely by a community of peers. At King’s, we are lucky to have several student journals that are built on this strong foundation of friendship. That is what makes Babel so special: each paper that we publish has a story behind it. Because each is written by a fellow student, our readers and editors often know parts of that story – you might pick up Babel to see that paper you heard so much about over coffee at Tart and Soul, or perhaps to witness the academic fruit of a semester-long inside joke.
The papers in this volume are a collection of impressive academic achievements. They are also a set of stories about the hard work and the brilliance that the King’s community is capable of. Each paper here is a shining example of what our community can do. This is a collection of essays written by friends and classmates; all individually excellent, but even better together.
The Early Modern Student Society itself is also an example of that strength. It has been such a pleasure to work with all the members of that team, and with the Early Modern Studies studentbody. It has been a pleasure to learn alongside you all, and to learn from you. It is also such a privilege to learn from the expertise that goes into the papers we publish in Babel There is some truly incredible work here and you should all be very proud.
As you begin perusing this edition of our journal, please remember that each paper is born out of comradery. The words on these pages are the product of hard work, a passion for knowledge, and the drive to share what we have learned. Babel is an opportunity to escape from the closed pages of a class paper, and to reach others with our writing. Some of these papers educate on little -known subjects, some offer fresh perspectives on popular early modern stories, and some are akin to activism in their efforts to reach back through past and know that which has been assumed unknowable.
I hope that our readers enjoy these papers as much as I have. May you walk away with the knowledge that you too are a part of the EMSP community.
We welcome you.
Emma Martel Co-PresidentoftheEarlyModernStudiesSociety,2022–24Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein details the tragic tale of an ambitious scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and the Creature that is the fruit of his labours. Through a series of misunderstandings, caused by the removal of responsibility and the obsession with revenge, both individuals are ultimately destroyed, along with many innocents. In this essay I will explore the tension between innocence and accountability, in the scenarios of both Frankenstein the creator, and the Creature the created. Both entities wrestle with the repercussions of their actions in contrast with the relative innocence and noble goals that they began with. The Creature wishes to have his humanity acknowledged, while Frankenstein wrestles with the weight of creating life, as well as the guilt and grief stemming from the actions of his creation.
The Creature was born on a cold, rainy winter night, constructed from scavenged corpses. He was created to be beautiful, Victor says that: “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful.”1 However, he was ultimately horrific to gaze upon. Victor also says that “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch.”2 The Creature did not choose to be created, or to be given consciousness; he exists purely due to the desires of another. Victor himself admits to his desire to be exalted as a benefactor of life, he says “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.”3 He also makes the assumption that the race that he creates would have inherently good natures, and be grateful to him for their creation. This demonstrates Victor’s hubris, as he sees himself as a godlike figure, capable of bringing forth life from death. This blurring of the line between the mortal and the divine blinds Victor to any other scenarios but his success, as he is so naively sure of himself and his inability to fail: “but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed.”4 The Creature does not see Victor in the same manner. While the Creature draws parallels to Victor as God, it is only to show how far he is from a benevolent architect of new life. The Creature says, “Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”5 Here, the use of familiar Biblical imagery serves two purposes: the first is to forge commonalities through well known imagery in order to cultivate understanding as to the Creature’s circumstances as a comparison with Adam. The second is to foreshadow the ultimate fate of the Creature; due to Adam’s sins, he was banished from the paradise of the garden of Eden and sent to suffer in a harsh, uncaring world. The Creature, too, was dispatched from a relatively safe and comfortable home to the wilderness of Europe. The Creature describes his situation; originally created to be a triumph of the human will and a mastery over death, and was shortly thereafter abandoned by the man who was to act in a guiding, parental, and nurturing role simply due to the Creature's perceived failures and inadequacies. Victor’s realisation of his mistake drove him into a raging illness, leaving him to completely
neglect the needs of his Creature, such as food, water, a place to live, and instruction on how to survive in the world. This lack of foresight and its resulting culpability towards the Creature manifests in palpable joy when he was relieved of the responsibility of caring for his creation, “ I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy and ran down to Clerval.”6 Since Victor never considered what his creation would need in order to lead a somewhat fulfilling existence and was also willing to abandon his created-child, he failed in his mission to create life even before he even began. Even calling the Creature ‘his enemy’ when he had done no actual harm at that point shows how glibly Victor regards his Creature, and how unwilling he was to consider his humanity. Frankenstein says, “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”7 Here, Victor acknowledges his personal intellectual overreach. He realises that naivety and ignorance can be better than ambition, and that he remains ultimately responsible for the Creature’s creation, and thus the outcome. This is held in tension with the Creature’s own actions, for which Victor was not directly responsible.
Throughout the novel, the Creature has shown the capacity for empathy, and a consciousness of right and wrong. The Creature could have, at any moment chosen to rise above the circumstances of his origins, and either disappeared into the wild as he had mentioned, or found a way to integrate himself into a community, or even solitarily built a life for himself. However, he made the active and ongoing decision to punish Victor for what the Creature perceived as folly. This speaks to the nature of the changed character of the Creature, and to Victor’s failure as a parent. Towards the end of the novel, the Creature speaks frequently of his crushing guilt and shame in what he has done, and how he is unable to live with the violence he perpetrated against innocents. Shortly before his suicide, he says “‘Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?’”8 The Creature sees himself as human enough to have the ability for empathy and compassion, and is in fact predisposed to it. By using the word polluted, the Creature calls to a previous pure state of being that was lost to him through his own actions. He describes this condition as follows: “‘My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture, such as you cannot imagine.”9 This leads to the conclusion that the Creature did in fact have a conscience, and that although he was blinded by rage, disgust, and crippling loneliness, he knew that his actions were morally reprehensible, for he felt emotional torture and great distress when he felt that he was going against his inherently good nature. The Creature, however, blames his misdeeds on his circumstances saying “I am malicious because I am miserable…”10 Furthermore, he blames his circumstances on his creator and humanity. This can be evidenced when he says “Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only
dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?”11 Therefore, while the Creature acknowledges his active role in the suffering he has caused, he ultimately rests that blame upon Victor for creating him, and then leaving him to fend for himself in a world he did not understand, much less one that understood him. Shelley’s use of the word ‘sport’ in particular adds a sense of bitterness by implying that Victor decided to play with life lightly and as a mere amusement, one that negates its actual seriousness. However, the Creature speaks also of his personal sins, and the guilt he feels at having committed acts of violence against innocents in the name of vengeance against Victor. By giving the Creature remorse, “Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever” and a sense of self loathing, Mary Shelley has given the creature the burden of having conscience.12 Consciousness makes him ultimately responsible for his own actions, regardless of his origins. Although he blames Frankenstein for creating him, he acknowledges that it was ultimately only himself that took the lives of William, Clerval, and Elizabeth, and it was these deeds that destroyed his innocence and inner goodness. When he sees Victor’s corpse, the man he sought such passionate, complete vengeance upon, he says: "’There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.’”13 He too seeks freedom from the pain that his actions have caused, and he ultimately chooses to face the freedom of death alone. The implications of this choice are far-reaching, by choosing to die alone the Creature is not only attempting to regain control of his life beyond his creator, but he is also seeking to come to rest without causing further harm. He has acknowledged the pain and suffering not only in his life, but also those same sentiments caused by his actions towards others. He is no better than Victor in this regard, for although Victor irresponsibly created life, he never actively took it from others.
Mary Shelley explores the themes of innocence and accountability in relation to both the creator and the created. Victor’s naivety and innocence is his hubris, for he never conceived that he would have created an abomination that he would have been so disgusted with. He abandoned his creation out of fear and disgust, not malice, but he is still ultimately accountable for the fate of the life that he brought into the world. For his Creature, he was born completely innocent and unknowing of the world and its mechanics. He needed a teacher and a guide, for the very fact that he has a sense of empathy and compassion shows his innate humanity that Victor chose to ignore. However, the Creature’s display of his knowledge of morals demonstrates that he is in fact accountable to the crimes that he has committed in order to cause pain and suffering to his creator. The Creature’s literary education imbued him with a knowledge of history, of the self, and of right and wrong. While he remains ignorant of many worldly affairs, through his education he los-
es the very innocence he attempts to adhere to. This dichotomy holds a tension that is masterfully displayed particularly towards the end of Frankenstein, where we truly come to understand what both Victor and the Creature have become not only in their search for each other, but also in their search for meaning and understanding in their world.
1 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus: the 1818 Text. Peterborough: Broadview Editions, 2012, 59.
2 Ibid., 61.
3 Ibid., 55.
4 Ibid., 54.
5 Ibid., 118.
6 Ibid., 64.
7 Ibid., 54.
8 Ibid., 286.
9 Ibid., 282.
10 Ibid., 156.
11 Ibid., 117.
12 Ibid., 286.
13 Ibid., 285.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus: the 1818 Text. Peterborough: Broadview Editions, 2012.
In his essay “On some lines of Virgil,” Michel de Montaigne argues that we should not consider sex an unmentionable or uncivilized act, arguing that both men and women experience sexual desire. In this way, he deconstructs patriarchal norms that privilege expressions of male sexuality and necessitate repressions of female sexuality. Despite his willingness to critically dissect our tendency to associate sex with brutishness when it is, in fact, generative of our humanity, Montaigne emphasizes conducting sexual relationships with an awareness of the social and emotional attachments often generated from physical intimacy. He examines various descriptions of scorned lovers from Latin poets to exemplify the emotional consequences of consummating desire without regard for the feelings of one’s partner. Montaigne considers the passion of love an arresting force that can be generative of jealousy and hatred if not approached with compassionate consideration from both parties. In his exploration of Classical depictions of betrayal within sexual relationships, Montaigne critically examines gendered and inherently misogynistic tropes that often cast scorned women as unreasonably emotive.
Montaigne implores his reader to conduct their sexual relationships with empathy for their partner, as he exemplifies how the consummation of sexual desire without consideration for the emotional attachment of one’s partner can breed intense hatred. Montaigne considers the gendered lens through which we often interpret expressions of an abandoned lover’s jealousy, When jealousy seizes hold of the feeble, defenceless souls of such women it is pitiful to see how it bowls them over and cruelly tyrannizes them. It slips into them, under the title of loving affection: but as soon as it gets possession of them, those same causes which served as a basis for benevolence now serve as a basis for deadly hatred.1
Montaigne ironically plays into a stereotypical characterization of women that associates femininity with weakness and delicacy to consider the unjust sexual power dynamics that typically ascribe more power and greater agency to the male partner. In detailing a woman’s emotional response to rejection from a sexual partner by personifying jealousy, Montaigne underscores that the spectrum of emotions from jealousy to desire is fundamentally overpowering, thus imploring his readers to consider the implications of emotional intimacy bred by physical intimacy. In his portrait of a jealous woman’s “maleficent frenzy,”2 Montaigne quotes the Latin elegiac poet Propertius: “Nullae sunt inimictiae, nisi amoris, acerbae [No hatreds so bitter than those of love].”3 This verse elegantly captures Montaigne’s assertion that a lover’s betrayal can breed an arresting hatred, and thus sexual partners should proceed with caution before consummating their desires. Although this extract
from Propertius from a poem entitled “She is leaving him” details not a hysterical scorned woman, but a man expressing his sorrows and a profound sense of devastation after experiencing rejection from his female lover. As Montaigne’s father educated him in Latin as his first language, Montaigne would have been acutely aware of the degree of nuance that he inserted into his portrait of a stereotypically emotive abandoned lover, as he would have been familiar with Propertius’ use of gendered language. In his subversive application of Classical sources, Montaigne asserts that love and the intense hatred generated by a lover’s careless rejection is a fundamentally universal expression of emotion that transcends time, place, and societal expectations of gendered behaviour.
Montaigne then ironically considers mythical representations of women abandoned by their lovers, emphasizing that women are often more subject to the universal experience of jealousy and hatred invoked by romantic despair because of sexual power dynamics that typically privilege the male partner’s will. Montaigne embeds a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid about the deserted Carthaginian queen Dido in order to exemplify the symptoms of the bitter hatred of a love lost, “Notumque furens quid fœmina possit, [we all know what a woman’s rage can do].”4 In evoking an extract chronicling the emotional consequences of the consummation of Dido and Aeneas’ passion, Montaigne engages with one of the most enduring Classical portraits of lovesickness, as Dido is driven to death by her sorrow. As Dido’s suffering is fated and necessitated in the establishment of Rome, she embodies a familiar romantic dynamic that renders the female partner more subject to impassioned expressions of outrage at a sexual partner’s rejection. Montaigne associates these symptoms of lovesickness with Dido not because they are inherently feminine but rather because they are indicative of a patriarchal culture that tends to render women more vulnerable to cruel treatment from their male partners. Montaigne even considers how the irrationality yet universality of feelings of passion and jealousy complicate the logic of Classical philosophical frameworks, “As for the confounding of children, apart from the fact that the gravest of lawgivers want it and legislate for it their republics, it does not affect women, yet it is precisely in them that jealous passion is somehow more at home.”5 Montaigne refers to the Platonic ideal of the communal family, as in the Republic, Plato advocates for raising children communally to strengthen his political structure. Platonic thought would assert that children should not be permitted to know whom their parents are, thus promoting a culture of non-monogamy in which a man could father children with multiple women. In this allusion to The Republic, Montaigne ironically considers how an argument for a kind of stoic detachment from the social implications of sexual expression places women at a more significant emotional disadvantage because they are also responsible for bearing children conceived in expressions of physical intimacy. Montaigne also examines an extract from the neoteric poet Catullus, who, like Montaigne, wrote in an explicitly personal and confessional tone in order to consider the “jealous passion”6 more commonly seen depicted in mythological representations of women,
Saepe etiam Juno, maxima cœlicolum, Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana.
[Even Juno, the greatest goddess among the dwellers in heaven, feels the scourge of jealousy over her consort’s daily wrongs]7
In employing this particular passage from Catullus, Montaigne emphasizes that jealousy in romantic relationships is pervasive, as an expression of emotion that is not only common to both men and women but even to non-mortals. Catullus also employs this allusion to Juno to explain his experience of romantic torment to a friend, as a female partner ignores him in an expressively masculine assertion of lovesickness. Montaigne employs his extensive familiarity with ancient poetry so that an early modern reader with a similar level of Classical knowledge can ascertain his subtle reference to an implied reversal of gendered dynamics of romantic rejection. As Montaigne asserts that anyone men, women, and even gods can feel spited when a sexual partner disregards their emotionality, he implores all of his readers to consider the emotional implications of physical intimacy carefully.
Montaigne then shifts the course of his exploration of jealous passion as he overtly expresses that a man can also be cast in the role of the scorned lover, subverting a stereotypically misogynistic equation between femininity and emotional irrationality. Instead, Montaigne emphasizes desire itself as a fundamentally irrational force, typically associated with women slighted by patriarchal dynamics implicated in expressions of sexuality. However, it is a universal emotion that can transcend binary depictions of gendered behaviour. In his introduction to “On some lines of Virgil,” M.A. Screech asserts Montaigne’s commitment to developing a sense of balance in his exploration of physical and emotional intimacy, “but while Montaigne presents men and women as a case of ‘us’ and ‘them’, he frequently gives examples of men to support a statement of allegedly female vice or virtue.”8 In this way, Montaigne offers an explicit example, also from antiquity, of a man who succumbs to the arresting force of bitter hatred evoked by the rejection of a sexual partner. Montaigne examines a historical anecdote from Ancient Rome derived from Tacitus’ History that exemplifies a distinctly masculine expression of jealousy bred from passion, An interesting example of this was a man called Octavius in Rome. After lying with Pontia Posthumia, his delight in it so increased his love that he persistently begged her to marry him. When he could not win her over, his extreme love hurled him headlong into deeds of most cruel and mortal hatred; and he killed her.9
Montaigne underscores that the experience of physical intimacy increased Octavius’ emotional attachment to Pontia Posthumia, rendering his anger over being rejected by her after the consummation of their desire more intense. After implying through careful use of Latin poetry that jealous passion need not be exclusively associated with scorned women, Montaigne overtly draws on a concrete example in which a man is subject to lovesickness as a consequence of his apathetic female lover. Montaigne suggests that Octavius’ act of violence is motivated by “his extreme love,”10
once again emphasizing that love, hate, jealousy and desire function on a fluid spectrum of emotionality. Montaigne’s examples of scorned women emphasize the psychological interiority of the lovesick woman. In contrast, in his sole overt reference to an abandoned male lover, he underscores a kind of barbaric violence inspired by the man’s emotionality. In this way, Montaigne warns his reader that while sex should not be considered brutish, if his readers do not pursue sexual relationships within a moral framework through which both lovers are compassionate towards the emotionality of their partner, physical intimacy can breed incivility. Men, in particular, are permitted to behave barbarically. In contrast, the pressure of patriarchal expectation often encourages women to suppress supposedly unfeminine expressions of anger or express it stereotypically selfsacrificially, like Dido.
Montaigne creatively and subversively employs Classical sources in order to undertake a nuanced examination of how physically intimate experiences in which one partner lacks empathy for the other can be generative of profound and cruel expressions of jealous passion. He asserts that no one is immune to lovesickness. Although patriarchal social expectations generally cast women in the role of the hysterical scorned lover, men can also behave in ways that are overtly emotive and even barbarically irrational after being rejected by a sexual partner. Montaigne demonstrates an intimate familiarity with Classical poetry, philosophy, and history, employing evidence from antiquity in order to assert that he is examining an aspect of the human condition that is both profoundly personal yet timelessly universal.
1 Michel, de Montaigne. “On some lines of Virgil.” The Essays: A Selection, edited by M.A. Screech, Penguin Classics, 2004, 290.
2 Ibid., 290.
3 qtd. in Montaigne, 290.
4 qtd. in Montaigne, 291.
5 Montaigne, 290.
6 Ibid., 290.
7 qtd. in Montaigne, 290.
8 Screech, M.A. Introduction. The Essays: A Selection, by Montaigne, Penguin Classics, 2004, 260.
9 Montaigne, 90–91.
10 Ibid., 291.
Works Cited
Michel, de Montaigne. “On some lines of Virgil.” The Essays: A Selection, edited by M.A. Screech, Penguin Classics, 2004, pp. 290-329.
Screech, M.A. Introduction. The Essays: A Selection, by Montaigne, Penguin Classics, 2004, pp. 260.
John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” presents a mysterious figure who possesses the ability to ensnare, manipulate, and destroy those who naively permit his influence. Lord Ruthven’s character is undoubtedly rooted in malicious intent; however, the true nature of his evil may only be uncovered through his relationship with Aubrey. In Ruthven’s command that Aubrey never “‘impart [his] knowledge of [Ruthven’s] crimes or death to any living being in any way,’”1 he enacts an oath that binds Aubrey to silence, even when circumstances call for truthfulness. It is suggested that Aubrey’s inability to break this oath is attributed to Ruthven’s supernatural vampiric powers, yet their companionship suggests that this vow finds its origins in earthly constraints. Aubrey’s failure to expose Ruthven’s villainous disposition is due to the power of the natural human condition. In particular, the loyalty of friendship, the pressure to maintain high social status, and Aubrey’s unstable perception of reality demonstrate that mystical forces do not preserve the vampiric oath.
Firstly, Aubrey’s reluctance to break his oath to Lord Ruthven is attributed to the sense of loyalty implicit in the bond of friendship. Though their alliance may be founded upon a combination of Ruthven’s “winning tongue”2 and Aubrey’s lack of guidance by stable parental figures,3 their fidelity towards one another appears to be, at times, reciprocal. Aubrey’s admiration for his companion is clear from the beginning: he views Ruthven as a “hero of romance”4 rather than a tangible human being due to his overactive imagination and naivety. Similarly, Ruthven works to maintain the appearance of mutual affection, as evidenced when he cares for Aubrey during his first fit of illness.5 In this sense, Lord Ruthven works to establish the appearance of reciprocity and trust in their relationship to entrap Aubrey in his nefarious plans to corrupt innocence and virtue. On his death bed, Ruthven makes a point to mention that in taking the oath, Aubrey “‘may save my [Ruthven’s] honour, [his] friend’s honour,’”6 to which Aubrey responds that he would do anything to bring this into effect. These lines demonstrate that the bond is fundamentally built upon the allegiance of companionship rather than supernatural influence. Though the nature of their friendship may be deceptive and self-interested on Ruthven’s side, Aubrey’s inability to break his oath is partially due to this sense of allegiance to his supposed friend.
Aubrey’s relationship with Ruthven supports his social status and provides him with opportunities to explore the world. He understands that he risks losing both of these privileges if he breaks his oath, which further secures the promise as an earthly one. Ruthven appears in Aubrey’s life at an exceptionally opportune time: “[H]e was about to relinquish his dreams, when the extraordinary being we have above described, crossed him in his career.”7 Aubrey is on the cusp of abandoning his ambitions to experience the world and satiate his romantic fantasies when he meets
Lord Ruthven and is conveniently provided with the means to travel.8 This creates a sense of dependency in their relationship; Aubrey relies on Lord Ruthven for his education and encounters with the world. When Ruthven warns Aubrey to “‘[s]wear by all your soul reveres, by all your nature fears’”9 not to reveal his secrets, it seems that he is appealing to Aubrey’s distress at the possibility of losing the opportunities he has been granted through their affiliation. For example, Aubrey reveres the Romantic experience of travelling the world and fears the loss of this experience and his social status. In this sense, the consequences of breaking the promise to Ruthven threaten the values by which Aubrey lives his life. Even when he seriously considers violating the oath, Aubrey realizes that no one would believe the stories of Ruthven’s terrifying character10 and decides to keep the secret out of fear of social condemnation. The maintenance of the oath, in part, originates from Aubrey’s reliance on Ruthven for his lived experience.
The unreliable nature of Aubrey’s perception of reality also plays a role in his inability to break his promise to Ruthven. Polidori introduces Aubrey as a figure with an uncontrollable imagination someone who believes that “the dreams of poets [are] the realities of life.”11 Seeing as his view of the world is dangerously naive to begin with, it seems plausible that he would be so inclined to believe Ianthe’s vampire stories.12 Though he attempts to put these thoughts from his mind, he quickly resigns himself to “the many coincidences which had all tended to excite a belief in the supernatural power of Lord Ruthven.”13 Aubrey’s description of Ruthven’s superhuman abilities is essentially fictitious - the invention of an irrational mind and a soul that mourns the loss of a friend and a lover.14 Aubrey’s fear of the consequences of breaking his oath to Ruthven is exacerbated by this unreserved belief in the vampire legend. Thus, Aubrey’s experience of events is fundamentally unreliable due to his “mind [being] almost broken under so many repeated horrors.”15 The moments at which Aubrey is so convinced of Ruthven’s supernatural quality are near the end of the story - when he has succumbed almost entirely to madness. He is under the constant supervision of a doctor, and his “incoherence became at last so great, that he was confined to his chamber.”16 Aubrey’s supposition of Ruthven’s dangerous, otherworldly powers may be true insofar as he believes them to be. Still, the rest of the characters rightfully understand this as nothing but the ramblings of a lunatic. In essence, Aubrey’s inability to break Ruthven’s promise can be explained by earthly phenomena, as the only alternative suggestions originate from an exceptionally unreliable source.
Aubrey’s oath to Lord Ruthven is not enforced by a supernatural vampiric influence but rather a set of purely terrestrial circumstances that originate from human nature: the duty of friendship, the constraint of social status and the allure of worldly experiences, and the effect of mental instability on the perception of reality. Though Ruthven’s intentions for Aubrey may be grounded in his propensity for corrupting the vulnerable,17 Aubrey possesses a strong reverence for the man he perceives (at one point) to be his friend, making him reluctant to reveal his secrets. Furthermore, Aubrey’s relationship with Ruthven allows him to have experiences and garner an elevated reputa-
tion that would not otherwise be possible - the threat of losing these privileges weighs heavily on Aubrey’s decision to keep his promise. Finally, the pain of multiple losses (Ianthe’s death, the alienation from Ruthven) drives Aubrey’s already hyperactive imagination to the point of insanity, and his fears of Ruthven’s supernatural retaliation cannot be stifled by rational thought. To conclude, Aubrey and Ruthven’s relationship demonstrate the complexities implicit in the act of taking an oath, especially in an agreement as tangled and unpleasant as this one. Polidori’s story brings forth the question of the true power of human loyalty, experience, and pain, and whether it is truly more potent than the possibility of the supernatural.
1 Polidori, John. “The Vampyre.” The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, edited by Alan Ryan, Penguin Books, 1988, 17.
2 Ibid., 7.
3 Ibid., 8.
4 Ibid., 8.
5 Ibid., 15.
6 Ibid., 17.
7 Ibid., 8.
8 Ibid., 9.
9 Ibid., 17.
10 Ibid., 20.
11 Ibid., 8.
12 Ibid., 12.
13 Ibid., 13.
14 Ibid., 15.
15 Ibid., 18.
16 Ibid., 21.
17 Ibid., 9.
Polidori, John. “The Vampyre.” The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, edited by Alan Ryan, Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 7-24.
In its four centuries of publication, Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe has not dimmed in its brilliance as it explores the ever-relevant themes of avarice, striving, and self-destruction. Marlowe’s writing is grippingly entertaining as it cunningly weaves exaggerated religious considerations with classical references and delightfully absurd comic relief. Faustus’ willing ignorance combines with Mephistopheles’ dry wit to create a roaringly funny narrative that simultaneously poses profound questions on the nature and limitations of academic endeavour. What social and empirical limits are meant to be surpassed, and which ought to be respected? Are humans responsible for their actions in a deeply unkind and unfair world? If given the opportunity to gain access to greater power and knowledge through illicit means, what would be ethically at stake? Throughout this work, Marlowe employs the subtle use of symbolic repetition to provide a theological framework to explore these underlying questions. In Dr. Faustus, the recurring motifs of blood and wine are employed to interchangeably communicate participation in either divine or infernal activity.
The first and least surprising use of this fascinating symbol is the direct allegory of the Eucharist. In most Christian theology, participation in the sacrament of the Eucharist is a means of memorializing Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection and a way to cleanse oneself of sin.1 It is the outward participation of a deeper internal grace of forgiveness and redemption. In Catholic traditions, it is believed that the host and wine are metaphysically transubstantiated into the literal body and blood of Christ, whereas in Protestant theology, communion is simply a memorial and sacramental act. While the act of taking communion is not explicitly referenced in Dr. Faustus, the blood of God is referenced as divine and redeeming in nature: “See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!/One drop would save my soul Half a drop: ah, my Christ!”2 In this passage, Faustus raves that Christ’s blood might save him, drawing on the notion of blood as sacramental and redeeming in nature. Yet this passage reveals further symbolic depth than simply a direct allegory to communion.
As well as referencing the consumption of the Eucharist, blood and wine symbolize the accessible and generative nature of God’s grace. It is an effective and visceral allegory, for just as blood is necessary for one's physical survival, the blood of God is theologically necessary for spiritual preservation. Extending this metaphor, an unwillingness to accept the grace of God (through communion or other means, such as repentance) leads to isolation from the divine and the deteriorating health of the soul. Furthermore, a refusal of God’ s grace is, ultimately, a denial of the whole of creation and the self, as the value of the world is an imbued quality that stems from God’s goodness. Thus, Faustus’ contract with Lucifer is a willing, yet ultimately self-destructive decision, as he becomes starved for spiritual fulfillment over the course of twenty-four years. This metaphysical illness is manifest in his decline over the course of the play, as he begins the narrative
as a renowned physician and ends it as a petty magician. Faustus’ demise is not solely due to his spiritual starvation but his stubbornness, avarice and greed, as it is in the nature of God’s grace to be ever-present and accessible. Faustus is capable of repenting at any moment, yet seems to expect forgiveness without contrition. This notion is strikingly communicated in the passage previously discussed: “See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! / One drop would save my soul Half a drop: ah, my Christ!”3 as Marlowe’s vivid and visual prose illustrates that Faustus’ unwillingness to repent is a decision consciously made and frequently re-affirmed. The image of “blood stream[ing] in the firmament” implies a literal deluge of redeeming blood, a phenomenon that would be encompassing and near-inescapable; yet Faustus would prefer to mourn his unnecessary damnation than step outside and into the possibility of redemption. A half-drop of Christ’s blood is easily accessible to him, yet he refuses it in a capacity which is arguably more laborious. The notion of Faustus’ sin as unnecessary and intentionally arduous is echoed in the middle of the play when Faustus uses his infernally-granted power to scare the pope at lunch by stealing his food and a goblet of wine.4 This is a symbolically corrupted version of the Eucharist, where Faustus literally “takes” communion from the pope in a show of unnecessary effort and force. Faustus gains nothing, and he and Mephistopheles are chased off by cardinals attempting to exorcise them. This scene demonstrates Faustus’ willingness to reaffirm his damnation rather than repenting, and the reality that it is a deeply strenuous task to undertake. The comparative arduousness of sin is a theme repeated by Marlowe over the course of the play and echoed in further symbolic applications of wine and blood.
If the blood of Christ is sacramental in nature, then a corrupted Eucharist is sacrificial: an act of giving that reaps no rewards. The symbolic language of sacrifice and inverted communion is found when Faustus writes a pact with Lucifer using his own blood: “I cut mine arm, and with my proper blood / Assure my great soul to be Lucifer’s.”5 There are a few implications that stem from the symbolism present in this passage. Firstly, it is the blood of Christ that is binding and redemptive in nature, not the blood of man, so Faustus’ contract is essentially null and void. Though he is currently bound to Satan, his pact is wholly reversible if he simply repents. Secondly, the act of writing a pact with Lucifer in his own blood is a literal and symbolic perversion of the Eucharist. Taking communion symbolizes Christ sacrificing himself for the benefit of the whole world, while Faustus’ contract symbolizes a sacrifice of self for the alleged benefit of self when in reality, he is benefitting Lucifer. Furthermore, Faustus’ act of writing in his own blood speaks to the fact that he is entering into this covenant of his own, free will. If it is only the blood of Christ that may redeem you, it is only the blood of the sinner that can damn you. The love of the self a prioritization of individuality and personal gain over all else is ultimately the love of Satan. Moreover, Faustus is stalled by his blood congealing while he attempts to sign the contract, signifying that the act of entering into a covenant with Lucifer goes against his very biological nature: “My blood congeals, and I can write no more.”6 Although he can rationally justify his decision to sell his soul
for knowledge, his body protests and attempts to sway him from the act. Faustus questions this himself when he asks: “What might the staying of my blood portend? / Is it unwilling that I should write this bill?”
7 But this is to no avail, and he signs the pact despite the danger that his blood portends. Thus far, the symbolism of wine and blood has applied solely to Faustus. However, the final application of this metaphor extends to a variety of characters throughout the play and furthers the thematic notion of the corrupted sacrament.
Marlowe’s brilliance as a playwright is clearly visible in his use of comical scenes as a means of furthering the plot and deepening the symbolism in Dr. Faustus. He marries the theme of the arduousness of sin and the dual metaphors of wine and blood through expository dialogues which, at first read, do not seem to pertain to the plot. While Faustus cavorts about Europe with Mephistopheles, a series of characters from his hometown and abroad become fascinated with him and the rumours of his infernal interference or magical abilities. Some of these moments of curiosity lead to brushes between lesser characters and the demonic, moments which are always accompanied by the recurring symbols of wine and blood. In these scenes, blood and wine tend to allude to the corrupt communion or the infernal power of Satan. A notable instance of this symbol is in the mischievous antics of Robin and Ralph in their desire to access Faustus’ infernal alliances. After Robin steals Faustus’ book of spells, he convinces his friend, Ralph, that they should use it for their own means of drinking and seduction. When Ralph asks what the benefits of the book are, Robin tells him “first, I can make thee drunk with ippocras at any tavern in Europe for nothing.”8 According to the footnotes, ippocras is a “wine mixed with sugar and spices”9 and thus seems to continue the complex metaphor of corrupt communion. This also feeds into the theme of the laborious nature of sinfulness, as it is significantly more effort to conjure infernal ippocras than it is to pay for it at the local tavern. However, the scene continues, and Ralph and Robin must steal a silver goblet from a local vintner in order to have something to conjure their infernal ippocras into.10 After threatening him with ineffective spells, they are forced to return the goblet.11 Without the aid of a legitimate wine merchant, Ralph and Robin are unable to access the devilish drink they desire. This is a clever and subtle metaphor for the differences between God's and Satan’s power. While Lucifer can supply an endless quantity of questionable and demonic wine, it is not without a legitimate cup that they can drink it. Thus, Lucifer’s power is a corrupt extension of God’s, but without the inverse use of a legitimate and incorrupt object, person, or idea, it cannot take hold. Robin and Ralph cannot have their wine without their goblet, and Satan cannot have Faustus’ soul without first accessing him, a corruptible human being. All Lucifer can do is destroy the nature of pre-existing things, he cannot create new ones. This theme is also present in Faustus’ visit to the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt. While there, he offers the pregnant Duchess any food she should like, and she requests grapes.12 Though he claims they were fetched by Mephistophilis, it is likely that they are not actually grapes, and rather some form of infernal food. Though the grapes are procured by a demon, they are symbolically neutral in this scene. Instead of being pro-
cessed into wine, they retain their freshness and remain in potentia, where they will either stay grapes or become the symbolic eucharist or corrupt communion. Just like the baby the duchess carries, the grapes are without connotation and denote neither heaven nor hell in the same way that an unborn child can neither be sinful nor find salvation. Thus, Marlowe expertly intertwines seemingly irrelevant moments with a symbolic framework which denotes grace, sin, and redemption.
The repetitive use of wine and blood as metaphors for participation in either the divine or profane is a subtle yet effective means of communicating theological themes such as the laboriousness of sin, the necessity of repentance and the consequences of free will. Where the blood of Christ is sacramental, accessible, and rejuvenating, blood that is related to covenants with Lucifer is sacrificial, difficult to access and inhibiting in nature. The repetition of these themes highlights Faustus’ profound inability to face the consequences of his actions, and how more often than not, it is more effort for him to remain in his state of sin than for him to access one of grace. The use of his own blood while writing his covenant with Satan functions as an inverse communion, where a love of the self is prioritized over a love of the world, an ultimately self-destructive and damaging act. Furthermore, by ignoring the warning manifested by his congealing blood, Faustus turns against his own nature for the sake of arbitrary gain. Finally, the experiences of Robin, Ralph and the Vanholts speak to the solely corruptive nature of Satan’s power, and his inability to create anything anew. The masterful application of these symbols creates a complex and visceral piece of literature which is as comedic as it is cautionary, and speaks to the unchangeable aspects of human nature, whether for good or ill.
1 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Eucharist.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eucharist. Accessed 15 December 2022.
2 Marlowe, Christopher. Dr. Faustus. Edited by Stanley Applebaum and Thomas Crofts, New York, Dover Thrift Editions, 1994, 55.
3 Ibid., 55.
4 Ibid., 33.
5 Ibid., 20.
6 Ibid., 21.
7 Ibid., 21.
8 Ibid., 36.
9 Ibid., 36.
10 Ibid., 37.
11 Ibid., 38.
12 Ibid., 47.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Eucharist.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eucharist. Accessed 15 December 2022.
Marlowe, Christopher. Dr. Faustus. Edited by Stanley Applebaum and Thomas Crofts, New York, Dover Thrift Editions, 1994.
Voltaire lived during a time of great ideological change. He is one of the flagship figures of the Age of Enlightenment, which served as a flourishing for philosophical thought. Thinkers, writers, and scientists begin to consider the world in a radical manner, focused on the principles of empiricism and reason. Rational thought moves from simply being a philosophical and scientific tenet and becomes a part of social and historical life. Rational thought was a virtue that Voltaire held in high esteem, and this went hand in hand with a consideration of the problem of evil. The existence of evil in human life was a prime target for rational thinkers of the Enlightenment, for it is a universal and unconquerable presence. In order for someone to live a productive life, they must find some ideological justification for pain and suffering, or else life becomes too painful to continue living. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz would call this justification a “theodicy.”1 For the majority of human history, this justification was religious. A person would have faith that God or the gods would reward them for their good deeds in the next life, or that the divine had some allencompassing plan for them. In the Enlightenment, this has begun to shift away from religious faith, but it is still predicated on faith, for the most part. Deism has begun to emerge as a school of thought, where a supreme being is believed to exist, but on the basis of rational thought and empirical observation rather than revelation.2 This is normally coupled with the idea of God as a watchmaker that intelligently designed the universe and then allowed it to ‘tick’ on its own without interference. These views still require a certain degree of faith in the principles of reason, nature, and God. However, in Voltaire’s Candide, the characters who express faith in any sort of belief system meet with misfortune and ridicule. Voltaire seems to equate faith with passivity, criticizing any expression of an immutable state of the world. Philosophers who believe that life offers the “best of all possible worlds”3 and those who argue alternatively that “God has abandoned [the earth] to some malignant being”4 seem equally ridiculous in the narrative. Instead, Candide arrives at a philosophy that is closer to meliorism: that action in the world must be the focus of human life in order to make it progressively better, rather than holding steadfast beliefs about its quality. There is only a limited amount that humans can do to alleviate the moral and natural evils of the world, so instead of passively philosophizing, as Voltaire concisely puts it, we must instead learn to “take care of our garden.”5
When the novel begins, Candide holds a deep and passive faith that reflects earlier worldviews. He lives in an Edenic barony in German Westphalia where he wants for nothing and takes on an innocent “gentle manner”6 that befits his name. He pines for the baron’s daughter, Cunegonde, but has not and would likely never act on his feelings. The court philosopher, Pangloss, lectures (or preaches) on any number of philosophical sciences and proves the perfect and immutable state of the world using a rhetoric that seems moronic to the reader:
It is demonstrable… that things cannot be otherwise than as they are, for all things having been created for some end, they must consequently be created for the best. Observe, that the nose is formed for spectacles, and therefore we come to wear spectacles.7
Pangloss, while teaching his philosophy, never considers it and never dares to act upon its tenets. Even though he appears rational, he operates with a blind faith in the righteousness of his principles. Candide is smitten by this philosophy and abides by it for most of the book’s events. Pangloss travels with Candide for a while and continues to adhere to his ineffectively logical faith. When they both witness the drowning of James the Anabaptist, Pangloss and Candide have an opportunity to dive in and save the charitable man’s life, but the philosopher instead opts to demonstrate “that the bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned.
While he was proving this a priori, the ship foundered, and the whole crew perished.”8 Pangloss’ philosophy, while grounded in the reason of the Enlightenment, remains supremely passive and ineffective and thus, worthy of the reader’s ridicule. When encountering the ravages of disease, a “beautiful auto-da-fé,”9 robbery, and cannibalism, Candide relies on Pangloss’ philosophy as a reassuring mantra. He is committed to the faith that he is used to, despite evidence to the contrary.
Candide continues to adhere to passive reason, but there are a few standout moments when he acts for himself, though it rarely ends well. When Candide reunites with Cunegonde in Lisbon, she is under the joint ownership of a Jewish banker, Don Issachar, and an unnamed grand inquisitor.
When the two men discover Candide in their home with their mistress, he quickly kills them with his rapier. However, when confronted with the consequences with his actions and asked what to do next, he cannot respond. Even as he thinks of Pangloss, he wavers, requesting the counsel of ‘the old woman,’ a character who has suffered a great deal and possesses a pragmatic view of the world. Candide now tries to move away from Pangloss’ optimistic passivity, but leaps to the other extreme of impulsive irrationality. When Cunegonde asks how Candide could have committed such a heinous act, he responds, “when love, jealousy, and the terror of the inquisition, act upon a man’s brain, they are enough to drive him distracted.”10 Candide has, for a moment, abandoned reason and submitted to environmental influence. He reiterates this impulse again when Candide encounters Cunegonde’s brother in Paraguay. The two get along splendidly, until Candide mentions he wishes to marry Cunegonde. Her unnamed brother, currently a Baron and a Jesuit, objects to his sister marrying an apparent lowlife and scoundrel. Candide then draws his rapier and runs him through but is appalled by his own actions. “[I]n pulling [the sword] out, reeking hot, he burst into tears. ‘Good God!’ said he, ‘I have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-inlaw.’”11 Candide is once again overcome by impulse and shows genuine remorse. He has tested the extreme opposite of passive reason and been disgusted by the results of his murderous action.
The novel outlines another extreme of blind philosophical faith: that of the Manichean, Martin. At this point in the novel, Candide has witnessed so many moral and natural evils that
Pangloss’ philosophy no longer holds. Optimism and pure reason are not satisfactory philosophical systems, and Candide has found that pure impulse is not sustainable either. Martin exhibits the failures of pessimism, which will drive Candide to a sounder philosophical conclusion. Martin is taken on by Candide in Surinam, where the latter searches for a man who is “most dissatisfied with his state and the most unfortunate in the whole province.”12 Candide chooses Martin to accompany him from the New World back to Europe. Martin also has blind faith in his doctrine.
When Candide expresses disbelief at his being a Manichean, he responds, “I cannot help it; I know not how to think otherwise.”13 Martin is also determined to not only believe in the fundamental evil in the world, but pessimistically seek it out in the presence of good. When Candide points out a Dutch villain perishing on a sinking ship and receiving his just desserts, Martin undermines it by pointing out the loss of the ship’s other passengers. When Candide proposes that there be but some good somewhere in the world, Martin replies, “That may be… but I know it not.”14 Candide’s misfortune inclines him towards Martin’s nihilistic views, but he still finds the philosopher’s passive moral absolutism lacking. Martin asserts that the world was “originally framed… to plague us to death”15 and that human beings can never change their nature. Candide desperately refutes him with the Enlightenment ideals of free will and reason. A vignette at the estate of the Venetian senator, Pococurante, further reinforces Martin’s view and fails to sway Candide. The senator possesses a grand library and gallery of Western classics but is disinterested by every text. He makes no attempt to find something that will please him or create his own art, but wallows in his passive judgment. Candide is desperate to recognize the bit of pleasure in criticism, but Martin brushes him off. Martin is committed to a blind faith in evil, and the resignation of one’s life to its effects.
Candide also has traveling companions who are more sensible and neutral than his dithering philosopher friends. The old woman has lived a life of woe and hardship, but she does not allow evil to interrupt her life. When Candide kills the Jew and the inquisitor, ‘the old woman’ springs into action, suggesting they flee the country. She also takes charge regarding Candide and Cunegonde’s separation in Paraguay, benefiting them both.16 She recognizes the world’s evils and has lived through many herself, but “still [she] was fond of life.”17 Candide’s other sensible compatriot is Cacambo, a South American mixed Spaniard and jack of all trades. He accompanies Candide through Paraguay, El Dorado, and Surinam and continually acts in a sensible manner. Cacambo concocts a clever ruse to help Candide escape Paraguay after the murder of the Baron, and he later parleys with the indigenous Oreillons before they eat Candide. He is incredibly loyal and not afraid to act when it is necessary to preserve himself or his friends.
Candide’s travels allow him to explore multiple aspects of moral philosophy. Optimism and pessimism have been the main considerations of Voltaire’s satirical treatment, but the author explores a more subtle idea: Voltaire warns against the danger of blind faith in any belief system, be it religious or rational. He cautions the reader against making absolute judgements, and instead en-
dorses a meliorative approach. One ought to act in what little way one can, for the world is always changing and always can be changed. At the end of the novel, Candide retreats to a rural, family homestead with Cunegonde, Pangloss, Cacambo, Martin and the old woman. Crops may someday fail or fall to bad weather, but it helps no one to make broad statements about the quality of the farm. Voltaire’s metaphoric advice seems to be that a compassionate embracing of others and all their failings along with a knowledgeable tending of one’s garden; this embodies his best approach to life.
1 Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. Translated by E.M. Huggard, OPEN COURT, 1985.
2 Diller, Jeanine, and Asa Kasher, editors. Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities. Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg, 2013.
3 Voltaire. Candide. Edited by Eric Palmer, Broadview Press, 2009, 48.
4 Ibid., 100.
5 Ibid., 133.
6 Ibid., 47.
7 Ibid., 48.
8 Ibid., 57.
9 Ibid., 59.
10 Ibid., 66.
11 Ibid., 83.
12 Ibid., 98.
13 Ibid., 100.
14 Ibid., 101.
15 Ibid., 103.
16 Ibid., 78.
17 Ibid., 75.
Works Cited
Voltaire. Candide. Edited by Eric Palmer, Broadview Press, 2009.
Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. Translated by E.M. Huggard, OPEN COURT, 1985. Diller, Jeanine, and Asa Kasher, editors. Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities. Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg, 2013.
The end of Don Quixote, the titular character in Miguel de Cervantes’ novel with the line, “I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha but Alonso Quixano once called the Good because of my virtuous life.” shows a stark contrast between Quixote and his true identity.1 Alonso Quixano and Don Quixote reflect the different stages of the Early Modern period at its starting point. Specifically reflecting the state of Spain through Quixano and Don Quixote, and acknowledging the colonial dichotomy through the two sides of the character.
The persona of Don Quixote, as the knight, symbolises the image that the Spanish Empire wants to portray. Quixano does this early on in Book I with the declaration: “I know who I am.”2 While this is directly the identity Quixote wants to portray to the world, it symbolically refers to how Spain attempted to portray itself to its colonies at the time. Before the publishing of Don Quixote, Spain had amassed many colonies in the western hemisphere, as designated with Portugal with a hemispherical split over the New World by the Treaty of Tordesillas. This 1494 treaty, which gave Spain a majority of the New World, was also based religiously on an early draft from Pope Alexander VI. Quixote reflects this by reassuring his squire, Sancho, to “Leave it to God” throughout their endeavours with most of their consequences as with Quixote’s character being fantastical.3 However, Quixote does have a bit of method to his madness as he reminds Sancho “not lower your desire so much that you will be content with anything less than the title of captain general.”4 The Quixote persona created by Alonso Quixano, who developed him from the fantasies he had read, is a reflection of Spain exerting its presence in the New World, and creating an image for it to be the great benefactor of the societies it overpowers, without much consideration for how it will impact the history of the New World. Consequently, Cervantes foreshadows this with the cast of supporting characters who are aware of this persona’s antics and attempt to bring sense back to Alonso Quixano.
The opposing side of the colonial dichotomy, the opposition to the empire as supposed to its benefactors, is expressed by the supporting characters of Don Quixote. Within the first novel’s chapters, the immediate family begins to take action to prevent Don Quixote from his antics: Your grace should send them to be burned, just like all the rest, because it’s very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing, and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease.5
The plot by Quixote’s niece to burn his library serves as an allegory to resisting an imperial institution in a colony and preventing the expansion of its influence. The description of the disappearance of the library, along with other comeuppances in the adventures of Quixote, is an allegory
for the scapegoat from the colonial perspective. Quixote represents the Spanish, and the wicked enchanter, who are the people trying to stop Quixote’s antics, are in a broader sense the colonised people of an empire who are ignored by their colonial authority. Expressed when “the housekeeper burned and consigned to the flames all of the books that were in the corral and the house” while Quixote and Sancho were away on their adventures.6 When Quixote returns after his adventures, he immediately assumes a scapegoat who is presumably among the crowd of his hometown. Sancho, who was along with him at the beginning of his expedition, as his majordomo. He is complacent to the ideas of Don Quixote like that of a colonist being subordinated by the colonisers.
As the right-hand man of Quixote, Sancho Panza is a figure who is complacent to a colonial institution. He originally was a “farmer [who] was a neighbour of his, a good man” before being offered to be Quixote’s squire in his endeavours.7 Although Sancho is not as aware of Quixote’s grandiosity, he is aware to play along with Quixote during his expedition. When his knight, or his steed Rocinante, was in need, Sancho “hurried to help as fast as his donkey could carry him, and when he reached them discovered that Don Quixote could not move because he had taken so hard a fall with Rocinante.”8 Despite the opposition to Quixote and Panza, their antics reflect that of an empire trying to justify itself. Along with this scenario, there is a sense of imperial superiority within Spain as well.
With all of the colonial contexts of Cervantes’ novel in consideration, the death of Don Quixote, also known as Alonso Quixano, is made more beautiful through symbolism. “I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha but Alonso Quixano once called the Good because of my virtuous life.”9 The death of the personality of Don Quixote symbolises the death of a colonial institution. His death came as a point where the pursuit of enacting virtues Quixote had enacted on his various expeditions. So too did Spain on the states it was governing, leading to the dissolution of an empire through various independence movements. However, the consequences of their ways are foreshadowed by Cervantes with the Don himself pondering on a simpler life with Sancho “[roaming] the mountains, the woods, and the meadows, singing here, lamenting” on their fantastical adventures.10 Don Quixote’s claim begins his undoing as a character with our first glimpses into Alonso Quixano’s life and a return to simplicity, as with Spain’s duality between an imperial state and a simpler one following the initial steps into an empire. Alonso Quixano, the man who became Don Quixote through reading various adventure novels in solitude, perishes as a member of a colonial institution by partaking in his adventures across Spain, but also as a symbol of human innocence in a colonial endeavour. Even his squire, Sancho, confronts this latter idea Quixote moves in his final moments:
Your grace should take my advice and live for many years, because the greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die, just like that, without anybody killing him or any other hands ending his life except those of melancholy.11 Sancho could not bear to lose the Don he knew as it would alleviate Sancho from his duties as a
squire, and the broader image of an empirical force dying out; meaning that the glory days of the empire are almost at a close. Cervantes highlighted this throughout Quixote's adventure with previously stated examples throughout his novels. All of which highlights the dichotomy of the golden age of an empire.
The dichotomy between Don Quixote and Alonso Quixano is Imperial Spain with its true intentions. The cast of supporting characters such as his squire, immediate family, relatives, and the community of people around him reflect the story that Quixano made for himself as Quixote. Quixano wanted to be something more of himself from the adventure stories he had read in his library as did Spain to the New World during the Renaissance and the attempt to reinstall morale from its golden age of imperialism. These two characters were made for all that glittered, but there was no gold for their personas.
1 Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by Edith Grossman, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003, 935.
2 Ibid., 43.
3 Ibid., 57.
4 Ibid., 57.
5 Ibid., 50.
6 Ibid., 54.
7 Ibid., 55.
8 Ibid., 59.
9 Ibid., 935.
10 Ibid., 899.
11 Ibid., 937.
Works Cited
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by Edith Grossman, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003, pp. 43-937.
For hundreds of years in England, public executions were perceived as necessary to maintain social order. The spectacle of death took place in, what historian J. A. Sharpe refers to as, the “theater of punishment”1: a fitting analogy which illuminates the dramatized, fantasticized, and sensationalized nature of the public execution, and reiterates the importance of the audience as the patrons on whom the success of the performance was hinged. Similar to the theater, the execution scaffold served as a stage upon which the state’s notions of good and evil could be acted out; Sharpe writes that “civil and religious authorities designed the execution spectacle to articulate a particular set of values, inculcate a certain behavioral model and bolster a social order perceived as threatened.”2 The parliamentary debates on the 1868 ‘Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill’ offer many insights into the varied contemporary perspectives regarding public execution. Conservative politicians held that executions must continue to be public to deter criminality. Reformists argued that public executions not only failed as a deterrent, but actively contributed to the rise in criminality. Both sides of the argument are crucial to understanding the intended function of public execution, the function it actually had, and what led to its abolishment merely a month later. This essay will examine the evolution of public execution in early modern England and contrast historical developments to the arguments posed within the Bill.
The conservative position on public executions rested on three major threads of argumentation. Firstly, it was believed that public displays of violence would deter criminality and instill a self -regulating fear of execution within the population. In the 1868 parliamentary debates, William Gregory cites the testimony of police officers who, “from their experience of our most desperate criminals,”3 believed that they would have committed more egregious offenses if they had not been restrained by their fear of being hanged. Gregory mentions one “desperate burglar”4 who was quoted as saying “that he would have ‘choked’ both the housemaid and the old lady if it had not been that he was afraid of being ‘choked’ himself.”5 The second argument was that executions were performed for the benefit of the public, and thus should be witnessed publicly so that those in attendance would, as Charles Newdegate stipulates in the debates, “see their own punishment carried out.”6 Execution was intended to be perceived as “the act of the whole nation,”7 which leads to the third conservative argument: that, without an audience to validate the execution, capital punishment would be carried out with a perceived secrecy that would raise public suspicion. Christopher Darby Griffith states that “the national aversion to secrecy”8 would ensure the abolition of capital punishment entirely. These arguments illuminate the multi-faceted function of public execution in early modern England as well many of the contemporary anxieties that upheld it.
Executions in early modern England used shaming rituals to reinforce a negative perception of lawlessness. J. A. Sharpe studied dozens of seventeenth-century murder pamphlets cheaply published and sensationalized accounts of the ‘last dying speeches’ of criminals before their execution to relay the didactic nature of early modern public executions. These pamphlets made the “theater of punishment”9 more accessible, as “only a small number of people might witness an execution, but the pamphlet account was designed to reach a wider audience.”10 The popular consumption of these murder pamphlets had, in a sense, commodified criminality as a form of entertainment; Sharpe writes that, “ever since the popular press had been established in England, much of its output had been devoted to crime, its major concern being the sensational and newsworthy case.”11 The sensationalization of crime and punishment was largely believed to strengthen conservative ideologies, and narratives of criminality, which were solidified through both the execution performance and the “gallows literature,”12 can be understood not only as an attempt to deter criminality, but to foster a specific framework for public morality.
One publication in particular, titled The Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, produced hundreds of murder pamphlets between its first issue in 1676 and its dissolution in 1772. In addition to their execution, the condemned would be expected to deliver a confession of their offenses, admit their guilt, and, crucially, proclaim their acceptance that the execution that was to follow was necessary and deserved. An early publication from May of 1676 relays the events of a public execution at Tyburn and outspokenly uses the condemned’s last dying speeches to dissuade criminality: Being come to the Gallows, and the usual Prayers and Solemnities being performed, one of them spoke a pretty while to the Multitude, protesting, This was the first Face that he was ever actually guilty of, though he had been accessary to divers others, and had been all his days a very ill Liver; so that he could not but acknowledge that he suffer'd justly. He very much admonish'd all persons to consider their ways; especially warning Youth not to misspend their time in Idleness, or Disobedience to Parents or Masters; and to have a care of being seduced and drawn away by led women, affirming that such Courses and their Temptations, and to satisfie their Luxury, had been originally the cause of his destruction, and that shameful death he was now going to suffer.13
These murder pamphlets fleshed out the subtle didacticism present in the humiliation rituals of early modern executions aiming, as Sharpe writes, “to remind spectators that the death of the condemned constituted an awful warning.”14 While the momentary shock of a violent execution might have a temporary deterrent effect on an audience, the punitive narrative had longer-lasting resonance and enforced values of lawfulness through imagery and allegory. The condemned became a mouthpiece for the state’s message, and these warnings spoken from the gallows were, as the conservative position holds, the most powerful means of delivering it.
The liberal position on public executions, as established in the 1868 Bill, also rested on three major threads of argumentation. Firstly, criticisms of public execution refuted the conservative
claim that the “theater of punishment”15 instilled morality within the audience: claiming that, in fact, public displays of violence had an opposite effect. Historian Randall McGowan writes that criticisms in the late eighteenth century “argued that the very sight of violence tended to corrupt public morality;”16 a sentiment which is echoed by M’Laren in the 1868 Bill, with his statement that “all the evidence went to show that instead of doing [the audience] good, it had a tendency to demoralize them.”17 Spectacles of violence were a central part of England’s urban lifestyle, as “cock fighting, bear baiting, and the like”18 were inexpensive forms of entertainment for people of all classes. It was believed by some that “such sports encouraged idleness”19 and had a “tendency to brutalize spectators.”20 Analyzing a statement made by reformist John Scott in 1773, McGowan writes:
Civilized individuals demonstrated their higher valuation of human life in a refined sensitivity to suffering. Violence, in whatever form, severed this link and rendered one insensitive to others. A fistfight or cockfighting indicated a moral disorder as profound as murder.21
If those who found entertainment in recreational displays of violence were as morally corrupt as a killer, those who attended the “theater of punishment,”22 or purchased murder pamphlets, would be similarly demoralized and desensitized to further violence. Gathorne Hardy, among others, proposed that the execution audience was comprised of “the very worst classes, and that many of them [were] themselves on the very road to the gallows”23: demonstrating this belief that the public could be corrupted through the exposure to execution.
The second argument made by liberal reformers was that public executions had a negative effect on the condemned themselves. As the “gallows literature”24 makes evident, the public execution was, crucially, an opportunity for a criminal to confess their wrongdoings before their peers and before God. The religious justification for execution although rather tenuous relied heavily on the belief that the condemned’s final moments, being spent in contrition, would help them to purge their spirit of evil and begin their reconciliation with God. The confession, as it affected both the condemned and the spectators, was only functional when those in attendance afforded the execution ritual an appropriate amount of respect. Gathorne Hardy posits in his 1868 statement:
Can anyone imagine that it is beneficial to him that, in his last moments, he should be brought out and inspected by these mobs, to be received, as has been the case in one instance in London, with great applause, or with hooting and execrations, which must distract his mind from the religious and devotional duties in which everyone would wish that he should be at such a moment engaged?25
Like any performance, the moral taken away was dependent on the interpretation of the audience; as historian Susan Dwyer Amussen writes, “the government could never assume that its use of violent coercion was read in the way it was intended. Many in the crowd came to support, rather
than condemn, the victims, who were seen as martyrs.”26 The audience’s failure to participate in the way they were intended rendered the execution performance as a moral failure for the condemned and the spectators alike.
The third major thread of argumentation proffered by liberal reformers was that, rather than solidifying public trust in the state, public executions raised indignation due to the spectacular exertion of authority over their peers. Amussen’s earlier description, of the condemned as “martyrs,”27 is a crucial aspect to this argument; in the wake of England’s Bloody Code, many spectators began to identify more closely with the condemned than with the upper-class legislators. The Bloody Code, which reigned between the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, saw a steep increase in the number of capital statutes: from 50 in 1688 to over 200 by the end of the eighteenth century. Many of these statutes regarded petty property crimes, and made minor offenses such as poaching, pickpocketing, and forgery punishable by death. Thus, those who might be forced to commit a petty offense out of desperation could be punished as severely as a murderer. These Bloody laws were a legal justification for, and entrenchment of, classbased inequalities, and ostensibly served only the interests of the powerful and propertied. Public executions of petty criminals appeared, to the masses, not as, what Newdegate would call “the act of the whole nation,”28 but rather the act of a select privileged few the same privileged few who were responsible for such legislation. Amussen suggests that “such punishments made explicit the violence that was always implicit in the exercise of power. Yet the use of violence by the state was not always accepted, and though legal, onlookers did not always accord it legitimacy.”29 Public executions, as the liberal reformers had rightly pointed out, had, by the nineteenth century, become undeniably ineffective as a deterrent for crime, as a form of restitution for public sufferings, or to promote trust in the state’s punitive institutions.
Public execution was regarded ambivalently in early modern England: while some believed the “theater of punishment”30 strengthened public morality, and others believed it deteriorated it, the fact remains that, like any performance, the reception was dependent on the audience. The decision to end public execution in 1868 was an attempt, by both sides of the parliamentary debates, to ameliorate some of its unintended practical consequences: namely, the increasing tendency of juries to acquit capital criminals, rather than accidentally condemn an innocent person to the gallows. The fear inspired by England’s theatrical executions seemed to work more effectively on those responsible for upholding the law than it did on criminals; Charles Gilpin, a liberal politician, claimed that “he believed it was not too much to say that there were men and women walking about red-handed amongst us persons unquestionably guilty of the most atrocious murders,”31 whose incidental freedom was indicative of the failures of public execution and of the justice system as a whole. Randall McGowan argues that, while historical narratives often illustrate the abolition of public execution as a “victory for humanity,”32 private executions within prisons can hardly be considered a more “civilized”33 practice. The “theater of punishment”34 can be con-
sidered savagely dehumanizing, but the private executions that followed were similarly dehumanizing in the sense that they were “anonymous and bureaucratic.”35 The debates regarding the function of public execution illuminate the complex social relationship to the practice, and elicit, for me at least, a disbelief in modern sentiments that the barbaric laws of the past have followed a humanist trajectory towards “civilizing punishment.”36
1 Sharpe, J. A. “‘Last Dying Speeches’: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in SeventeenthCentury England.” Past & Present, no. 107, 1985, 156.
2 Ibid., 148.
3 UK Parliament, Hansard, ‘Capital Punishment Within Prisons Bill Bill 36’, Commons Chamber, Volume 191 (21 April 1868), from Hansard’s Records of Parliamentary Debates, 1042.
4 Ibid., 1042.
5 Ibid., 1042.
6 Ibid., 1056.
7 Ibid., 1056.
8 Ibid., 1057.
9 Sharpe, 156.
10 Ibid., 148.
11 Ibid., 147.
12 Ibid., 148.
13 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 02 December 2022), 17th May 1676, trial of Henry Seabrook, Elizabeth Longman, Robert Scot, Edward Wall, and Edward Russell. Ordinary of Newgate's Account (OA16760517), 8.
14 Sharpe, 150.
15 Ibid., 156.
16 McGowen, Randall. “Civilizing Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 33, no. 3, 1994, 260.
17 Hansard Column, 1056.
18 McGowan, 261.
19 Ibid., 261.
20 Ibid., 261.
21 Ibid., 261.
22 Sharpe, 156.
23 Hansard, 1056.
24 Sharpe, 148.
25 Hansard Column, 1056.
26 Amussen, Susan Dwyer. “Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 1995, 9.
27 Ibid., 9.
28 Hansard Column, 1056.
29 Asmussen, 12.
30 Sharpe, 156.
31 Hansard Column, 1036.
32 McGowan, 281.
33 Ibid., 281.
34 Sharpe, 156.
35 McGowan, 281.
36 Ibid., 257.
Amussen, Susan Dwyer. “Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 1995, pp. 1–34. JSTOR, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/175807.
McGowen, Randall. “Civilizing Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 33, no. 3, 1994, pp. 257–82. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/176073. Accessed 7 Dec. 2022.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 02 December 2022), 17th May 1676, trial of Henry Seabrook, Elizabeth Longman, Robert Scot, Edward Wall, and Edward Russell. Ordinary of Newgate's Account (OA16760517). https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ browse.jsp?id=OA16760517&div=OA16760517#highlight
Royer, Katherine. “The Body in Parts: Reading the Execution Ritual in Late Medieval England.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 29, no. 2, 2003, pp. 319–39. JSTOR, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/41299275.
Sharpe, J. A. “‘Last Dying Speeches’: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in SeventeenthCentury England.” Past & Present, no. 107, 1985, pp. 144–67. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/650708.
UK Parliament, Hansard, ‘Capital Punishment Within Prisons Bill Bill 36’, Commons Chamber, Volume 191 (21 April 1868), from Hansard’s Records of Parliamentary Debates: https:// hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1868-04-21/debates/a89d84e2-fc94-487d-a7e2-427 4cdbe9e12/CapitalPunishmentWithinPrisonsBill%E2%80%94Bill36
I began this journal with a message about friendship. I would like to close by continuing on that theme. Due to some unfortunate obstacles, this volume of Babel is being released on a delayed timeframe that has brought us right up to the end of my degree. As a soon-to-be graduate, this afterward is my goodbye to that group and to that sense of belonging which I wrote about in the forward.
I want to thank all of the wonderful friends and classmates whom I have met along the way; those published in this journal, those on my society team, and those whom I have taken classes with for the past four years. I would never have made it to the end of my degree without you. There has been so much support from all of you, and you have collectively transformed the course of my degree through your friendship.
I also want to thank the King’s faculty, both EMSP professors and those outside the program. Your unwavering support of your students and of the student societies does not go unnoticed. We could not possible do any of this without your guidance and dedication.
So, there is my goodbye – though I know there will always be a place for me at King’s. It would be difficult to enter the NAB, to breath in the smell of paper and books that waft up from the bookstore, and not to be transported back to my first steps into my life at King’s. That sense of homecoming will always be here, for me and for each of our graduating students.
I guess it isn’t a true goodbye. Maybe a goodbye to student life, and a hello to whatever comes next.
I’ll see you when I see you.
Emma MartelCo-PresidentoftheEarlyModernStudiesSociety,2022–24