BLOCK 1 FORM AND READING - Arab Open University

A123 Block 1 A123HUMANITIES

AN INTRODUCTION

Special editionlicensed for use by theArab Open University

BLOCK 1

FORM ANDREADING

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The Open University (UK) and the Arab Open University (AOU) acknowledge thecontribution of Professor Mohammad Awwad in reviewing this book andsuggesting the modifications and adaptations subsequently adopted in this version.

The Arab Open University has opted to use for its programs of study high-qualityeducational materials produced for the United Kingdom Open University andoriginally intended for its British and worldwide student body.

However, the AOU finds that there are certain viewpoints contained in thesematerials that cannot be endorsed by the AOU. Therefore, in conformity with Arabtraditions and Islamic beliefs, the AOU has modified these educational materialseither by way of complete deletion of certain statements, or by adding appropriatefootnotes to them.

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First published 2004

This edition produced 2004 for use by the Arab Open University

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BLOCK 1FORM AND READING

Introduction to Block 1 5

Unit 8 Seeing 7

Unit 9 Form and Meaning in Poetry: the Sonnet 45

Unit 10 Introduction to History Part 1: Issues and Methods 85

Unit 11 Reasoning 123

Unit 12 Reading Week 147

Index 149

INTRODUCTION TO BLOCK 1

Written for the course team by Charles Harrison

Having worked through the Introductory Block, you will already have anidea of the ground covered by the Arts disciplines. In the four units of thisblock you will be focusing on the specific disciplines of art (Unit 8),literature (Unit 9), history (Unit 10) and philosophy (Unit 11), andpractising the particular activities and skills associated with each – looking,reading, analysing and reasoning. The divisions between these skillsshould not be taken too literally, however. In responding to the arts, wedraw both on our reasoning abilities and on our senses in variouscombinations. And there is considerable overlap among the variousdisciplines.

It is primarily in art and literature that we expect what we normally thinkof as works of art. You will be introduced to representative examples inUnits 8 and 9. That we refer to works of art is a reminder that such thingsas paintings and poems result from the practical activities undertaken byartists and writers. We aim in this block to help you to understand thekinds of materials and techniques with which works of art are made, togive you some experience and guidance in analysing their forms, and toenable you to explore the distinctive pleasures they offer.

‘Form’ is a key concept here. Anything we single out for attention musthave a form of some kind – otherwise how could it be singled out? Thuswe speak of natural forms, such as rocks or trees, but also of forms ofbehaviour or forms of argument, the last of these being a particularconcern of philosophy. In fact, what gives the term a special place both inphilosophy and in discussions of the arts is that the kinds of form at issueare those in which human meanings and intentions are expressed. Theone factor uniting the different components of this block, therefore, is aconcern with the relationship between form and meaning.

We have to be a little careful here. We can say with confidence that thisrelationship lies at the heart of painting, of poetry, and of philosophicalargument alike. But if we try to analyse how this relationship works, wewill have to proceed in different ways according to the different types ofform involved. In other words, learning to ‘read’ a painting requires skillsthat differ in significant respects from those we employ in the reading of apoem. The ‘meaning’ we may find in a painting is a different kind ofmeaning from that which is carried by a philosophical statement or even apoem, and it is carried in a different way. One important difference is thatphilosophical statements and poems use verbal language, whereaspainting does not.

5

You will find that the four units in this block have different numbers ofpages, though in fact the actual work you have to do is roughly the samein each week. Thus Unit 8, on art, is the longest of the four – but youdon’t have to do any additional reading. The literature unit (Unit 9) is ofmedium length, and requires you to read a number of sonnets in ResourceBook 1 – in addition to those printed in the unit itself. Unit 10 is also ofmedium length, which gives you time for the exercises. The philosophyunit has been kept short so that you can devote sufficient time to theaccompanying exercises; these have been designed to give you practice indistinguishing between valid and invalid arguments.

Note: all the units in Block 1 contain brief marginal references to The ArtsGood Study Guide, with which you will already be familiar from theIntroductory Block. These references indicate parts of the guide that giveadvice about relevant study procedures; follow them up in cases whereyou would like further support.

6 INTRODUCTION TO BLOCK 1

UNIT 8SEEINGWritten for the course team by Charles Harrison

Contents

Aims and objectives 8

Pronunciation guide 9

The artists: dates of birth and death 9

A note on the reading of captions 10

1 Introduction 13

2 Form and space in painting 14

3 Perspective 19

Summary 21

4 Two still lifes: (1) Seeing what, and seeinghow 23

5 Two still lifes: (2) biography, intention andmeaning 28

Still life, and life and death 30

Still life and life story 31

6 Iconography 33

7 Open questions 35

8 Adequacy and relevance 36

How much is enough? 36

What’s relevant? 37

9 Composition and the work of the spectator:Rembrandt’s The Artist in his Studio 38

STUD

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STUDY COMPONENTS

Weeks of study Texts Audio CD Set books

1 Illustration Book, ResourceBook 1

Audio CD 1, Track 1 Arts Good Study Guide

Aims and objectivesThe aims of this unit are to:

1 interest you in painting, and introduce you to some distinguishedexamples of the art;

2 describe some basic characteristics of pictures, and to show how someconventional forms of pictorial composition and illusion work inpractice;

3 through guided comparison, demonstrate a range of typical painterlyeffects;

4 help you learn, through comparison, how to observe the significantfeatures of different works and different styles;

5 encourage thought about the usefulness and relevance of biographicaland other information in understanding works of art;

6 introduce the concept of iconography and to raise some preliminaryquestions about the uses and limitations of iconographical approaches;

7 consider the role of the spectator in responding to pictorialcomposition, using Rembrandt’s The Artist in his Studio as a casestudy.

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

1 provide a brief and accurate description of a conventional type ofpainting, making relevant observations on the treatment of light andshade and on the organization of pictorial space;

2 make distinctions between comparable paintings in terms oftechnique, treatment of subject and compositional effects;

3 when considering the form of a work of art, exercise suitable cautionover the relevance of biographical information;

4 provide at least one example of a pictorial form used to convey aspecific symbolic meaning;

8 STUDY WEEK EIGHT: SEEING

5 when faced with a traditional type of pictorial composition, give someaccount of its effect in structuring the imaginative experience of thespectator;

6 visit a picture gallery or museum of art with enhanced understandingand enjoyment of the work on display;

7 communicate some part of that understanding and enjoyment toothers.

Pronunciation guideThe italic text below gives an idea of how to pronounce the names ofartists referred to in Unit 1. Where we place an accent in the italics, itmeans that, when the name is pronounced, this syllable should bestressed. Names not listed are pronounced as written:

Sandro Botticelli (Italian): Sandro Bottichélli

Gustave Courbet (French): Goostav Korbay

Edgar Degas (French): Edgar Degáh

Eugène Delacroix (French): Erjayn Déllacrwah

Domenico Veneziano (Italian): Dohménnyko Vennaytziáno

Gerard Dou (Dutch): Gherrad Dow

Albrecht Dürer (German): Allbresht Dyoora

Giovanni di Paolo (Italian): Jováni di Powlo

Louise Moillon (French): Looeez Mwulloh

Claude Monet (French): Clode Monnay

Piero della Francesca (Italian): Pee-airo della Franchéska

Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch): Rembrant van Rin (he is usually justknown as Rembrandt)

Hans Vredeman de Vries (Dutch): Fraydeman der Frees

The artists: dates of birth and deathSandro Botticelli: 1444/5–1510

Frederick Church: 1826–1900

John Constable: 1776–1837

Gustave Courbet: 1819–77

Edgar Degas: 1834–1917

9STUDY WEEK EIGHT: SEEING

Eugène Delacroix: 1798–1863

Domenico Veneziano: active 1438–61

Gerard Dou: 1613–75

Albrecht Dürer: 1471–1528

Giovanni di Paolo: c.1399–1482

Jan Davidsz de Heem: 1606–83/4

Jacques Linard: c.1600–45

Louise Moillon: 1610–96

Claude Monet: 1840–1926

Barnett Newman: 1905–70

(Sir) William Nicholson: 1872–1949

Piero della Francesca: c.1415–92

Rembrandt van Rijn: 1606–69

John Russell: 1745–1806

Jan Steen: 1625/6–79

Harmen Steenwyck: 1612–after 1655

Adriaen van Utrecht: 1599–1652

Otto van Veen: 1556–1629

Daniel Vosmaer: 1622–after 1666

Hans Vredeman de Vries: 1527–?1606

Joseph Wright of Derby: 1734–97

A note on the reading of captionsWhen we print a reproduction of a painting, or other work of art, wenearly always provide a full caption as well. For example:

COLOUR PLATE 1 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Artist in his Studio, c.1629, oil on panel,25 x 32 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession no. 38, 1838

This gives you a great deal of useful information, not just the artist’s nameand the title of the work, but also the date when it was painted – in thiscase roughly 1629 (the c. before a date stands for circa, Latin for ‘about’).The caption will tell you whether the artist used oil, pastel, etc., whatsurface he or she painted on (wood panel in this case, though it might becanvas, paper, etc.), and what its dimensions are. Read this informationcarefully, because it will give you clues about the work. The final piece of


information is the name of the gallery or other collection where the workis to be found.

Having said that the information is useful, I want to warn you about titles.Of course they can be helpful in telling you what it is you should beseeing, but bear in mind that the title by which a work of art becomesknown was not necessarily given it by the artist. Where a date is given,ask yourself whether the title is one that is likely to have been used at thetime in question. The older the work, the less likely the title is to beoriginal and the more likely it is to be the product of later interpretation.

Information about medium will help you to imagine the effect of theoriginal work. This effect will depend in part on the physical form of thework and on the function for which it was intended. All other things beingequal, works on paper tend to be less expensive both to make and to buythan works on canvas or wood. Artists will often use pencil, ink or crayonon paper to try out ideas and details before working them up in the moreexpensive medium of oil on canvas or wood. Pastels are soft and chalkycrayons. Used on paper they produce a delicate and vulnerable surfacewith subtle colour effects. Oil paints have been used since the fifteenthcentury. Because they can be mixed to different consistencies, they allowthe artist to choose from a wide range of surface effects – from verysmooth and fine, to thick and textured. They are also slow-drying, whichallows the artist time to revise his or her work. Once dry, the surface of anoil painting is relatively durable. Tempera was widely used by artists inItaly before the introduction of oil paints. In this case the pigment – thesubstance giving the colour – is mixed not with oil but with egg, the whitebeing used for lighter colours and transparent effects, and the yolk to adddensity and warmth. Tempera is a less fluid and flexible medium than oil.It tends to dry faster and demands an even application and a light touch.In the hands of a skilled technician, tempera can be used to produce acoloured surface of great clarity and brilliance.

Information about size should be read in connection with informationabout medium. Clearly an oil painting small enough to be carried in abriefcase is a very different kind of thing from a mural occupying anentire wall. When reproduced in a book, however, they might appear thesame size. In the absence of a full caption it might not even be clear thatone was a portable object painted on canvas while the other was painteddirectly onto the wall. Where such information is given, you can oftenmake use of it: for example, a small oil painting is likely to have beenproduced for a private purpose – as a sketch for the artist’s own use, as acommission from someone whose reasons were largely personal, or forspeculative sale to a buyer who would not have had to be very wealthy. Awork too large to have been easily carried is more likely to have beencommissioned for some public purpose, as a form of commemoration, forstate or civic propaganda, or in order to embody religious meanings and


values. If you keep these points in mind, they will help you interpret theimage you are looking at.

Information about the location of a work may also have much to tellyou if you give it some thought. A work in the collection of a museum israrely in the place for which it was designed. This in itself should give youpause for thought. Trying to imagine its original function is a useful wayto start inquiring into a work of art. A still life might have been intendedto decorate a private dining room or study, a portrait to hang in a familyhome. The great majority of paintings on religious themes were intendedfor devotional purposes. Many of them were commissioned for specificchurches or chapels. As we shall see, many of the small Italian picturesnow in the world’s richest museums are actually fragments long separatedfrom much larger altarpieces. On the other hand, if the caption tells youthat the work in question is to be found in a church, there is a chance thatit is still in the position it was designed for. It is thus more likely to be inits original form – though you should bear in mind that a work of art thatappears to have survived intact for centuries may actually have beenadapted at some point to serve a different purpose, to fit a different spaceor frame, or simply in response to changes in taste and fashion.Remember that reproductions have the effect of reducing differencesbetween works of art, of obscuring their practical aspects, and of maskingtheir complex histories.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 1

This would be a good point at which to listen to audio CD 1, Track 1, ‘Arthistory’, which offers advice about getting the most out of looking atworks of art in museums and galleries.


1 INTRODUCTION

We will start this unit with a picture. Please look at Colour Plate 3 (in theIllustration Book). This is by one of the most famous painters in thehistory of Western art, the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (usually justknown as Rembrandt). It was painted around 1629, when he was abouttwenty-three years old. It now hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts inBoston, Massachusetts, USA.

EXERCISE

For this exercise, write down some comments on the painting. First,describe what you think the picture shows, using not more than onehundred words. Then, in not more than fifty words, try to describe itseffect on you. Lastly, say whether or not you like the work, giving briefreasons if you can.

DISCUSSION

We will return to this painting at the end of the unit, when we will look atit more closely. By then I hope that various things will have happened.The first is that you will know more about the skills required to composeand to produce such an image. The second is that you will have a bettersense of the richness of meaning that even so small and apparently simplean image can convey. And the third is that you will be better able toexplain, to yourself and to others, why a little painted rectangle such asthis should be held in such high esteem. So if, at the end of the unit, youcome back to what you wrote for this activity, you should find it easy toadd to – or change – your notes under the first two headings.

Whether you change what you have written under the third heading isanother matter, and will depend in part on what you have said. But Iwould like to make clear that there is no failure involved in not liking awork of art, whether it is a painting or a poem, however authoritative itsadmirers may appear and however wonderful they may take it to be. Wefail in the encounter with works of art only if we refuse to look or to read.But the looking I have in mind does require a certain level or quality ofattention (as we might give the best rather than the least of our attentionto another person). As I aim to show, there may be more to look for andto look at than is immediately apparent in a painting such as Rembrandt’sThe Artist in his Studio.


2 FORM AND SPACE IN PAINTING

In this unit we shall be looking at a range of paintings, drawn fromvarious phases of the Western artistic tradition, from the fifteenth centuryto the twentieth. I want to start by establishing some basic points aboutthe way in which pictures have been understood and thought aboutwithin that tradition, and about the means by which pictures havetypically been made to work for their spectators. Think of this as anintroduction to the grammar of painting: that’s to say, to the ways in whichparts are related to each other so as to compose meaningful wholes. Inthe later sections we will be looking at some more complex pictures. Aswe work through the unit I hope to demonstrate how rich a medium ofexpression painting can be. You will not be expected to look at all theplates in detail. Some of them are there to provide points of amplificationor comparison for the main works under discussion, and some may berevisited later in the course. (The note in the margin on this page is areminder that, if you would like it, help is available in The Arts GoodStudy Guide.)

Before we proceed I want to establish some basic points about therelationship between images and words, pictures and verbal language. Wemight say that both the painter and the writer normally start off with a flatsurface, and that both mark that surface so that it will be understood ashaving content of a sort – that’s to say, so that it will be understood asreferring to something. But here we encounter an important difference.The elements of writing – words – refer to their objects by custom andconvention, rather than by being like them. The word ‘cat’ neitherresembles a cat nor sounds like a cat. To call something a picture of a cat,on the other hand, is to say that it refers to a cat because it resembles one.Look now at Colour Plate 4 and Plates 1 and 2. These are a landscape by anineteenth-century American painter, a group portrait by a Flemish artistand a still life by an English painter working in the early part of thetwentieth century. Think for a moment about what these pictures show,and consider what it would be like to provide some equivalents for themin writing. If I try to imagine such a task I feel instantly daunted by thetime it would take – the endless sequences of words I would have tostring one after another. And as I imagine those sequences, I think of theloss there would be – a loss of immediacy. However painstaking mywriting, it could never capture the look of evening light as Church’spicture does. And the more fully I describe all the people in van Veen’spicture or all the jugs in Nicholson’s, the further away I would be movingfrom the distinctive experience their pictures provide – that of seeingrelationship and variety simultaneously displayed.

There are some important lessons to be drawn. Pictures may not beparticularly suitable for conveying the kinds of information that are most

AGSG, ch.6, sect.5,‘Evaluation’


easily absorbed sequentially, like narratives and reports. But where whatwe wish to convey are observable qualities and relations – impressionsand effects, similarities and differences – then pictures come into theirown. And this is principally because, whereas the meanings of verballanguage are built up in linear sequences (over time), a picture – withinthe Western tradition at least – is something that can usually be seen all atonce. As a viewer, you may need time to take it all in, but this is notbecause it unfolds over time like a speech, or has to be read in order likea piece of writing. When we think of what it means to compose a picture,then, what we are considering are the techniques used by artists to makesomething we can look at and look into. These are the kinds oftechniques we shall be exploring in this unit.

To summarize: to make a picture is to do something to a flat surface withthe intention that the surface will be viewed as having a form of content.This content is of a special kind: (a) it is decided by what the markedsurface looks like; (b) it is all present at once (even though it may take theviewer some time to explore). I put the matter in this way because I wantto make the point that the very first condition for the making of a pictureis not the composing of a likeness, however basic that likeness may be.What must come first is the idea that a likeness is something a flat surfacecan be made to contain.

Now there are some kinds of likeness that can be produced withoutaltering our sense of a surface as flat. To return to our comparison withwriting, if I draw a letter ‘A’ on one sheet and copy it onto another, thesecond ‘A’ is a likeness of the first and it has been achieved without theaid of any illusion of depth. In fact, of course, you would be justified insaying that I am not really making a picture – not ‘drawing’ at all. What Iam actually doing is ‘writing’, albeit at a very basic level. We might saythat it is only once we get past this very simple kind of similarity – thelikeness of one ‘A’ to another ‘A’ – that the special value of pictures isrealized. Another way to put this would be to say that it is only oncepictures start to do what writing can’t do that they start to be interestingand useful. In this sense, even a crude drawing of a stick personrepresents a considerable advance on the letter ‘A’, though it may not bemuch harder to make.

There are two reasons for this, and they are inextricably connected. Thefirst is this: unlike the letter ‘A’, which needs only to be identifiable as an‘A’ in order to perform its function, the stick person pictures – or is ‘like’ –

something else. In a very basic sense it is like a human figure. The secondreason for the difference between the stick drawing and the letter is that ifthe stick drawing refers to an actual figure – which is a solid thing, withweight and volume and colour and so on – then the surrounding papermust refer to a space in which that figure notionally exists. The paper youwrite on remains a flat piece of paper. The paper you draw on becomesan imaginative world.


EXERCISE

Try a simple experiment for yourself. Draw a circle in the centre of asheet of paper, like a large capital O, as in Figure 8.1.

Now shade one side of the O, as in Figure 8.2.

DISCUSSION

What you have done is to add tone to your drawing. Tone is a quantity ofgreyness or darkness. The ‘tonal range’ of a picture is the range from itswhitest white to its darkest black. In shading the circle, you have in effectfirst imagined the circle as a sphere, and then signalled this by giving thesphere a dark side and a brightly lit side. In other words you have impliedthe existence of a source of light. It is light that allows us visually toperceive things in the world and to measure the relations between them.So what is the effect of what you have done? It is not just that the circlehas ceased to be like a capital O and has become like a sphere. The pointis that while a flat sheet of paper can contain a capital O, it cannot containa sphere. Therefore, since the circle is now seen as a sphere, somethingmust also have happened to the sheet of paper. If you can see the shadedcircle as a sphere, it must follow that you can see – or imagine – thepaper as having a ‘depth’ sufficient to contain it; or rather you must beable to ‘see’ the ground on which the shaded O is drawn not as a sheet ofpaper at all, but as if it were a spatial volume sufficient to contain asphere. Of course you still know that it is a sheet of paper, and that it isflat. But it is as if your mind has agreed to entertain the illusion that it issomething else, in order to make sense of the ‘seeing’ of the sphere. Whathas happened, in fact, is that you have exercised imagination.

I suggest that the ability to draw someone into this agreement is the basiccondition required to make illusion do its work in painting. I would alsolike to suggest that the establishment of such agreement is the startingpoint for art considered as a social activity. The form of social activity Imean to indicate is the relationship of collaboration and of mutualrecognition that is established, via the work of art, between the artist whofurnishes material for the exercise of imagination, and the spectatorwilling to undertake the relevant imaginative work. A work of art is like agame – often a very serious game – that is set in play when the spectator’simagination engages according to its rules. Once that point of agreementis reached, endless possibilities are opened up for enriching the illusionand for the consequent enlargement of the picture’s possible field ofreference. Colour Plate 5 shows a slightly more complex picture of anilluminated sphere (John Russell, The Face of the Moon). At first glanceyou may have taken it for a photograph. In fact this image of the moonwas drawn in pastel some decades before the invention of photography,

FIGURE 8.1

FIGURE 8.2


by an artist who must have used a telescope. Again, as a measure of theimportance of pictures, try to imagine what it would have been like toconvey that information in words.

There is a point to be noted here. It is not simply illusion that thespectator assents to or agrees to entertain. It is not just the apparenttransformation of the sheet of paper into a space with a sphere in it thatholds our attention in such pictures as Russell’s. Rather, what is intriguingis the curiously paradoxical experience of seeing the paper as bothliterally flat and imaginatively fathomless. What the art of painting catersto is not simply a taste for illusion, then. Instead, it makes its meaningwithin the relationship between the seeing of the flat painted surface, andthe seeing of that surface as something else, something much more,something which has been made to be as it is.

Like your own shaded sphere, Russell’s picture demonstrates a basicfigure–ground relationship. Figure–ground relations involve seeing someobject both as distinct and as located in a context by which its identityand meaning are established. A black stain on a white sheet drawsattention to itself as a stain precisely because of its difference from thesurrounding area. A solitary post driven into a level field would draw theeye by virtue of its singularity and its uprightness. These may seem likepurely formal matters. But figure–ground relations affect how we seethings in a more than literal sense. If I call to mind a particular colleague, Iam considering that person against the background of an institution ofwhich we are both members. I am likely to be seeing her in the light of acertain working relationship, good or bad. To consider the same person asa member of her family, however, is to accord her a different form ofidentity, to see her as a figure set against a different ground, in which sheis involved in different kinds of relationship with other people.

To take another example: I may worry over the size of a bill if the sumalmost matches the total I have in my bank account. Against thatbackground the figure looms large. But if I won the Lottery, thesignificance of the sum would be reduced – as would my anxiety. Suchfigure–ground relations are in general crucial to the organization of ourthoughts and priorities. By such means we isolate an object of attentionagainst the background of our concerns and preoccupations, so as to givea critical meaning to the relations between them. The meaning is ‘critical’in the sense that it raises the issue of relative values or significance. In thecase of Russell’s picture, the image of the moon is built up with great care.Its isolation in the velvety space suggests that it is worth looking at – thatit is a significant object of attention.

In the case of our various spheres, it is clear enough, I think, which partof the picture serves as the figure and which the ground (I would havesaid ‘background’, but in this case the spatial grounds extend in front ofthe spheres as well as behind them). But figure–ground relations appear in


many different ways in art. Look at Plate 3 (Barnett Newman, untitleddrawing: also known as The Void), which seems at first glance to showanother sphere. In fact, the reference to the void suggests a differentreading. It is important, however, that the ‘void’ is sphere-shaped – or toput it another way, it is significant that the artist has both aroused andreversed our normal expectation that a ‘ground’ will surround a ‘figure’. Itis the shock of this reversal that produces the effect of the picture. Whatwe have is a void in place of a sphere, as if the very medium of ‘seeing’ –

or light – had come before there was any object for it to illuminate. Thefirst book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, opens with the words, ‘Godcreated the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form andvoid, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’ What Newman’s worksuggests is that, for the painter, creation begins not with formless matter,but with the command, ‘Let there be light.’ Once there is light, we canbegin to make out figures against grounds, and to distinguish form fromchaos.

Newman’s is a modern picture, of course. Modern artists of his generationwere fascinated with the idea of going back to the – or a – ‘beginning’,and they associated the beginning of creative activity with the kind of‘beginning’ of drawing that we have been undertaking so far. My point inusing this example, and in contrasting it with Russell’s picture, is to showthat much of the effect of paintings depends not upon the details of whatthey picture, but rather upon the way that their spaces and surfaces areordered, and upon the ways in which the spectator can be made torespond to that ordering. We are going to explore this in the next section.


3 PERSPECTIVE

At this point, I would like you to return to your drawing of the sphere.

EXERCISE

Draw another sphere, higher up on the same sheet of paper. Imagine thatthis second sphere is actually the same size as the first, but that it isfurther away. Try to shade it so that it looks as if it is lit from the samelight source as the first sphere.

DISCUSSION

You may well have drawn the second sphere smaller than the first, ratheras in Figure 8.3.

Now, here is a problem. What if someone fails to see this as a picture oftwo same-sized spheres, with one nearer than the other? What if he or sheinsists that it shows a large and small sphere, each the same distance awayfrom the viewer? Your awkward spectator is ‘seeing’ the two spheres asboth located on the same vertical plane – a plane parallel to the literalplane of the paper. The spectator is seeing them as in Figure 8.4.

(Can you see how the surface on which the spheres rest appears as ifupright, and thus parallel to the actual page?) What I have done in Figure8.4 is add in some visual cues to show how the relationship between thespheres is being conceived. Now you want to change your spectator’sangle of vision so that the two spheres are seen to lie along a plane thatrecedes into the depth of your picture, so that one is further away than theother. How are you to do it? The answer is to add some different cues ofyour own, as in Figure 8.5.

Notice that the pairs of spheres in Figures 8.3, 8.4 and 8.5 are all drawn inexactly the same way. What I have done in Figure 8.5 is suggest a basicperspective in order to direct the viewer’s vision, so that it appears as ifthe sphere on the left is seen ‘first’ as the eye travels into the picture. Itseems that we may after all need sequence of a kind in the reading ofpictures. It is a sequence, however, which leads us as it were into theimaginary space of the picture rather than across the literal surface of thepaper. Once this perspective is established, if I want to go further and tosuggest an actual size for the spheres, I can provide a clue whereby thespectator will be encouraged to relate them to his or her own dimensions,as in Figure 8.6.

Basic perspective can also suggest depth of space so that even if I drawtwo spheres literally the same size, it appears that one is further away thanthe other, as in Figure 8.7.

FIGURE 8.3

FIGURE 8.4

FIGURE 8.5


Another type of perspective is that of single-point perspective, which wasfirst developed by artists and architects in Italy working earlier in thefifteenth century. A system of perspective is a consistent means oftranslating three dimensions into two. Forms which are of equal height inactuality are pictured so that they appear to reduce in even progressionaccording to their distance from the viewer, like the two spheres in Figure8.3. The ‘single point’ is the vanishing point on the horizon at which thereceding parallel lines joining points of equal height are made toconverge. It marks the imaginary deepest point into which the viewer ofthe picture sees. Here is a simple illustration of such a system at work(Figure 8.8). I have drawn in the converging lines that an artist would useto establish the perspective, though these would normally be erased orcovered over once the initial composition was worked out.

The vanishing point is close to the centre of the composition. The effectof this is to give the viewer the impression of being firmly placed on thethreshold of the scene and of looking directly into the centre of theproceedings. The height at which the horizon of a picture is set serves todefine the horizontal angle of the spectator’s view into the scene itpresents. In this respect, consider the differences between Figures 8.9, 8.10and 8.11. Notice how changing the height of the horizon affects the senseof distance. Because it changes how it feels to be looking, it even affectsthe imaginary mood of the scene.

FIGURE 8.6

FIGURE 8.7

horizon line

vanishing point

FIGURE 8.8

FIGURE 8.10FIGURE 8.9 FIGURE 8.11


EXERCISE

Plates 5, 6 and 7 provide examples of pictures with eccentric or ‘extreme’vanishing points (Hans Vredeman de Vries, perspective view; Walt DisneyStudios, background drawing; Daniel Vosmaer, Loggia with a View ofDelft).

See if you can work out where these points are located.

DISCUSSION

In Plates 5 and 6 the vanishing point is set right at the bottom centre ofthe picture, creating precisely the opposite effect. In Plate 7 it is set at theextreme left-hand edge. Note what happens in each case to your ownassumed position and angle of view. The example from the DisneyStudios (Plate 6) is a background drawing for a cartoon film. It serves tomake the point that the success of an animated film is not simply a matterof making the figures appear to move. In the hands of the skilful artist, theeffect of motion depends at least as much upon the continualreorientation of the spectator’s viewpoint, which is achieved by changesof perspective and angle of vision. In the drama of figure–groundrelations, our attention will be the more powerfully engaged if the groundis also allowed to move.

There is no reason to assume that a particular form of technical orintellectual development must involve an increase in artistic quality. Aform of organized and systematic ‘truth to appearances’ is one property apainting may have. Decorative charm and individuality are others. Thesetwo properties may go together, but there is no reason why they shouldhave to. Art-historical treatments of the art of the Italian Renaissance havetended to stress the development of perspective systems – rightly enough,for these developments played a crucial part in shaping the course of artover the next 400 years. But we should not allow this emphasis to blind usto the virtues of such work: the vividness and homeliness of its detail, theevocative quality of its atmosphere, and its forthright way of showing thepassage of time.

SummaryBefore you move to Section 4, I will summarize a number of terms thatare useful in understanding and analysing pictures. I have alreadyintroduced most of them, but one or two are new:

1 First, remember the relationship between lighting and modelling. (Inpainting, modelling means giving form the appearance of three-dimensionality, or ‘plasticity’.) Shading a form involves adding tone in


such a way as to indicate its relation to a light source (it will appearlighter on the side from which the light is coming). The tonal range ofa picture is the range between its lightest light and its darkest dark.Where the tonal range is narrow, as in Colour Plate 6 (Claude Monet,Ice Floes), this will tend to convey the impression of an even orsubdued lighting and it will consequently reduce effects of modelling.Colour Plate 7, on the other hand, shows the kinds of dramaticpictorial effect that can be produced with sharp light–dark contrastsand a wide overall tonal range (Joseph Wright of Derby, The Earth-stopper on the Banks of the Derwent). Notice that the individual formsappear correspondingly solid and distinct from one another.

2 Other terms refer to the organization of illusionistic spaces. A literalplane is the actual flat surface of a piece of paper or canvas – thesurface you can touch. The picture plane, on the other hand, is asurface you cannot touch, though it may seem to correspond to theliteral surface of the picture. It is the invisible and imaginary front ornearest level of the picture’s illusory space. To place yourselfimaginatively up against it is to stand on the threshold of that space.An illusionistic plane is a part of the fictional scheme of the picture.An illusionistic plane may actually be depicted (as in Figure 8.5), or itmay simply be implied by the relationship of two or more objects in apicture space (as in Figure 8.3). An angle of vision is the plane alongwhich a line of sight is projected into the space of the picture. Inmany pictures, like the Portrait of Agatha Bas shown in Plate 8, theangle of vision is set at right angles both to the picture plane and tothe literal plane of the picture, suggesting an upright, head-on viewingposition for the spectator (the kind of position represented by Figure8.4 rather than Figure 8.5, for instance). In the engraving by Vredemande Vries and the Disney drawing (Plates 5 and 6), on the other hand,the angle of vision is set so that we feel as if we are looking straightdownward. This means that it intersects the plane of the horizontal ata right angle. The perspective of a picture is a compositional systemwhich serves both to organize the spatial relations between depictedforms, and to define the angle of vision of the spectator so that thisorganization will make sense. Thus the exaggerated perspective of theDisney drawing becomes credible and effective when we adopt inimagination the disconcerting angle of vision that it defines.

As you become more used to ‘reading’ pictures with these terms andconcepts in mind, you will find that you gain new insights into the waysin which artistic effects are created. The next section will provide youwith a detailed exposition of the kinds of analysis involved. You will findthat your understanding of pictures will continue to improve if youpractise applying the relevant concepts to any pictures you may have tohand, in books or on your walls, or in any galleries or museums you mayvisit. Try identifying light sources, noting the way forms have been

Pause here to assessyour progress inreading andunderstanding theunit so far. If youhave found it moredifficult than youexpected, look atAGSG, ch.2, sect.3,‘Reading strategically’


modelled by shading; consider the part played by tonal range and contrastin creating a sense of mood and atmosphere; work out the level ofhorizons and the location of vanishing points; try to decide the imaginaryposition in which a picture places you as its spectator and the angle ofvision it invites you to adopt; see if you can identify an illusionistic planewhich is not actually delineated, but which is defined by the spatialrelations between two or more objects.

4 TWO STILL LIFES: (1) SEEINGWHAT, AND SEEING HOW

Please look now at Colour Plates 8 and 9 (Louise Moillon, Still Life, c.1630;Gustave Courbet, Still Life with Apples and Pomegranate, 1876). Theseboth show oil paintings of the type known as still life.

In the traditional language of the art school and the studio, a painting‘from life’ is one that depends upon the study of an object that the artisthas actually available to view, typically a model posed for the purpose.Such paintings are contrasted with those, like Plate 10, which arecomposed from imagination and in that sense invented, though theirindividual forms and details may be based on ‘life study’, and though theirsubjects may be derived from historical or literary texts. A ‘still’ subject isone that can be counted on not to move. Thus a typical ‘still life’ is apicture showing objects which we assume to have been real and presentto the painter, and that are inanimate. The French term for still life isnature morte, literally ‘dead nature’, or ‘inert nature’. A painting of alandscape might include a representation of a swan (Plate 11). The samebird laid out dead on a table becomes a suitable object for inclusion in anopulent still life (see Plate 13, Adriaen van Utrecht, Still Life with WhiteSwan).

EXERCISE

Look carefully at the reproductions of still lifes by Moillon and Courbet(Colour Plates 8 and 9). How are they similar in terms of subject matter,composition, lighting and so on? How are they different?

You should expect to write 150–200 words in note form, and to spendabout half an hour on this exercise. After you have read to the end ofSection 6, I shall invite you to check back over what you have written.


DISCUSSION

Under similarities you may have noted the following: there is a table-top –

or similar surface – shown in both paintings; both include centrepieces ofedible fruit; in both cases some of the still-life materials have been placeddirectly on the table-top as if there had been too much for their respectivecontainers; and in both cases the background is dark and indefinite. Theseare all statements about what is pictured. You might have gone a bitfurther to consider how these elements are made to work in the paintings.Thus in each case the table-top is seen at an angle that suggests aviewpoint slightly above and quite close to, so that we have a downward-

A NOTE ON THE GENRES OF ART

Still life is one of the ‘genres’ (French for ‘kinds’ or ‘categories’) intowhich the practice of painting was divided according to the FrenchAcademy (a body that was established in the mid-seventeenthcentury). The authorities of the French Academy did not invent thesecategories: they simply codified the different types of picture thathad emerged in practice over centuries, through processes ofinteraction between the requirements of religious, civic andindividual patrons on the one hand, and developments in artistictechniques and interests on the other. Paintings with moralizing orpropagandizing themes drawn from religion, history and literaturewere gathered under the heading of history painting. This was themost prestigious of the genres, with the most evidently publicfunction, attracting work on the largest scale and requiring thewidest range of skills in composition and execution. (We shall beconsidering history painting further in Block 3 in relation to thework of Jacques-Louis David at the time of the French Revolution.For now, note that Plate 10 shows a nineteenth-century example ofthe genre, Delacroix’s Return of Christopher Columbus of 1839.)Next in rank was portraiture (see Plates 8 and 9), followed bylandscape painting (see Plate 11: John Constable, Wivenhoe Park,Essex), the genre of low-life or peasant scenes (confusingly knownas ‘genre painting’; see Plate 12, The Life of Man by Jan Steen), andfinally still life. Landscape and still life were considered as ‘low’

genres because least suitable for the instilling of moral content –though, as we shall see, paintings in the still-life genre could be richin their own distinctive kinds of philosophical content, while low-lifescenes often carried warnings against the dangers of idleness ordrunkenness or sexual licence. The theory of the genres remained apowerful means of classification and organization of the practice ofpainting for the next 250 years, and its influence is still felt today.


slanting angle of vision; in both the fruit is positioned close to the pictureplane or ‘front’ of the composition, as if within reach, while much is madeof its colour and texture; in both cases the light seems to fall on the fruitfrom the left foreground, while the dark background serves to set thevarious objects into relief and to concentrate our attention upon them. Inboth pictures there is a relatively wide tonal range.

I describe this second series of common features as ways in which thecomponents of the picture are ‘made to work’. Thus we progress fromdescribing what is pictured to noticing how the picturing is done. This isan important development, for what then becomes clear is that it is donein such a way as to produce a series of effects – ways in which we, asspectators, are drawn to respond imaginatively to the paintings. It is onlywhen our imagination is set to work that they really come alive for us. Butnote that this imaginative activity is not free-ranging: in both cases thecomposition has been formed and organized so that quite specific effects– feelings of nearness, of concentration, and of stimulation of the sense oftouch – are the effects that will be produced in the attentive viewer.

We have seen that the two paintings have much in common but, when itcomes to considering the differences, there are actually so many that it ishard to pin them down to a straightforward list. It may help if we establishsome categories.

First of all, differences in the objects pictured. Moillon’s painting shows abasket full of fruit – a fine basket full of fine fruits, with the bloom ofripeness upon them. Courbet’s painting shows a plate piled with applesand a single pomegranate. The plate is a piece of rustic pottery, chippedwith use, and though the apples are glowing with colour they are alsoscabby and bruised – windfalls perhaps. Moillon includes a bundle ofasparagus at the front right and some leaves (and pods?) at the front left,Courbet a pewter jug and a glass with some liquid (wine? beer? cider?)further back at the left. It is also noticeable that Moillon shows us the frontedge of her table, whereas in Courbet’s painting the surface continuesforward as it were past the picture plane and into the spectator’s ownspace.

Secondly, differences in the way the picturing is done. (This categoryincludes differences in style and technique.) The fineness of Moillon’s fruitis in part conveyed by a refined manner of painting. Everything issmoothly and carefully delineated, with attention to detail and to thesubtle gradations of surface and texture. Notice particularly how the softand gradual transition from light to shade on the peaches and plumscontributes to the illusion of their roundness. Although various texturesare represented in the painting, its literal surface retains a glassysmoothness overall. By contrast, Courbet’s painting presents a rougher andmore variegated surface to the eye, although the painter uses a muchnarrower range of colours than Moillon. The brushwork on the apples, in


particular, looks quite casual or sketchy. (The points made here should bediscernible from the reproductions, though of course you could expectthem to be much more evident if you were in front of the actualpaintings.)

Thirdly, differences in effect. As with the similarities, these areconsequences of the ways in which the picturing has been done. Thuswhile the finer technique of the Moillon creates the effect of a sharp lightupon the fruit and of an even focus on the part of the observer, the effectof Courbet’s glowing colours and more blurred manner is to make us feelas if the apples themselves were radiating warmth and subdued light.

I mentioned earlier that the fruit in both pictures is painted ‘as if withinreach’. These paintings both offer clear examples of compositional devices– ways in which the painters have organized the forms of their pictures –

that serve to prompt the spectator’s imagination into an appropriate kindof response. In both cases the subject is presented as if viewed from aspecific position (almost on a level and close enough to touch); in both acertain atmosphere is created (relatively dark but with a single light sourceto the left of the angle of vision); both define a principal object ofattention (the pile of fruit); and each seems to convey something that wemight call a particular disposition or mode of attention (the manner inwhich the various objects are seen or experienced). Courbet’s painting,however, sets us closer to the fruit than Moillon’s – more nearly on thesame level, as if we were leaning our weight upon the same surface.

These considerations lead us to our last form of difference between thetwo paintings – a difference in what we might call emotional orexpressive quality. I believe it is the most important difference of all, but itis also the hardest to describe. It is hard to put into words because thequalities we are referring to are precisely those that painting as a form ofart conveys more successfully than language. This emotional quality isdefined in the relationship established between the spectator and theobjects painted – in the ways in which these paintings go beyond merepicturing of the fruit, to define a position for the spectator. I say ‘position’,because I mean to refer to a sense of physical placing, as if it were theactual spectator who was the person within touching distance. But it isimportant to recognize that the painting also defines something more likea disposition or inclination on the part of its imaginary spectator. Asregards their respective emotional qualities, perhaps the best way tocapture the difference between our two paintings is to say that the personwe imagine sitting at Moillon’s table is a different kind of person from theone we imagine sitting at Courbet’s. What makes this complicated is that itis the same actual spectator – in this case you or I – who is consideringboth paintings. What we have to say, I think, is that when we experiencethe Moillon it is as if we were one person, complete with one potentialrange of physical and social and psychological interests and attributes, andwhen we experience the Courbet it is as if we were another. This is to say


that each painting solicits a different act of imagination. (I don’t at thispoint want to pin down those differences, because it is important that youexplore them for yourself, but we shall return to the question as weproceed.)

If it seems fanciful to think of a painting as working upon the spectator inthis way, try to imagine what it must be like for a painter to make such athing. The artist does not simply measure the emerging appearance of herwork against the appearance of the objects she is picturing. At intervalsthroughout the working process she stands back from the surface in orderto test its effect. What is at issue is not so much whether the objects lookrealistic (in the sense of being like their model in the world), but whetherthe work as a whole feels right, or whether its composition produces asufficiently vivid emotional effect. If it does not, the artist must try toimprove it. This tells us something about the kind of work that artisticwork is. It is work that involves the attempt to make something as good asit can be within its own terms, or to do something as well as it can bedone.

There is one case where the work of art needs clearly to match theappearance of its pictured object, and that is the commissioned portrait.But even here it may be hard to distinguish between achieving a likenessand achieving an effect on the viewer – the kind of effect, for instance,that comes from showing a person in a certain light. A skilled portraitpainter may create a sense of interaction with the viewer, so that we feelas though the figure were not just seen, but were also seeing. (We say, ‘It’sas though the eyes were following us round the room.’) A portrait maythus appear to be for some actual or imaginary viewer. In her portrait byRembrandt (Plate 8), Agatha Bas seems to look straight out at us, seriousand thoughtful. Do you imagine it is you she is looking at? Or do you findyourself looking as if through someone else’s eyes? The artist’s perhaps?To put the question another way, whose point of view do you think theartist intended his picture to represent? Was it simply his own? Or couldhe have imagined Agatha to be looking at someone else, her husband forinstance? Such an effect might certainly have pleased the husband. In factRembrandt did also paint a companion portrait of Agatha’s husband,whose name was Nicolaes van Bambeeck (Plate 9). This might appear tosupport the idea that Agatha’s picture was painted for Nicolaes – if weassume, for instance, that he would have been the one who paid for bothpictures. (The slight difference in the dimensions of the two paintings isdue to both having at some point been trimmed slightly at top and sides.)But it’s interesting that the woman’s portrait is the more detailed, thatshe’s given more prominence, is more brightly lit and is brought closer tothe front of the picture. Might Rembrandt have intended to show Agathaas she saw herself, painting her as though studying her reflection in amirror? It does seem as though he found her the more interesting subject


of the two. And we do in fact know that while Nicolaes was a successfulcloth merchant, his origins were relatively humble, while Agatha was thedaughter of one of Amsterdam’s most prominent citizens, with money ofher own. This may not be why Rembrandt devoted more attention to thewoman’s likeness than to the man’s, but it does help to explain the effectof what we see: the impression that she is posing for no one but herself.

5 TWO STILL LIFES: (2) BIOGRAPHY,INTENTION AND MEANING

We will return to Rembrandt in the last section of this unit. For now, theconnection with portrait painting allows us to go one step further in ourdiscussion of the two still lifes (Colour Plates 8 and 9). So far we havediscussed them as if all we needed to know could be seen in them. Butworks of art normally come accompanied by other forms of informationas well. You may have noticed not only that the two pictures were paintedsome 250 years apart, but that they were painted by artists of differentsexes. It was difficult and unusual for a woman to achieve the status of aprofessional artist in the seventeenth century, as it was to remain throughthe twentieth. As a surviving painting by a woman artist of the period,Louise Moillon’s work would therefore be exceptional even if it did nothave so much else to commend it. Note that she painted her still life whenshe was only about twenty years old, whereas Gustave Courbet was aboutfifty-seven when he painted his. Information of this kind may lead us tonotice or to look for forms of difference other than those we haveexplored so far. For instance, we might be inclined to go back to the twopaintings and to ‘see’ a feminine freshness in one and a masculinecrabbiness in the other. We need to be careful, however. There is a risk inthis case that we will simply reduce the relations between the twopaintings to a set of contrasting stereotypes. And these might well turn outto be far less revealing – and of far less relevance to the actual paintings –than the observations we have already made without bringingconsiderations of gender or age to bear.

This is not, of course, to say that either gender or age is irrelevant, northat when we come to interpret a work of art we can or should set asidesuch information as we may have gained about it or about the artist whoproduced it. The point is rather that the relevance of such considerationsas the age or gender of the artist should be established where appropriate,and not merely assumed at all points. For instance, to accept thatdifference of gender must be so important as fully to account for thedifferences between the two paintings would be to rule out or tounderestimate the potential importance of the 250-year gap in dates or the37-year gap in age.


We may, however, be able to use the caption information to confirm ourobservations and to fill them out. One way to do so would be to recall thepoint that the artist is always the first spectator of any painting – thespectator, as it were, on whom the effects of the painting are first triedout. Let us say, then, that our first still life is not only a picture of fruit in abasket. It is also a representation of the form and character of Moillon’svisual experience. Courbet’s painting, by the same token, shows us notonly what Courbet once saw; it also reveals, in some measure, the formand character of Courbet’s seeing. Now seeing is not simply an automaticprocess of image-formation. Human spectators are not mere mirrors. Wethink about what we see as we see it. As we look, our habits andemotions and appetites are in play. The objects of our vision (and ofcourse this includes the paintings we look at as spectators) are continuallycharged with desire or disappointment, with affection or antipathy – infact, with forms of meaning. What a man in his fifties desires and dislikesmay not be quite what a young woman desires and dislikes. All otherfactors being equal, we may expect that the pictures they produce willindeed be different, though not necessarily in ways that would allow us totell which was painted by the man and which by the woman.

Of course, in this case the ‘other factors’ are considerable. On the onehand, there is the artists’ sharing of a convention, a set of implicit rulesand expectations, that suggests what is and is not appropriate for a workin the still-life genre. For instance, it was a normal assumption that theappropriate way to paint one’s subject was as if it were seen on a table,close to, with clearly illuminated forms against a dark ground. Thepersistence of this assumption largely explains the similarities we haveobserved between Courbet’s painting and Moillon’s. On the other hand,there is the gap in time of some 250 years. This factor may account for allkinds of change and difference. Yet even when these factors are takeninto account, what we can perhaps say with the benefit of hindsight is thatthe emotional differences we have found between the two paintings areconsistent and compatible with what we now know about the differencesbetween their authors. To that extent each could be said to represent itsauthor. It would perhaps be fanciful to take the next step along this pathand to say that each is like a form of self-portrait. But to consider thepaintings in these terms is not an entirely inappropriate way of drawingattention to their differences, so long as we remember that it is thepaintings, not the artists themselves, that we have to test our responsesagainst.

Taking a lead from this idea, we can perhaps use the contrast withMoillon’s painting to help us get closer to the ‘meaning’ of Courbet’s. Wehave considered what is represented in the two paintings. We have alsoconsidered how that representing is done. What remains to ask is: why arethe objects painted in that particular manner and with those particularqualities? Why such clearly humble objects? Why apples redolent of the


country orchard and the long grass rather than the dining table or thesideboard? Why apples that have the signs of decay about them, for alltheir roundness and colour? Why a single pomegranate? Why a chippedpiece of rustic earthenware rather than a more splendid container? Andwhy these forms shown as if glowing with their own light in the neardarkness rather than lit solely from above as still-life objects are morenormally painted?

The questions perhaps matter more than the answers, for they serve inthemselves to indicate what makes Courbet’s painting distinctive as apainting – an object whose meaning is largely derived from itsrelationship to other paintings. In fact, to ask such questions is already toshow some recognition of what it means to work within a tradition and agenre, for they imply some understanding of the kinds of decision it wasrelevant for the painter to make. If we assume that the properties we haveobserved are the properties the painting is intended to have, we are reallysaying that the effect we have experienced is the painting’s meaning, hardas this effect may be to put into words. But perhaps we can go a littlefurther in explaining why Courbet might have made a painting that lookedlike this. In order to do so, however, it is necessary now to go beyondwhat can be learned by looking closely at the painting. There are twopoints to be made, one relevant to the still-life genre as a whole, the otherto Courbet in particular.

Still life, and life and deathThe first point, implied earlier, is that the genre of still life has traditionallybeen associated with a specific kind of moral and philosophical content. Ifyou look at Colour Plates 10 and 11 (Harmen Steenwyck, Still Life: AnAllegory on the Vanities of Human Life; Jan Davidsz de Heem, Still Lifewith Fruit and Oysters), you may be able to see why.

EXERCISE

Make some brief notes about the differences between the two pictures.List some of the objects in each; then, beside each object, put down aparticular meaning or activity or emotion that it suggests to you. (Forexample, you might write ‘peach/eating/physical pleasure’.) The aim ofthis exercise is not to come up with a complete or correct list – whateverthat might look like – but rather to note that the associations of the twopictures tend to go in opposite directions.

DISCUSSION

The Steenwyck features a skull, a large vessel, an empty shell, a watch, asmoking taper, a Japanese sword, a lute placed face down, a book. You


may not have been able to recognize all the objects, or to give them allmeanings that will fit neatly together. But if you took the skull as yourprincipal cue, you might have deduced that the painting was designed toevoke thoughts of the brevity of life, perhaps also of the transience ofsensory experience and of worldly pleasures and achievements. This typeof still life is known as a ‘Vanitas’. As the full title suggests, the reference isto the vanity – meaning emptiness or futility – of human possessions,powers and pleasures, as expounded in the Book of Ecclesiastes from theOld Testament: ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and thespirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith thePreacher; all is vanity.’ The second painting, on the other hand, is full ofobjects suggesting luxury and sensory enjoyment. It seems to conveyexactly the opposite message to the Steenwyck: ‘Get what you can andenjoy it while it lasts’, perhaps. Of course, both paintings were made to beenjoyed as skilful works of art. We might even say that both were alsointended to encourage reflection on the brevity of life. But one does sothrough an encouragement to abstinence and thoughtfulness, the other bya concentration on perishable foodstuffs and momentary pleasures.

It is a feature of the genre of still life, then, that it is often used to suggestdeliberation on the meaning and the finiteness of life. This is not reallysurprising given the two principal conditions that tend to define the genre:on the one hand a type of pictorial set-up that tends to suggest solitaryand sedentary concentration; on the other an emphasis upon the play ofthe senses. In the typical still-life composition of the seventeenth century,the accomplished painter worked to stimulate a sensory self-awareness;the sense of touch is evoked by emphasizing rounded volumes andcomplex textures; flowers or smoking pipes evoke the sense of smell;succulent fruit, beakers of wine, pearly oysters and the charred flesh ofgrilled fish evoke the sense of taste; musical instruments the sense ofhearing; and of course, the decorative and illusory properties of paintingitself provide exercise for the faculty of sight. If you look at Plate 14 youwill see a still life by a French artist of the seventeenth century thatactually takes the relationship between the five senses (sight, taste, touch,smell and hearing) and the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) as itssubject. You may like to work out for yourself which components of thepicture are used to represent or to refer to which senses or elements.

Still life and life storyI mentioned two points relevant to Courbet’s work. The second concernsthe conditions under which he may have painted his still life. He came ofpeasant stock from the mountainous country of south-eastern France andhe retained a strong sense of identification with his background. As alifelong supporter of political radicalism, he had been involved with the


Paris Commune, which was formed in opposition to the right-wingNational Assembly in 1871 after the fall of the French monarchy. After thebloody suppression of the Commune, he was tried, fined a large sum forhis supposed part in the destruction of the Vendôme column, andimprisoned. (The Vendôme column was a Roman monument erected inParis, which the Communards viewed as a symbol of oppressive authorityand imperialism.) The still life we have been looking at was probablypainted in Courbet’s cell at St Pélagie prison in Paris.

Given these two resources of information, it is perhaps not so difficult toconceive of Courbet’s small still-life painting as a kind of assertion of hisidentity, and thus by extension, perhaps, as a form of self-portrait; not justa picture by, but in a metaphorical sense a picture of, someone near theend of his life – a man locked up in an urban cell but with the self-imageof an honest countryman, already suffering with the illness of which hewas to die, but still, for all that, in full possession of his senses.

There is one important caution to be inserted here. Had you been able tostart with the information I have just given you, you might well havearrived at a ‘meaning’ for the painting by a quicker route than the one Ihave asked you to take. But you would, I think, have been less likely todo the kind of work the painting invites you to do; less likely, that is tosay, to exert yourself fully to see it. And it should be borne in mind thatthe more interesting and potentially relevant the information aboutCourbet seems, the stronger will be the temptation to use it as a key to theappearance of the painting, whether it actually fits or not. If it turned outnot to be true that the picture was painted in prison, would this change its‘meaning’? You might feel that it would, and yet nothing would havechanged in the painting’s form. It might be best to say that its meaning foryou would be affected. But that suggests that its meaning for you issomehow independent of, or separate from, the form of the painting. If itis true – as suggested in the block introduction – that a work of art is a‘form given meaning’, perhaps it is in the end the form that defines thismeaning, and not what anyone happens to feel about it on the basis ofthe information they are given. It is always tempting to treat biographicalinformation about the artist as a key to the meaning of a work of art, butwe need to bear in mind that the formal and physical characteristics of thework are there to be perceived independently of what that informationmay suggest. The relevance of such information is best treated as an openquestion. We will turn to discussion of open questions in the section afternext.

Before we leave the subject of biography, there is one last point to bemade. You may have wondered why I chose to give precedence toCourbet’s still life, using Moillon’s painting to ‘help us get closer’ to his,rather than the other way round. The answer is that Courbet is an artistwho had a long career, has a substantial body of work attached to hisname, and figures largely in the history of nineteenth-century art. I have


only ever seen two works by Moillon, of which the still life we have beenlooking at is one. The other is a painting in the Louvre in Paris, showing aseller of fruit and vegetables with her female customer. Both were paintedwhen Moillon was about twenty.

Though they are both remarkable pictures, there is no large body of laterwork associated with her name, and I assumed that she died young andthat there is little more to be discovered about her. In fact, this was a lazyand unimaginative assumption on my part. It was only at the last stages ofpreparation of this text that I checked the date of Moillon’s death. In factshe lived to be eighty-six. So what happened to her career as a painter?You may have guessed sooner than I did: she got married (to a woodmerchant), had children, had another ‘occupation’. As a woman marriedto a successful man, she would not have been expected to pursue anindependent profession. When the question comes up, ‘Why are there sofew great women artists?’, it would be worth bearing this lesson in mind.

6 ICONOGRAPHY

I would like to consider one last question about the details of Courbet’spainting. What significance should we attach to the single pomegranate inthe dish of apples? There is a deceptively easy way to answer this: go to alibrary and look up pomegranate in a dictionary of signs and symbols,and you will find that it had a particular meaning within the classicaltradition. Being packed full of seeds, the pomegranate was a symbol offertility, of life, and of the rebirth of nature.

In the traditions of art, it is as if certain forms acquire a life of their own,carrying their little parcel of meanings with them wherever they go. Thistendency of pictorial forms to carry and convey symbolic meanings is oneof the factors that enables works of art to deal with complex ideas. Wherepaintings depend heavily upon such symbolic forms of meaning, theviewer may need a specific kind of knowledge in order to ‘read’ them.The study of such symbolic meanings, of the ways in which they persistand change and develop, is known as iconography. (The term ‘icon’ isderived from the Greek for an image or likeness.) If we adopt aniconographical approach to Courbet’s painting, we may well conclude notonly that it is a form of disguised self-portrait or self-assertion, but alsothat it has a kind of hidden religious theme.

Once again, you may feel that had I given you this information to startwith, you would have been able to ‘understand’ the painting sooner. Butat this point I want to pull back from what begins to look like an exercisein translation. No interpretation of a work of art should be allowed to


stand unchallenged if it fails to do justice to the way in which that workappeals to the senses. I am not sure that this kind of translation is usefulwith Courbet’s picture: what holds my attention is the substance andcolour and texture of the fruit, and I suspect that it was this sense ofsubstantiality that the painter most wanted to convey. Courbet calledhimself a ‘Realist’, meaning that he aimed to show life as it was, not as itwas supposed to be. And he never painted a properly religious picture inhis life.

It is possible that Courbet had only a few objects available to paint, andone of them happened to be a pomegranate. In the end we can’t knowwhat the pomegranate ‘means’, nor even whether Courbet himself wasaware of its potential meaning as a symbol. Even if he was not aware of it,however, we may nevertheless have to allow that this meaning – havingbeen established in other circumstances – still ‘clings’ to the fruit.

On the other hand, we should not assume that reading a book of symbolswill qualify us to respond imaginatively to the meaning of a given work ofart. There are forms of learning that can be distracting if they are notproperly harnessed to the exercise of imagination. Given theseuncertainties, what we can do is to look at the picture – at all of thepicture – and try to report faithfully what we see, and how we see it. Whatwe can read about Courbet or about Moillon in the history of art may wellhelp us to see and to notice certain aspects of their pictures, and to thinkto better purpose about how and why these pictures affect us as they do.But what we don’t want to do is to let that reading do the work of lookingfor us. I hope you will have been persuaded by our discussion so far thatthis work of looking can be both demanding and rewarding.

EXERCISE

This is the moment to look back at your response to the exercise at thebeginning of Section 4, where you made notes on the similarities anddifferences between the two still lifes. There are bound to be points youmissed at that stage. Ask yourself what prevented you from making therelevant observations. Try to distinguish between points you might havenoticed if you had looked more attentively, and points you missedbecause you didn’t have the necessary information. This may help you toassess your own strengths and weaknesses. You should not feeldisappointed on either account, however. It is always easier to concentrateon the task of observation when one has some idea of what to look for.


7 OPEN QUESTIONS

The substance of the argument up to this point is that, in order to be in aposition to interpret, to explain or to judge a painting, a work of literatureor an argument, we need first to consider what its form is. It has to beacknowledged, however, that recognition of a work’s form is not just amatter of seeing what its components are and how they are arranged. Wehave seen that there might be doubt about the character of Courbet’s stilllife. Should we see it as a work of straightforward realism or as a kind of‘coded’ philosophical-cum-religious statement? In the first case we mightassume that the painting of this particular subject is a kind of testimony tothe actual presence and reality of these things in the world Courbetinhabited at that moment. In the second case we might regard thecomponents of the composition as having been put together for the sakeof their symbolic associations. In asking the question ‘How should we seethe painting?’, we are asking how to discover its critical form – the aspect,that is to say, through which significant meaning and value are conveyed.

Here are some other cases in which it can be a complicated matter todecide just what is the critical form of a work.

1 Many works of visual art survive in damaged form or as parts of lostwholes. For instance, many of the early Italian pictures in our nationalcollections are the surviving parts of large composite altarpieceswhich were broken up long ago. Some of them have been cut downfrom larger panels. Many are the victims of ham-fisted cleaning orrestoration, resulting in simplification of detail and distortion of colour.

2 Does changing the punctuation and spelling of a poem to accord withmodern standards alter its form? Or is the poem’s form alwayssomehow ‘there’ in the words, and simply revealed in a different lightunder different editorial conventions?

3 What do we mean when we talk about the form of a piece of music ora play? Do we mean the composer’s written score in the case of themusic, and the author’s text in the case of the play? Are these thedefinitive forms of the works in question, independent of any specificperformance? Or in speaking of music and drama respectively, are wetalking of arts in which there can be no definitive form withoutperformance?

I don’t think that these are issues that can be resolved by simple answersof ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Rather, they are open questions. Open questions tend tobe questions that are relevant and useful to bear in mind but notnecessarily desirable to resolve. They are not always easy to identify assuch, and it can be confusing when an open question is presented as if it

AGSG, ch.2, sect.2,‘Your reactions toreading’


ought to receive a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Imagine that the followingquestion were posed in an examination:

If you really want to understand the form of Shakespeare’s Hamlet,should you: (a) study the text in detail, (b) go to one really goodperformance, or (c) go to as many different performances as possible?

Faced with such a question you might with reason feel under pressure todecide in favour of one alternative over another. But although you mightdecide on an order of importance, it would not really be appropriate to letany one answer rule out either of the others. To appreciate why this is sois to come to some understanding of just what a play is, and of how it isdifferent from more purely ‘literary’ forms such as the novel and the shortstory.

Inquiries into form and meaning in the arts often involve open questionssuch as these. You should not be discouraged by this. It is a part of theenduring fascination of the arts that the problems they pose tend not tohave single and exclusive solutions.

8 ADEQUACY AND RELEVANCE

This is not the same, however, as saying that any definition of an artisticform will do. Nor does it imply that any one interpretation is as good asanother. In the study of works of art there are two requirements to beborne in mind, and in their way they are every bit as stringent as thedemands that apply to the study of the sciences.

How much is enough?I will refer to the first requirement as the demand of adequacy. Theexperience of the work, that is to say, should be adequate to the workitself. I will explain more fully what I mean by this in the next paragraph.But first I should make clear that to be adequate, an experience of a workof art need not be total – as if we could somehow be fully aware of alldetails simultaneously. Our attention to works of art is necessarily givenwithin certain human limits. It is in the nature of sensory experience that itis subject to a rapid rate of decay. Someone might scan carefully overevery brushstroke of a painting, or read every word in a novel, but at thepoint at which they perceive the work as a whole, they are most unlikelyto be in a position to recount every detail. In practice one may never ‘see’– all at once – all that is there to be seen in the form of the painting, or‘hear’ all that is there to be heard in the piece of music, or ‘read’ all that isthere to be read in the work of literature.


The demand of adequacy, therefore, is not that one’s looking or listeningor reading should always be absolutely complete, but rather that it shouldbe conducted with completeness of experience as its guiding principle orobjective. (Of course, in viewing a work in reproduction we are almostalways seeing something less than the original has to offer. But so long aswe bear this in mind, a reproduction can often serve as a reliableindication of the features of the original.) No account of a work of art orof music or of literature can be adequate if the spectator or listener orreader has failed to pay it sufficient attention. So how much is enough?Well, we should not be impressed by someone who offered aninterpretation of Courbet’s painting which, however neat and tidy, showedno evidence that the glass and the pewter vessel had been noticed at all.This suggests that what is enough is somehow related to what is there tobe seen, rather than to the interests of the individual spectator. Themeasure of what is sufficient attention, then, is not to be decided in termsof anyone’s specific priorities, or in terms of the amount of time they haveavailable or happen to think is enough. Rather, the measure of sufficiencyand of adequacy is to be derived from the form of the work itself. Thoughwe can rarely give an absolutely complete description of a work of art, wecan at least pay it enough attention to understand what such a descriptionwould have to cover.

What’s relevant?So much for the demand of adequacy. The second requirement is thedemand of relevance. What this means is that we should avoid attributingto the work of art properties that are not actually its own properties. Forexample, someone might see a painted landscape as cheerful because ithappened to resemble an actual place where he once had a good time.But in fact his good time has nothing to do with the appearance of thepainting. Similarly, it might be the case that what someone had read aboutpomegranates, however interesting they found it to be, was in the endirrelevant to Courbet’s picture.

Of course, our experience of works of art would be poor indeed if wecould not connect them at all with the rest of our lives, with what else wehave seen, with what we have read, with our commitments and desiresand so forth. But what the demand of relevance means is that we shouldapproach the experience of art as a kind of responsive activity, allowingthe individual work to guide us in the exercise of our knowledge andimagination, rather than treating it as a peg on which to hang our already-formed opinions and associations. It is by observing this demand, Ibelieve, that we come to profit from the individuality or originality ofworks of art – that is, from their difference from ourselves and from theirnewness to us. I have suggested that Moillon’s and Courbet’s pictures mayeach be seen as creating its own imaginative world. To see these picturesfrom the positions they define for us is to enter these different imaginative


worlds, and thus to extend our knowledge and experience. This, then, iswhy it is advisable to leave as much as we can of our baggage ofassumptions and interests behind when we engage with the individualwork of art. We need to be as open as possible to the promptings ofartistic form and composition, for it is through these that we derive theimaginative experience that works of art have to offer. The experience inquestion is not merely an experience of what is pictured. As we haveseen, in the hands of the skilled artist the shapes and colours of whichpictures are made can serve to express a range of human identities andemotional dispositions. The perception of independent form can be aliberating experience, not unlike the experience of seeing another personas quite different from ourselves, and enjoying that experience. It isliberating from self and from those habits of thought and response thatserve to restrict the imagination.

With these various points in mind we will now return to the painting byRembrandt with which we started.

9 COMPOSITION AND THE WORKOF THE SPECTATOR: REMBRANDT’STHE ARTIST IN HIS STUDIO

Look now at Colour Plate 3, Rembrandt’s painting The Artist in his Studio.Note the dimensions. This is a very small painting. The medium is oil painton a wooden panel. We see a figure of an artist who looks enough likeknown pictures of Rembrandt in his youth to be reliably taken as a self-portrait. He appears just to have paused in the act of painting. He holds abrush in his right hand, a bunch of brushes, a palette and a mahlstick inhis left. (A mahlstick is used when fine control is needed and when it isimportant to avoid smudging areas of wet paint. With its padded endresting on the canvas, it provides a supporting bridge for the handholding the brush.) The artist is well swathed in clothes, as he might haveneeded to be in an unheated studio in Holland in the seventeenth century.Raised on a log beyond him we see a large and a small stone, used forgrinding colours. Two more palettes hang on a nail on the wall. On thetable behind him there are bottles that would presumably have held oiland turpentine, both essential in the practice of oil painting. Theforeground of the picture is occupied by an easel. The easel supports athin wooden panel held rigid between two slotted battens. It ispresumably from the hidden surface of this panel that the artist has juststepped back.


EXERCISE

Remembering your work in Section 3 of this unit, try to decide at whatlevel the horizon is set and, roughly, where you might locate thevanishing point of the perspective. This should help to establish the angleof the spectator’s vision. The clues that may help you to define the angleof vision are the plane of the floor and of the table, and the direction ofthe figure’s gaze. These may also help you to define the perspective,when taken together with the angle of the receding wall and the joins inthe floorboards. These last can be assumed to have been parallel in theactual space represented. You will recall that the vanishing point of theperspective is the point where the receding parallel lines would all meetup if they were projected.

DISCUSSION

Given the position from which we see the floor and the table, and the factthat our own gaze seems to be more or less level with the figure’s, wetend to assume, I think, that the angle of vision is set at the normal heightof a standing figure, and that it is directed towards the gaze of the artisthimself. In fact, if I trace the lines of perspective, such as they are, I findthem converging on a point to the right of this, in the exact lateral centreof the painting and two-fifths of the way down it, which is thus where thevanishing point is set. We can confirm the level of the horizon byprojecting the parallels formed by the battens holding the picture on theeasel at top and bottom. Traced out to the right of the picture, these willbe found to meet on the same level. The horizon is thus set slightly lowerthan the level of the painter’s eyes. We have already discovered a sourceof tension within the painting, then. The lines of perspective tend to directus towards the centre of the composition, while the angle of our vision ispulled inexorably leftwards and upwards towards the figure of the painter,whose eye level is set slightly above that of the spectator, for all that heseems dwarfed by the easel.

EXERCISE

Now try to draw a ground-plan of the composition – that’s to say, a viewfrom above of the area that the picture shows. Mark a line for the ‘front’ ofthe picture plane, then draw the room out ‘behind’ this line, marking theposition of the door, the back wall, the easel, the painter and the table.Next mark a point for where you think the spectator is positioned. Bear inmind that although the front of the picture plane coincides with the literalplane of the painting, the spectator’s viewpoint may actually be set somedistance ‘this’ side of it. Try to work out an appropriate scale. How tall aman is the artist? How far away is he from the spectator? How far is hefrom the easel? How large is the painting on the easel?


Next try to work out the source (or sources) of the light. At what heightand angle does this light enter the room? Think also about the kind ofsource it is – a single lamp? Direct sunlight? Or simply general daylight?

Finally, do you think it is relevant to consider what might be shown bythe painting on the easel, hidden from us but visible to the painter?

My object in asking you to undertake these tasks and to address thesequestions is not so that you can measure your conclusions against someset of correct answers, but rather so that you can come to know thepainting better. In particular I hope you will gain insight into the kinds ofconsideration that must have governed its composition and its making. Forwhat you are in a sense doing in considering these questions is addressingsome of the same problems the painter must have faced if he was to makethis picture out of the material around him.

DISCUSSION

For my version of the ground-plan, look at Figure 8.13 at the end of thissection.

If I use my ground-plan to imagine a side view of the studio, I can beginto work out relative heights for the painter, the spectator and the easel,though I find it difficult to decide just where the spectator should bepositioned. To put this another way, I find it difficult to work out therelationship between spectator and artist. We will return to this difficulty,which I take to be significant.

Figure 8.12, then, shows how I think the scene might appear if I werelooking in from the side, at the artist’s right.

Now, to consider the light source, we need to look back at the paintingitself. The light seems to be diffused and the shadows for the most partsoft, as they would be if the room were lit by daylight rather than by asingle lamp. The main clues to the direction of the light are the brightly lit

?

FIGURE 8.12


corner of the room behind the easel and the shadows cast by the easel,by the painter himself, and by the leg of the table. These all indicate thatthe light is coming from somewhere relatively high up, almost level withthe front of the picture space and to the left of the composition. If I thinkof my ground-plan as extended leftwards, I can imagine a wall with a highstudio window, or a skylight set in the angle between wall and ceiling.There is a lesson to be learned here. The imaginary world that paintingsdefine may be much larger than the space they actually picture.

Finally, we come to the matter of the painting on the easel, and ofwhether or not it is relevant to wonder what it shows. I think the answeris yes, but only so long as this wondering takes place within the ‘game’that the actual painting defines – so long, that is to say, as it is a part ofour response to what the painting does show. To help explain what Imean by this, I will ask you to consider one last question. This is not aneasy question, but it is one which I think the painting itself was in someway intended to raise.

Allowing for the effects of perspective, the ratio of horizontal to verticaldimensions is about the same in the picture on the easel as it is in theactual painting we have been considering. What I want to do is explorefurther the relationship between the two paintings. I offer two possibilitiesfor you to think about.

1 What the painting on the easel would show, if we could only see it, isa picture of what Rembrandt is looking at. He is apparently lookingtowards the spectator. What this seems to suggest is that the painting isa portrait. If so, it must be a portrait of the one who is both lookingand being seen, which is, as it were, you or me. Or rather it is notliterally you or me, but a notional seventeenth-century person whoseidentity we take on in imagination as we become spectators of thepicture. Look again at Rembrandt’s portraits of Agatha Bas andNicolaes van Bambeeck (Plates 8 and 9), and imagine firstly that it issomething like one of these that is on the easel, and secondly thatwhat you are seeing in looking at the painting of The Artist in hisStudio is what she or he would see: that is to say, you are seeing thepainter making your own portrait.

2 Of course, the shape of the painting on the easel would be wrong forthe typical portrait format adopted for the likenesses of Agatha andNicolaes. So perhaps what the painting would show is the one we arealready seeing. Rembrandt is painting a picture of himself in thestudio, as if in a mirror. It is his own appearance that he has steppedback to re-examine. It is through his eyes that we must imagineourselves as looking in order to make sense of what we see.

What we have here, I think, is another unresolvable issue – another openquestion. The tension between the respective possibilities is perhapsrepresented by the lack of fit between the painting’s vanishing point on


the one hand, representing as it does the angle of vision of the ‘outside’spectator, and the outward gaze of the artist on the other, invoking as itseems to do a matching gaze directed from this side of the picture plane.The critical form of the painting, I think, is the one that serves to keep thistension alive, so that its meaning can never be reduced to a singledescription.

I chose to concentrate on this painting because I believe it is a work thatis concerned with painting itself, and particularly with the relationshipbetween painting and seeing, or between the artist and the spectator. Isuspect that the ‘hidden’ painting on the easel is there to serve in theexploration of this relationship. If so, it is certainly relevant to ask what itshows. What we imagine it as showing will only be relevant, however, if itstays within the terms set by Rembrandt’s composition.

What Rembrandt seems to be doing is playing upon the different identitiesof artist and spectator, maker and consumer, rendering theminterchangeable. The spectator sees how it is to look as an artist. Theartist in turn gives an ordering power to the look of the spectator andconsiders how he himself might be seen by the one whose likeness he iscapturing. You may recall a point I made in Section 2 of this unit, aboutthe basic condition for art as a social activity: that it requires both an artistwho furnishes materials for the exercise of imagination, and a spectatorwilling to undertake the relevant imaginative work – or to play the gamethe painting defines.

There is a way of testing how much of the effect of Rembrandt’s picturedepends upon the ambiguity of the painting we can’t see. About a yearafter he had painted this picture, another artist – who was then one ofRembrandt’s pupils and studio assistants – made his own version of thesubject, replacing Rembrandt’s image with his own (see Gerard Dou’s APainter in his Studio, Plate 15). The pupil acknowledged his master by theinclusion of his portrait high on the back wall. And he added various still-life objects designed to evoke other kinds of occupation with which theart of painting might be thought to compete: symbols of learning on theshelf at the top and of martial activity in the right foreground. These arethe kinds of material that provide fruitful work for the iconographer (aperson who studies the meanings of images), and their inclusion in Dou’spicture serves to emphasize the complete absence of such devices inRembrandt’s. Gerard Dou was clearly unable to trust as fully as Rembrandthad done to the willing imagination of the spectator.

EXERCISE

Look for yourself at the other changes Dou has made in his interpretationof the theme, and make a brief note of those you consider significant.


DISCUSSION

Two specific changes seem to me of particular significance. The first is theinclusion of a second figure at the far left. This serves not only to signalmore clearly the presence of a witness in the studio, but also to give thatwitness an identity more evidently distinct from the artist’s own,presumably that of a patron. The second change, of course, is the turningof the hidden canvas so that its subject is revealed to the spectator. Andhow banal that subject turns out to be. What a loss the loss of ambiguity isto the effect of the composition.

There is an important lesson here, that Dou had evidently not learnedfrom his master. The true complexity and fascination of art – when it isexercised at the highest level at least – lies not in the quantity orlifelikeness of its detail. It lies in the inventive use of its form andcomposition. It is this that solicits the imaginative collaboration of thespectator.

There is a final question that Rembrandt’s painting invites us to consider.How are we to get the most from such paintings, or how are we to equipourselves to become competent and successful spectators of them? Do weneed to learn about conditions in the Low Countries in the seventeenthcentury, about the organization of Rembrandt’s studio, about the socialstanding and identity of his patrons and so forth, in order to equipourselves to be imaginative visitors to his studio? In other words, do weneed to do some art-historical work and learn how to approach thepainting, how to interpret it, how to ‘see’ it? Or when we talk of the formof the work, are we talking of a form that is sufficient to its own purposes,and that therefore furnishes all the relevant imaginative guidance someonemight need in order to ‘see’ it? If we take the painting on its own termsand adopt the identity it defines for us, do we become the imaginativeoccupants of its world?

There is another way to put this question. Is the meaning of a work of artalways relative to what we know about it, or think about it, or believeabout it, so that this meaning must always change according to theposition from which the work is viewed? Or is what we mean by themeaning of the work the identity that it possesses by virtue of its ownproperties, irrespective of our knowledge and interest? In the first case, wemight think of works of art as objects that have a kind of continuing andchanging life on account of their presence in our thoughts andconversation and writing. In the second case, we might say that although awork might look different to different people, and might be interpreted indifferent ways according to differences in their knowledge and interests,what we mean by ‘the work’ is its critical form – the form that establishesvalue and meaning independent of our interests and that is actually alwaysthe same, however hard it may sometimes be to perceive it.


Again, these are not alternatives between which it would be easy todecide once and for all. The important point, perhaps, is that eachposition serves as a kind of check on the extremes of the other. On theone hand, it should be borne in mind that works of art that have remainedof interest over a long period of time have usually been subject to aconsiderable number of ‘true’ and ‘authoritative’ and ‘irrefutable’

interpretations, each of which claims to capture its essential andunchanging quality, but each of which offers a different form ofdescription. On the other hand, to say that a work of art can meanwhatever anyone might want it to mean is to accord it no criticalindependence or integrity – no interesting difference from ourselves.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 1

If you have not already done so, listen now to audio CD 1, Track 1, ‘Arthistory’ before moving on to Unit 9.

viewpoint?

light source

FIGURE 8.13 My version of the ground-plan

AGSG, ch.2, sect.4,‘Remembering’


UNIT 9 FORM ANDMEANING IN POETRY:THE SONNETWritten for the course team by Stephen Regan

Contents


Study note: Audio CD 1, Tracks 2–16 47

The glossary 47

Editions and versions 47

1 The power of poetry 48

2 The sonnet form 50

3 From Italian Court to working-class life 50

The Italian sonnet 51

The sonnet goes abroad 52

4 William Shakespeare: ‘Shall I compare thee toa summer’s day?’ 55

5 John Milton: ‘When I consider how my light isspent’ 63

6 John Clare: ‘Emmonsails Heath in winter’ 68

7 Elizabeth Barrett Browning and ChristinaRossetti 72

8 Experimenting with the sonnet form 75

9 Tony Harrison: ‘Marked with D.’ 78

Glossary 82

References 83

Acknowledgements 84

STUDYWEEK

NINE

STUDY COMPONENTS


1 Resource Book 1 Audio CD 1, Tracks 2–16 Arts Good Study Guide


1 encourage you to think critically about the value and importance ofpoetry in the modern world, both in relation to other art forms and inrelation to the culture and society to which it belongs;

2 interest you in poetry and encourage you to read it (and hear it) withsensitivity and involvement;

3 examine the relationship between form and meaning in poetry, bylooking at one particular and distinguished form of poetry – thesonnet;

4 demonstrate how the sonnet has evolved as part of a tradition ofwriting and has altered in response to changing historical and politicalcircumstances;

5 introduce you to aspects of literary criticism and appreciation bygiving you an appropriate vocabulary and ample practice in readingand writing about poetry.


1 describe some of the basic elements of poetry, such as rhyme andrhythm, and give examples of how they function;

2 provide a brief account of the formal characteristics of the sonnet andof the range and variety of its subject-matter;

3 demonstrate how the sonnet form has been modified throughouthistory, and suggest how formal innovation might relate to social andcultural factors such as religion, gender and class;

4 apply some of the basic techniques of literary criticism to specifictexts, as a way of appreciating and understanding the language ofpoetry;

5 speak persuasively about why poetry matters.

STUDY WEEK NINE: FORM AND MEANING IN POETRY46

Study note: Audio CD 1, Tracks 2–16Unit 9 is accompanied by Tracks 2–16 of audio CD 1; these tracks containreadings (and in some cases discussions) of the sonnets you will bestudying in the unit. The sonnets are in the same order on the CD as theyare in the unit. Because the readings were originally recorded on audio-cassette, they are referred to as ‘bands’:

Tracks 2–10 contain readings of the first nine sonnets you will study;these tracks correspond to Band 2 on the original audio-cassetterecording;

Tracks 11–15 contain the next sonnets you study; these trackscorrespond to Band 3 on the original audio-cassette recording;

Track 16 contains the final sonnet in the unit; it corresponds to Band 4on the original audio-cassette recording.

The glossaryWords picked out in bold type, for example rhyme on the followingpage, are defined briefly in the glossary at the end of the unit.

Editions and versionsAt the end of each sonnet you will find a reference to the source that wehave used. However, it may be helpful to know that poems often exist inmore than one version, especially where the spelling and punctuation ofearly poems have been amended by modern editors. Occasionallytherefore, in your own reading, you will come across slight variations inthe printed forms of these and other sonnets.

STUDY WEEK NINE: FORM AND MEANING IN POETRY 47

1 THE POWER OF POETRY

The purpose of this unit is to introduce you to some of the basic methodsof reading and interpreting the sonnet. We are concentrating on thesonnet at this point because it is one of the oldest and most popular formsof poetry, and is highly rewarding for both writers and readers. As youwill see, part of the challenge for a poet who uses the sonnet is to workwithin a small space of just fourteen lines. The challenge facing the readeris to understand and appreciate how form and meaning relate to eachother. Learning how to read a sonnet is an excellent introduction toreading other forms of poetry. The sonnet is more elaborate than someforms of poetry, but form is essential to all poetry, including folk-songs,football chants and nursery rhymes. So the skills you develop in this unitwill be useful when you read or hear any form of poetry.

Most adults can recover from childhood some precious fragments of songor story. ‘Looby loo’ was (and still is) a personal favourite:

Here we go looby loohere we go looby lighthere we go looby looall on a Saturday night

As a grown-up reader, I can see what charmed the child: I loved thoselolloping ‘l’ sounds and those oodling ‘oo’s repeated over and over. Thequickening pace of ‘here we go’ builds up and then collapses into asatisfying rhyme at the end of ‘a Saturday night’. Just four short lines anda couple of rhymes can leave a deep impression. Looby Loo was also thename of a rag doll on the British children’s television programme, AndyPandy, and perhaps for that reason I began to sing ‘here comes LoobyLoo’. I must have wanted to give the words some meaning, but first andforemost it was the pleasurable energies of the words that caught myattention. In this way, the form of a poem – its highly organized structureof sounds – can make an impact on its readers and listeners before theyhave worked out what its words mean.

Some poems seem to function in a way that denies or defies meaning, asif the pleasure afforded by words is an end in itself. Many children’s songstake a delight in subverting established meanings, including the Christianmessage of Christmas carols:

We three kings of orient areone in a taxi one in a carone on a scooter blowing his hootersmoking a big cigar

(in Paulin, 1990)

AGSG, ch.2, sect.3.2,‘Reading speed’

For a discussion onreading a lyric, andwriting about it, seeAGSG, ch.6, sects 3–7about analysis


Poetry begins with this kind of excited interest in the possibilities oflanguage. Words often acquire a pattern or form in the absence of anyplausible meaning, and much of the enjoyment that readers and listenersfind in poetry comes from its musical appeal. Poetry, of course, can domany things. It has the power to console, as well as amuse; it can disturbthe attitudes and opinions of some readers and transform the hearts andminds of others.

In most cases, though, poetry does mean something. One of the basicassumptions in this unit is that form and meaning go hand in hand. Wecannot adequately say what a poem means without simultaneouslyrecognizing the significance of its form. That is why any attempt tosummarize or ‘paraphrase’ a poem rarely does justice to it and can nevercapture the vivid experience of reading or hearing the poem itself. Poems,like paintings, are imaginative works: they involve a process of making orcomposition, and the visual arrangement of lines on the page is one of theways in which the form of poetry can shape the responses of a reader.Like music, poetry appeals to the ear, and the organization of sounds canpowerfully affect the way in which meaning is perceived by a listener orreader. What makes poetry distinctive and different from other art forms isits use of words. We can learn a great deal about the way in which poetryworks, as both a spoken and a written form, by considering its languageas a script for the voice. At a fundamental level, poetry is an utterance oract of speech, and many of the patterns and structures it uses are thosethat we encounter in everyday conversation. At the same time, though,most poetry is much more formally organized than speech, through itspatterning of sound effects and its visual presentation upon the page.Briefly, then, we can define poetic form as the shape and pattern ofwords in a poem. The meaning of a poem has to do with the emotionaland intellectual responses that a poem can draw from a reader or listener.Form is not just a container for meaning; it actively shapes meaning.

Poetry has many forms, ranging from simple repetitive structures such asnursery rhymes to highly organized and intricate structures such as thesonnet. There are many good reasons for starting with the sonnet at thisintroductory stage. The sonnet is the best known of traditional forms, andthere are many celebrated examples that we can turn to for illustration.Much modern poetry looks formless or informal; learning about poetry atits most formal can help us to understand why more relaxed or irregularforms of poetry nevertheless also shape meaning.


2 THE SONNET FORM

The sonnet originated in Italy in the thirteenth century, and has been usedby writers in Britain for nearly five hundred years. Why has it proved sopopular? One reason is that, though small in scale, it has immenseflexibility: it can accommodate elements of narrative or story; it can stagea brief dramatic scene; it can incorporate dialogue and imaginaryconversation; it can present a series of philosophical reflections; it canexplore a vast range of thoughts, experiences and feelings; and it achievesthese things within a tightly organized structure of fourteen lines. Thesonnet is principally a love poem, but in the course of its development itssubject matter has ranged from the beauties of nature to the horrors ofwar and from political struggle to religious devotion. In this unit we lookat how the sonnet form has been adopted and modified – for significantlydifferent purposes – by a variety of writers working in the Englishlanguage.

As well as learning to identify the sonnet and understand how it works,you will also discover something of its origins and its historicaldevelopment. In doing so, you will be looking at a well-establishedtradition of writing, with a common set of conventions or shared methodsand ideas. As you will see, the extent to which a writer can borrowconventions and at the same time modify or alter them is an extremelyimportant issue in the study of literature. The sonnet tradition includesmany excellent examples of this process. Each sonnet has its ownparticular circumstances – biographical, social, political – that influenceand inform it. At the same time, each sonnet gathers impetus andinfluence from a long, evolving history of sonnet writing, with manyprominent and celebrated examples worthy of imitation.

3 FROM ITALIAN COURT TOWORKING-CLASS LIFE

The nineteenth-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti described a sonnet as‘a moment’s monument’. A deeply felt moment is not only given weightand substance by the form of the sonnet; it also acquires a sense ofpermanence. This has been a function of the sonnet since it was first usedby poets in the thirteenth century. What follows in the next two or threepages is a brief historical account of the origins of the sonnet: this ismainly for reference and you are not expected to memorize it. Althoughthis section may contain some unfamiliar names and terms, it should help

AGSG, ch.2, sect.4,‘Remembering’


you to understand how the sonnet acquired its distinctive character andform. Before reading further about the history of the sonnet, however, youmight consider taking a study break.

The Italian sonnetThe sonnet was invented in southern Italy, around 1230, and wasprobably the work of a small group of poets writing at the court ofEmperor Frederick II of Sicily (most of these sonnets are attributed to theemperor’s notary and legal assistant, Giacomo da Lentino). So, originally,the language of the sonnet was intimately connected with the power andauthority of the court. At the heart of the sonnet form is the idea ofeloquence – the skilful display of words with admirable wisdom and wit.The name ‘sonnet’ comes from the Italian sonetto, a diminutive version ofsuono, meaning ‘sound’. The sound of the human voice, with all itsvarious nuances and inflections, has informed and shaped the sonnet fromthe outset. Eloquence was an index of power, an opportunity for thecourtier to establish a position of status and respect through elaborate andpersuasive speech. Characteristic of the sonnet is the assertion of adramatized self or persona, a speaking voice that appeals to an imaginedlistener through a carefully staged set of arguments and explanations. Thesonnet nearly always involves some progression of ideas and someattempt to reach a satisfying and convincing conclusion.

The perfection of the Italian sonnet is generally associated with the workof Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch (1304–74). Petrarch’s Rime(pronounced ‘ree-may’) is a collection of 317 sonnets and other poeticforms, such as madrigals and ballads, and it became the most powerfulinspiration for the love poetry of Renaissance Europe. By the timePetrarch started writing sonnets in the 1330s, however, the sonnet formwas already a century old and highly sophisticated as a poetic instrumentof eloquent reasoning and argumentation. What came to be known as thePetrarchan sonnet is essentially two groups making up fourteen lines, witha break known as the volta (or turn in English) marking the divisionbetween the octave (a group of eight lines) and the sestet (a group of sixlines). This turn is an extremely important formal device, since it marks achange of direction in the thought or feeling of the sonnet. It can reversewhat has already been said in the octave or it can intensify an existingstatement; alternatively, it can move the poem towards a summary orconclusion.

The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet, usually ABBA ABBA in theoctave and either CDE CDE or CDC DCD in the sestet, suggests a furtherdivision of the octave into two quatrains (of four lines each) and thesestet into two tercets or triplets (of three lines each). Look closely at thetranslation of one of Petrarch’s sonnets in Resource Book 1, A1, and checkthe rhyme scheme for yourself. A new letter of the alphabet indicates a


new rhyme word (‘year’ = A, ‘blest’ = B, ‘oppress’d’ = B, ‘prisoner’ = A, andso on).

Petrarch is also credited with linking and extending sonnets into anarrative sonnet sequence, though this had been anticipated by Dante’sVita Nuova (written 1274–91), a sequence of sonnets and other poemswith a prose commentary in praise of his beloved Beatrice. (Note thatDante’s full name was Dante Alighieri, though he is usually just known asDante.)

Petrarch’s sonnets are addressed to Laura de Sade, who was born inAvignon in the south of France, and died there in April 1348. Petrarchadopts the established convention of an eloquent speaker addressing (asin formal speech) the woman he loves, but he brings to the speakingvoice a new and intense desire for beauty, with all the conflictingemotions that accompany the hopes and fears of the lover. After Petrarch,the sonnet came to be regarded as a form with both private and publicappeal, both intimately conversational and overtly rhetorical. I don’texpect you to remember all the preceding information, but what I wouldlike you to remember is the idea that the sonnet evolves: the sonnet isadopted and modified by different poets at different times. Although thesonnet is an intricately structured form of poetry, it has great flexibilityand versatility. At the outset, the sonnet was principally an aristocraticform; it involved a sophisticated test of skill and intelligence among anarrow social elite. But the sonnet has come a long way from its origins inthe Italian court in the Middle Ages.

The sonnet goes abroadIt was not until the 1520s, a century and half after the death of Petrarch,that the sonnet became established in Britain, France and Spain. Thisrevival of interest in the sonnet coincided with a revival of courtly centresin Italy and elsewhere in Europe. The Petrarchan sonnet, with its abidingthemes and images of female adoration, became the favourite verse formof courtiers and retained its appeal for well over a century. Petrarch’sadoption of the sonnet as a love lyric now fitted congenially into a worldof courtly power relations where influential women played decisive rolesin the distribution of favours and rewards. The sonnet, then, continued itsdevelopment within a particular set of social and political relations, evenwhen its ostensible subject matter was the intimate one of love.

It seems fitting that the first sonnets in English should have been writtenby Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–42) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517?–47), at the court of Henry VIII. English courtly society in the sixteenthcentury bore some striking similarities to that of southern Italy in thethirteenth century, including a preoccupation with graceful conduct andeloquent address. A punctilious concern for decorum produced a courtlydiscourse brimming with dedications and compliments that sought to


please, if not flatter, the listener. You could look, for instance, at Surrey’ssonnet titled ‘The golden gift that Nature did thee give’ (A5 in ResourceBook 1). The opening hints strongly at patronage in the suggestion thatthe lady’s ‘form and favour’ can ‘fasten friends and feed them’. The sonnetis essentially a plea to an influential woman not to change her mind with‘fancies new’. The speaker pledges his continuing honour and service.

The courtly discourse of such sonnets, then, is intricately tied up withparticular patterns of privilege and patronage and their manipulation.Beneath its sweet reasonableness the early English sonnet conceals a deeppolitical insecurity. Wyatt was probably a lover of Anne Boleyn before shebecame queen in 1533, but was in and out of court favour, and spentseveral periods in jail. The Earl of Surrey was also imprisoned severaltimes and was eventually beheaded after his arrest for treason.

Thomas Wyatt not only imported the Petrarchan sonnet into Britain butalso introduced the first formal changes to the sonnet since its invention.The closing couplet that Wyatt devised was a means of displaying courtlywit and wisdom in the manner of a proverb or pithy observation. Wyatt’sinnovation reorganized the sestet and reinforced its rhymes as follows:

ABBA ABBA CDDC EE

Surrey amended the octave as well, by introducing a greater variety ofrhyme words:

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

(You can see this if you compare the sonnets by Wyatt and Surrey inResource Book 1, A2–A5.)

AUDIO CD 1, TRACKS 2–5

At this point I would like you to listen to the ‘Introduction’ to the sonneton Track 2, then go on to listen to Track 3, Surrey’s sonnet, ‘Set mewhereas the sun doth parch the green’, and briefly compare it withsonnets by two other notable poets – Track 4, ‘One day I wrote her nameupon the strand’, by Edmund Spenser (1552?–99), and Track 5, ‘With howsad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!’ by Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86).All three poems are on the audio CD, and together they demonstratesome of the most distinctive features of the early English sonnet.

To begin with, just listen to them: they are meant to be read aloud, andhearing them will acquaint you with some of the special sounds of thesonnet. Then try listening to them with the printed text (in ResourceBook 1, A4, A7 and A9) in front of you. With each poem, write down therhyme words at the end of each line, giving each new sound a differentletter. Look carefully at the pattern of sounds in each case.


DISCUSSION

I hope you agree that hearing a sonnet ‘performed’ can greatly enhanceyour appreciation of its form and your understanding of its meaning. Eachsonnet has its own distinctive arrangement of sounds and its ownparticular concerns, but there are several important similarities worthnoting. The first point to make is that all three sonnets are love poems:they are all concerned with the constancy of love, even when faced withrejection (‘Are beauties there [in the heavens] as proud as here they be?’),impossible challenges (‘Set me in earth, in heaven, or yet in hell’), andeventual death (‘whenas death shall all the world subdue’).

FIGURE 9.1 Artist unknown, Sir Philip Sidney, oil on canvas, 115 x 82cm. (Reproduced by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)


The second point worth emphasizing is that all three sonnets imagine alistener: they imitate actual speech or dialogue and make use of manyexpressions that we might encounter, even now, in everyday conversation(though other aspects of the language are clearly ‘antique’).

The third point to stress (one closely related to the preceding point) is thatthe language of these sonnets is very dramatic: the use of questions,commands and assertions creates a lively sense of activity, close to whatwe might expect from characters on a stage. The sonnet, not surprisingly,has often been likened to a small drama. All of the above points can beamply illustrated in the sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564–1616).

4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: ‘SHALL ICOMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’SDAY?’

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 6

We move now to a detailed study of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, ‘Shall Icompare thee to a summer’s day?’ Listen to the sonnet on Track 6 of theCD and then read it in your own time.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed:But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(Shakespeare: Dodsworth (ed.), 1976, p.20)


FIGURE 9.2 John Taylor? (d.1651), William Shakespeare, oil on canvas, 55 x 44 cm. (Reproduced by courtesyof the National Portrait Gallery, London)


Before asking how this poem works as a sonnet, let’s try to establish someof its basic ideas. To whom do you imagine the poem to be spoken oraddressed, and what would you say was its main subject or concern? Wemight assume that the sonnet is addressed to a beautiful woman, but it isnow generally accepted that both the speaker and the imagined listenerare male. This sonnet is one of a sequence of 154 poems, first publishedtogether in 1609. The first 126 sonnets record and celebrate the poet’sfriendship with a young man, referred to in one sonnet as ‘my lovely boy’,while the later sonnets reveal the presence of a ‘dark lady’. One of themost unusual features of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence is this intenseconcentration on a friendship between two men. The speaker addressesthe young man in Sonnet 18 with passionate and extravagant words. Thenature of the friendship between the two men is never explicitly stated,though it is possible that Shakespeare is addressing a patron and usingpraise and flattery to seal what is essentially an economic relationship.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 6

Listen to it again, and try to imagine the poem as an intimate speech.Think about the ways in which the speaker approaches the subject oflove. Jot down two sets of words and phrases – those that you think are‘ordinary’ or ‘everyday’, and those that you think are more unusual orpuzzling. Use a dictionary if you are in doubt about any meanings.

DISCUSSION

What did you come up with? I expect that you will have found somecommon expressions such as ‘a summer’s day’, and also some lesscommon terms such as ‘the eye of heaven’. The second line of the poemis a good example of this combination of familiar and unfamiliarexpressions. How do you think the words ‘lovely’ and ‘temperate’ arebeing used? It seems quite usual to refer to someone as ‘lovely’, in thesense of kind or beautiful or lovable, but ‘temperate’ is more puzzling andseems to hint at such things as ‘moderate’ or ‘sober’ or ‘even-tempered’.We can see, even in the opening two lines of the poem, how Shakespearestarts out with a familiar idea or expression and develops it intosomething more complex and elaborate. Look, for instance, at the openingreference to summer, and then notice how the idea of summer isdeveloped throughout the poem. There are three direct references tosummer – ‘summer’s day’, ‘summer’s lease’ and ‘eternal summer’.

EXERCISE

Now read through the poem again, as if you were listening to a persuasivespeech, and see if you can relate these three ‘summer’ references to threemain points in the speaker’s argument. Write down your ideas beforereading mine.


DISCUSSION

My own response would be something like this:

1 The speaker begins by suggesting a comparison between his friendand a summer’s day.

2 He then suggests that in some ways his friend is more beautiful thansummer, because ‘summer’s lease’ (the time allotted to it) is short-lived.

3 In contrast to the season, his friend seems to represent or possess an‘eternal summer’.

Can you see, at this stage, how the repetition of the word ‘summer’develops the ideas and arguments of the poem? In what sense do youthink the speaker’s ‘fair’ friend possesses an eternal summer? One clue toanswering that question lies in the use of the word ‘eternal’ in lines 9 and12 of the poem. The speaker says that his friend will grow ‘to time’ (hewill reach as far as time can go) in ‘eternal lines’. Here, the speaker isusing a pun or double-meaning, suggesting both ‘lines’ of descent, fromone family to the next, and ‘lines’ of poetry. In contrast to the brevity ofsummer, his friend’s beauty will be celebrated eternally in the lines of thepoem.

Are there any other words that are repeated throughout the poem? Whatabout the word ‘fair’? How do you think it is being used here? Line sevenof the poem asserts that ‘every fair from fair sometime declines’, perhapssuggesting that every fair thing (in the sense of every beautiful thing)eventually loses its fairness. The line seems to gain strength from itscompression and also from the repeated ‘f’ sound. Then the word ‘fair’reappears, again in a rather odd way, in line 10: ‘Nor lose possession ofthat fair thou ow’st.’ Here, ‘ow’st’ is an abbreviated form of ‘ownest’.Summer is ‘leased’ for a short period of time, but the ‘fair’ friend of thepoet will never lose possession of his beauty, because it will always becelebrated and remembered in the poem itself.

I hope you can see, at this early stage of our reading of Sonnet 18, howeven the simple device of repetition – repeating ‘summer’, ‘eternal’ and‘fair’ – can help to shape or develop ideas and arguments. Let’s take thispoint a stage further by thinking about the poem as a form or structure –something that is made or ‘constructed’ from words.

One of the familiar ‘building blocks’ of poetry is imagery, a set of wordsthat evokes strong sense impressions (usually visual). So, for instance, ‘asummer’s day’ is an image that evokes impressions of sunshine andwarmth. The purpose of imagery is to make some vague or abstract idea,such as love, seem more concrete through likening it to something vividand perceptible. Think, for example, of the famous line from RobertBurns: ‘O my luve’s like a red, red rose.’ The line is striking and


memorable because it likens love (and the person who is loved) to aflower, colourful and perfumed. Shakespeare’s sonnets make extensiveuse of particular images; in fact, these images are a major structuringdevice.

The opening of Sonnet 18 immediately makes a comparison between thepoet’s friend and the beauty of a summer’s day. This technique ofpresenting one thing as being similar to another is known as simile. Line5, however, makes use of metaphor, not just likening but substitutingone thing for another, so that the sun becomes ‘the eye of heaven’. Themetaphor is extended into line 6, where the sun becomes a human facewith a ‘gold complexion’. The imagery of light is continued in line 8,which refers both to the decline of natural beauty when left uncultivatedor ‘untrimmed’ and also to the guttering light of a candle left ‘untrimmed’.It has also been suggested that the line contains a subtle linking of‘nature’s changing course’ and the ‘untrimmed’ sails of a boat (‘trimming’

in all of these instances implying an act of neatness and order). Finally,the words ‘fade’ and ‘shade’ also hint at conditions of light (or the loss oflight). Imagery, then, can be seen as a way of giving shape and coherenceto the form or structure of a poem.

EXERCISE

Imagery is used in many poems and not just in sonnets. We now need toask what makes Sonnet 18 a sonnet. How would we identify it as such?Here are some brief exercises:

1 Count the number of lines in the poem.2 Count the number of syllables (the single sounds) in each line.3 Look carefully at the final word in each line, and note which words

rhyme. Label each pair of rhymes with a different letter of thealphabet, starting with ‘day’ and ‘May’ as A.

4 See if you can identify a ‘turn’ – a turning point in the thoughts andfeelings of the poem.

DISCUSSION

There are fourteen rhymed lines in the poem, each consisting of tensyllables. This is the basic form of the sonnet. The poem has a variety ofrhymes – seven pairs altogether.

Identifying a turn may at first sight have seemed tricky: Shakespeare’ssonnet is printed as an unbroken fourteen-line poem rather than as twosections of eight lines and six lines. Even so, we can still observe anoctave and a sestet in the poem, with a definite turn between them,introduced by the word ‘But’.


Most English sonnets are divided into lines of roughly ten syllables withfive stresses – a measure or metre known as pentameter. You have seenthat Sonnet 18 follows this metre strictly, and the arrangement of itsstresses or marks of emphasis can be represented as follows, with accentsto indicate the stressed syllables:

Shall Í compáre thee tó a súmmer’s dáy?

A line of poetry that repeatedly uses an unstressed syllable followed by astressed syllable is called an iambic line. Sonnet 18, then, is written iniambic pentameter – lines of ten syllables with five alternating stresses.Iambic pentameter is the most common measure used in English poetry,but you might hear it almost everywhere in everyday English speech,since its rhythm slips easily into those of ordinary conversation:

She líkes to háve some súgar ín her téa.

Like rhythm, the rhyme scheme in Shakespeare’s sonnets is extremelyimportant: it often conditions the way in which we read the poems, and itcan shape the meanings we derive from them. Sonnet 18, for instance, canbe read not just as an octave and sestet (eight lines followed by six), butas three quatrains (three units of four lines) followed by a closing coupletof two rhymed lines. The rhymed couplet, which Thomas Wyatt broughtto the English sonnet, is a very distinctive feature of Shakespeare’ssonnets, so strongly marked that it might even be considered an additionalturn: it appears to ‘clinch’ the argument or offer the reader/listener asummarizing statement that has the force and authority of a proverb orepigram (a condensed or pointed statement, usually witty or surprising).The poet Tony Harrison likens the structure of the sonnet to that of a joke,with a statement, an elaboration or reversal of that statement, and apunch-line. The basic structure of most Shakespearean sonnets can berepresented in this way:

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

EXERCISE

To test the flexibility of the Shakespearean sonnet form, I would like youto try an interesting exercise. First read Sonnet 18 aloud as a two-partstructure, with one statement (in the octave) followed by another (in thesestet). Then read the sonnet again as a four-part structure, with threesections of four lines (each section making its own statement) beingfollowed by a closing couplet. Is there a difference between the tworeadings? Briefly write down your response before reading on.


DISCUSSION

Taking it as a two-part structure, we might say that this sonnet reflectsupon the short span of summer and ‘nature’s changing course’ in theoctave and then, in the sestet, upon the capacity of art and poetry to makesomething ‘eternal’ by preserving thoughts and images of beauty. Thistwo-part structure is based on contrast – the idea that natural thingschange and decay as the seasons pass, while a work of art can salvagebeauty from the passage of time by suspending it in the imagination of itslisteners or viewers.

Alternatively, we might say that the sonnet has a four-part structure:

1 Within the first quatrain, a question is asked and an answer isprovided: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art morelovely and more temperate.’

2 Within the second quatrain, the theme of transient beauty is asserted:‘And every fair from fair sometime declines/By chance or nature’schanging course untrimmed.’

3 Within the third quatrain, the focus shifts to the idea of eternity: ‘Butthy eternal summer shall not fade/Nor lose possession of that fair thouow’st.’

4 And in the closing couplet, the preceding twelve lines are summarizedand explained: ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/So longlives this, and this gives life to thee.’

Overriding both the two-part and the four-part structure is a larger,circular pattern. We move from ‘thee’ in the opening line to ‘thee’ in theclosing line, and from the hesitant question of line 1 to the closingassurance of line 14.

What encourages the suggestion of a very flexible form within the spaceof fourteen lines is the sentence structure and punctuation of the sonnet.Recent printings of Shakespeare’s sonnets have been amended to bringthe spelling and punctuation into line with modern styles andexpectations. Even so, I think we can see from the punctuation given inthe 1609 printing overleaf that a careful reading of the poem requirescertain stops and pauses (marked by such things as commas and colons).

EXERCISE

I would like you to read the 1609 version below, noting the early spellingssuch as ‘faire’, ‘eternall’ and (inconsistently) ‘sommer’, and paying closeattention to those moments in the sonnet where a stop or a pause isrequired. Try reading the sonnet aloud, and then consider the questionsprinted below.


Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shall I compare thee to a Summers day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,And every faire from faire some-time declines,By chance, or natures changing course untrim’d:But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade,When in eternall lines to time thou grow’st,

So long as men can breath or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

It’s fair to say that Sonnet 18 has a lot of stops and pauses, especially atthe end of each line; in fact, each line seems to read like a statement in itsown right. The pace or rhythm of the sonnet is affected by punctuation,and in Sonnet 18 the punctuation produces a slow and steady movement.

What is it, then – apart from the imagery of the poem – that holds ittogether and gives it a sense of coherence? Look at how frequently theword ‘and’ appears, and also look at where it appears.

DISCUSSION

What gives Sonnet 18 a sense of coherence and steady progression is itsrepeated use of joining words or conjunctions. You may have noticedthat, in the octave, three lines begin with ‘And’. In the sestet, whichintroduces a contrary line of thought, we find a different set ofconjunctions – ‘But’ and ‘Nor’. We use these conjunctions in everydayspeech, but in poetry we find them being used in a much more strategicor carefully positioned way.

What also gives Sonnet 18 a coherent sense of form and structure is therepetition and parallel arrangement of the phrase ‘So long’ in the closingcouplet. In many editions of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the closing lines areindented to emphasize the couplet, and the neatness of the repeatedphrase appeals simultaneously to the eye and the ear. The phrase isparticularly effective because it carries the double meaning of ‘so’,suggesting both ‘as’ and ‘therefore’. Each word in the final couplet is amonosyllable (a single sound), which gives a powerful stress to theclosing lines, as does the clinching rhyme of ‘see’ and ‘thee’.

The final line has a pause in the middle of the line (known as a caesura),which not only produces a pleasing internal reflection – ‘lives this’/‘this


gives life’ – but also gives maximum impact to the closing six words. Thefinal line brings into sharp focus the relationship between ‘this’ (thesonnet as a finished work) and ‘thee’ (the friend of the poet). The sonnetrests its claim on a belief that each time its words are read or spoken,extended ‘life’ is given to the friend to whom it is dedicated.

EXERCISE

To end our examination of this sonnet, try now to offer a brief account ofthe main concerns that it explores.

DISCUSSION

My own response would go something like this: the poem weighs theclaims of passing time and nature’s change against the promise of a lastinglife in the hearts and minds of future generations of listeners and readers(ourselves). The compressed form of the sonnet, including such things asrhyme, repetition and punctuation, embodies in a very powerful way thetension between two sets of ideas – time and eternity, life and death, thebeauty of nature and the beauty of art.

I’m not suggesting that this is the only way of describing what Sonnet 18 is‘about’. It’s very likely that our responses will differ in some importantrespects! Rather, I’m trying to suggest that the meaning of a poem isalways something much more than a summary of its themes and concerns.When language is working under pressure, especially in a tightlyconcentrated form such as the sonnet, the range of possible meanings isrich and diverse. Form intensifies language so that ‘meaning’ is not easilyextracted or paraphrased.

5 JOHN MILTON: ‘WHEN ICONSIDER HOW MY LIGHT IS SPENT’

Unlike his contemporaries, John Milton (1608–74) was not a courtier.Indeed he was a strong supporter of the Parliamentarian side in theEnglish Civil War. In his hands, the sonnet form underwent somesignificant structural changes and became a powerful instrument forcomment on public and political affairs. We encounter in his sonnets thesteady but impassioned arguments of a puritan republican: we hear notonly the voice of a fastidious religious conscience but the voice ofpolitical liberty and civic humanism.

AGSG, ch.2, sect.3.5,‘What if you getstuck?’


AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 7

‘When I consider how my light is spent’ is a difficult and challengingsonnet. Listen to it on the audio CD and then read it several timesbefore attempting the exercise printed underneath the poem:

FIGURE 9.3 Artist unknown, John Milton, c.1629, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 cm.(Reproduced by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)


When I consider how my light is spent

When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one Talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest He returning chide,‘Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?’I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not needEither man’s work or his own gifts. Who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,And post o’er land and ocean without rest:They also serve who only stand and wait’.

(Milton: Main (ed.), 1880, p.75)

To begin with, make the usual notation of its rhyme scheme, and then seeif the sonnet falls readily into the traditional octave/sestet division.Alternatively, can the sonnet be read as a series of quatrains, asShakespeare’s sonnet can? Do you notice anything unusual about thearrangement of lines in this sonnet?

DISCUSSION

The rhyme scheme is straightforward. What we have here is the basicPetrarchan model: ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. What seems unusual, though, isthat Milton’s sonnet provides the turn between octave and sestet earlierthan expected. The conjunction ‘But’, initiating a shift in thought andfeeling, appears in the middle of line 8.

In addition, the stops or pauses that we expect to coincide with thequatrain endings are frustrated by run-on lines, a technique known asenjambement. In lines 4 and 8 the use of a strong pause or caesura,combined with enjambement, prevents us from reading the quatrains asself-contained units of meaning as we did with Shakespeare’s sonnet.Similarly, it proves difficult to separate the sestet logically into two tercets,since the subject of line 11 (‘His state’) hangs at the end of the line andrequires the verb in line 12 (‘Is kingly’) for sense to be made of it. Thereis, as we will see below, an explanation for Milton’s brisk enjambementand frequent transgression of the sonnet’s structural boundaries.

His syntax is complicated, and each line seems to depend on the next forsome clarification of meaning. Only the final line can be read as a singleconceptual unit. Although the closing line is not part of a couplet, it


carries the weight and authority of a proverb or maxim (and in fact haspassed into the English language as such).

Let’s take a closer look at Milton’s syntax, since the impression of densityand intractability that the sonnet conveys is largely an effect of itssentence structure. You might have noticed that the opening statement,‘When I consider how my light is spent’, has no obvious or immediaterejoinder. The structure encourages us to seek some completion of thestatement, such as: ‘When I do this ... something else happens.’ Instead,we have a series of sub-clauses or dependent statements, introduced byconjunctions and connectives – ‘Ere’ (before), ‘in’, ‘And’, ‘though’, ‘and’,‘lest’ – extending all the way through the octave. The main verb in theoctave doesn’t occur until line 8: ‘I fondly ask’. To complete our sense ofthe opening line, we need to rearrange the word order to give somethinglike this: ‘When I consider how my light is spent, I fondly [foolishly/vainly]ask, “Does God expect a full day’s work when light is denied [to someonewho is blind]?”’

What makes the first few readings of this sonnet seem difficult andconfusing is the experience of holding several pieces of information inmind while the main statement remains incomplete. This delayingtechnique creates suspense, which is highly appropriate since the sonnet’smeaning turns on the experience of waiting. The convoluted andprotracted syntax imitates the speaker’s frustrated mental reckoning. Thesestet of the sonnet takes on a more direct and simplified syntax as itapproaches its resolution.

Accompanying Milton’s suspended syntax we find the occasional use ofellipsis or compression, where certain words appear to have beenomitted for the purpose of brevity and impact. To grasp the full sense ofline 2, for instance, we need to repeat the verb ‘spent’ from the precedingline so as to give ‘Ere half my days [are spent]’, taking it to mean ‘Beforehalf my life is over’. Similarly, line 4 contains a contraction so that weneed mentally to insert ‘is’, to give ‘though my soul [is] more bent/Toserve therewith my Maker’: the poet’s blindness makes him betterprepared to meet his God, at any time, and be ready to offer an accountof his spiritual life. Milton also makes use of inverted word order, as wesee with ‘this dark world and wide’, where the strategic positioning of theadjective ‘wide’ after the noun ‘world’ gives emphasis because of therepeated ‘w’, reinforcing the idea of unfathomable darkness.

There are two biblical allusions – both drawn from parables in Matthew 25– which most seventeenth-century readers would have identified andunderstood. The first is taken from the parable of the wise and foolishvirgins, in which the image of a lamp burning is equated with unswervingfaith and the need to stand in readiness for the arrival of the Lord. The‘spent’ light in line 1 implies a condition of despair as well as physicaldarkness.


The second reference is to the parable of the talents and the story of theunenterprising servant who fails to invest his talent (or silver coin). Likethe servant in the parable, Milton’s speaker is cast into darkness. Thepoem itself functions as a kind of parable in which the poet ‘fondly’

(foolishly) queries God about his duty. Patience is personified as a voicewho ‘soon replies’ (appropriately, breaking in before the sestet) and calmsthe speaker’s anxieties. Line 10 inverts the expected word order. Althoughthe line surges forward we have to pause to catch the meaning andperhaps reorder it as follows: ‘they serve him best who best bear his mildyoke’. Note also that we have to wait for the final rhyme ‘state’/‘wait’ tobe fulfilled.

Milton’s readiness to stand and wait is not an idle condition but a bracedattention to the working out of God’s will. The ideal of service that Miltonenvisages is both religious and political, anticipating the establishment of aparadise on earth. In the context of the English Revolution, the referenceto God’s ‘kingly’ state is an ironic reminder of that other ‘kingly’ state –the monarchy of Charles I – that foundered on its own corruption whenthe king was executed in 1649.

After the death of John Milton in 1674, the sonnet declined in popularityand frequency and did not recover its appeal as a major poetic form fornearly a century and a half. One plausible reason for this is the emergenceof the novel as a dominant literary form in the eighteenth century. Readers– who were becoming more numerous with the growth of the middleclass – became accustomed to long pieces of writing, whether novels orpoems. They developed a taste for epic or narrative verse, especially witty,satirical works such as Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1712).When the sonnet did eventually recapture the hearts and minds of a newgeneration of poets in the early nineteenth century, it did so with Milton’slegacy intact.

For Wordsworth, Shelley and other nineteenth-century poets, the sonnetretained those vital concerns that Milton gave it – the exploration ofpersonal conscience and the declaration of political liberty. Shelley’shatred of political despotism is powerfully conveyed in ‘England in 1819’

and ‘Ozymandias’ (Resource Book 1, A28 and A29). For Wordsworth,Milton’s influence is clear and direct, though his absence is keenly felt:

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters ...

This particular sonnet carries the title ‘London, 1802’ and is one of anumber of Miscellaneous Sonnets that Wordsworth published in 1807 (thefull text of this sonnet is in Resource Book 1, A24). This was a critical timein which Wordsworth’s poetic aspirations were intricately caught up withEngland’s political affairs. In the 1790s Wordsworth was a committedradical who had welcomed the ‘blissful dawn’ of revolution in France. By


1802, however, he had lost some of that radical enthusiasm and hisrecognition of England’s ‘stagnant waters’ coincides with his ownuncertainty about his role as a poet. He turns from France to England andcalls on Milton, England’s great political poet, to inspire and guide thenation. Wordsworth’s sonnet to Milton views England and English valuesas susceptible to corruption and decay. Wordsworth asks Milton to ‘raiseus up’ and ‘give us manners, virtue, freedom, power’. For Wordsworth,Milton’s soul was ‘like a Star’ and his voice was ‘like the sea’, but the veryact of turning to Milton suggests nostalgia, and much of the language ofthe sonnet sounds like an imitation of Milton.

6 JOHN CLARE: ‘EMMONSAILSHEATH IN WINTER’

The task of invigorating the sonnet with the energies of living speech fellto one of the most undeservedly neglected poets in the history of Englishliterature – John Clare (1793–1864). It was common in Clare’s time forpoets to praise the virtues of a rural, pastoral life in idealistic terms. Not allpoets were happy with this approach, however. George Crabbe(1754–1832), for example, wrote dismissively of those poets ‘who dream ofrural ease,/ Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please’. As anagricultural labourer, John Clare knew the realities of the Englishcountryside as well as Crabbe did, and the sonnets he wrote can hardly bedescribed as ‘smooth’. At the time Clare was writing, the acts of enclosurewere transforming large stretches of common land into private property.This process seriously affected the parish of Helpston where he lived(now north Cambridgeshire) and dramatically altered the landscape Clareknew. Not only did the redefinition of ‘property rights’ make villagerstrespassers on their own land; it profoundly unsettled their sense ofsecurity and identity. In Clare’s sonnets the relationship between self andnature is a matter of intense and sustained engagement. His deep sense oflocal attachment is immediately apparent in the earthy vernacular soundsof his poetry: Clare writes for and about a particular place and a particularcommunity.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 8

Speaking for an alienated social class, Clare sets a new practice in poeticdiction – one that refuses to conform to the smooth blandishments of‘standard’ English and ‘received pronunciation’. Listen to the recording of‘Emmonsails Heath in Winter’ on the CD and then read the poem carefullyin your own time, before answering the question below the poem.


Emmonsails Heath in Winter

I love to see the old heaths withered brakeMingle its crimpled leaves with furze and lingWhile the old heron from the lonely lakeStarts slow and flaps his melancholly wingAnd oddling crow in idle motion swingOn the half rotten ash trees topmost twigBeside whose trunk the gipsey makes his bedUp flies the bouncing woodcock from the brigWhere a black quagmire quakes beneath the treadThe field fare chatter in the whistling thornAnd for the awe round fields and closen roveAnd coy bumbarrels twenty in a droveFlit down the hedge rows in the frozen plainAnd hang on little twigs and start again

(Clare: Robinson and Summerfield (eds), 1966, p.195)

How would you describe the kind of vocabulary that Clare uses in hissonnet?

FIGURE 9.4 William Hilton, John Clare, 1820, oil oncanvas, 76 x 64 cm. (Reproduced by courtesy of theNational Portrait Gallery, London)


DISCUSSION

The sonnet uses local speech, and this is seen principally in its use ofwords of a strongly regional or non-standard variety (usually referred to as‘dialect’). We can list some of these words and explain their meanings:

‘brake’: bracken or fern‘crimpled’ hints at both crumpled and crimped (stiffly pleated)‘furze’: a spiny evergreen shrub, often called ‘gorse’

‘ling’: heather‘brig’: bridge‘awe’: an abbreviation for the hawthorn berry‘closen’: small enclosures of land‘bumbarrels’: long-tailed birds

EXERCISE

Now read the poem again, with a new sense of its vivid, colloquiallanguage. This time, look closely for any other non-standard or‘unconventional’ features in the sonnet.

DISCUSSION

One interesting feature of the sonnet is its total lack of punctuation. Aswell as disregarding minor items of punctuation such as the apostrophe in‘heath’s’, Clare omits all commas and full stops. In the original manuscriptof the poem he indicates the conjunction ‘and’ with an ampersand (&).Clare’s publishers and patrons tried to eliminate his ‘radical slang’, and‘tidy up’ the spelling and punctuation of the poetry in their attempt to sell‘the peasant poet’ to a polite readership. The version of ‘EmmonsailsHeath in Winter’ that you have here is based on Clare’s manuscript, ratherthan on the first printed edition of the poem. Clare’s seeming vulgarities,however, were not the result of illiteracy but the consequence of his closeattachment to a long tradition of oral poetry, including folk-songs andballads, and a subsequent wariness of print. He weds this oral tradition ofsong and recitation to the conventional form of the sonnet, and in doingso reinvigorates and perpetuates the sonnet tradition.

EXERCISE

Now read the sonnet again, and try to get a sense of the speaker’srelationship with the place he is describing.


DISCUSSION

The sonnet opens with a declaration of personal affection for the heathand the creatures that dwell there, but the sentence structure, with its run-on lines and lack of punctuation, makes it difficult at first to see whatconnection exists between the speaker and the place. The ‘while’ in line 3,for instance, seems to link both ‘I’ and the ‘leaves’ in the first two lineswith ‘the old heron’: something is happening to both the speaker and theheath while the heron is flying. Similarly, line 5 is likely to catch us offbalance because of its surprising diction and its unusually compact form.It should read something like, ‘And [I also love to see] an odd-lookingcrow in idle motion swing’. The overall effect, though, is of simultaneousimpressions, of an intense and complex relationship between the speakerand the place.

If there is a sentence in the opening lines of the sonnet, it doesn’t reach aclose until the end of line 7 (‘the gipsey makes his bed’). There is nosense of division between octave and sestet, though there is a kind of turnat the beginning of line 8 (rather than where we would expect it, at thebeginning of line 9). The turn is signalled by the abrupt and unexpected‘Up flies the bouncing woodcock’, introducing a new series ofimpressions linked with the repeated conjunction ‘And’. There is noconcluding commentary or summary at the close of the sonnet; it reachesa close at the end of fourteen lines, but it retains its sense of immediacywith the present-tense words ‘start again’ (in the sense of ‘fly off’). It is asif the speaker’s identity has merged with the scene he describes.

The unusual form of Clare’s sonnet is nevertheless appropriate to itsmeaning. It is almost as if the poem wishes to ‘keep things going’ at atime when such places as Emmonsails Heath are threatened with change.It seems appropriate, too, that this is a winter landscape – ‘withered’,‘crimpled’ and ‘frozen’ – since (despite the lively activity of the scene) themood seems bleak and melancholic. Clare’s attempt to establish his senseof being in relationship to the place he knew at a time of immense socialupheaval led to an acute identity crisis. That feeling of alienationworsened as Clare was pulled towards the literary life of London. Later, asan inmate in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, he produced adesultory but moving sonnet, titled ‘I am’ (see Resource Book 1, A37). Thepoem speaks of the crushing defeat and loss of freedom thataccompanied Clare’s deep sense of social alienation.


7 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNINGAND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Before the nineteenth century, the tradition of the sonnet was one inwhich the man was usually the speaking, acting lover and the woman wasusually the silent, passive beloved. In the love sonnets of Petrarch, Dante,Sidney and others, the idealized woman is the object of desire but is notusually seen to have desires of her own. In many instances it is theabsence or death of the woman that inspires the poet’s love. For a womanto speak openly of her own feelings in a sonnet was very unconventional,

FIGURE 9.5 MicheleGordigiani, ElizabethBarrett Browning,1858, oil on canvas,29 x 23 cm.(Reproduced bycourtesy of theNational PortraitGallery, London)


even subversive. The sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806–61) and Christina Rossetti (1830–94) contrast with a long tradition oflove poetry by men, and they simultaneously redefine and reactivate thepossibilities of the sonnet form.

Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of forty-fourPetrarchan sonnets published in 1846, stimulated the revival of sonnetwriting in the Victorian period. The title implies that the sonnets aretranslated from Portuguese. But in fact it was well known, even at the timeof their publication, that they alluded to her relationship with the poetRobert Browning.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 9

Listen to Sonnet 43 and then read it several times, answering the questionsbelow the poem:

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of Being and ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday’sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.

(Barrett Browning: Agajanian, 1985, p.67)

Look carefully at the structure of the sonnet, and make the usual notationof its rhyme scheme. How does the structure of the sonnet contribute toits expression of love? Look, for instance, at how repetition is used.

DISCUSSION

The rhyme scheme is Petrarchan – ABBA ABBA CDC DCD, if we acceptthat ‘breath’ and ‘death’ are near-rhymes with ‘faith’. But there is noobvious turn between the octave and the sestet. Instead of proceeding bylogical reasoning and argumentation, the sonnet offers a sustained andimpassioned declaration of love which runs across all fourteen lines. Thepoem acquires its emotional intensity from its repeated stress on a single


phrase: ‘I love thee’. Six lines begin ‘I love thee’, while another threeinclude the words within their structure. The form is not one of simpleincantation, however, and there is nothing mechanical in the use ofrepetition. Instead, the interplay of rhymes and the alternation of end-stopped and run-on lines gives the sonnet a powerful, pulsating energy.

Like Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, this sonnet opens with a question andconstructs a set of answers. Likewise, it creates a strong impression of aconfiding, familiar voice. The framework of the sonnet might be describedas enumerative: it actually lists the number of ways (eight altogether) inwhich the speaker of the sonnet professes her love. Try counting these‘ways’ for yourself.

Compared with Shakespeare’s sonnet, there is very little imagery and thelanguage seems relatively plain and unadorned. Images of space (‘depthand breadth and height’), and of time (‘sun and candle-light’), are usedvery subtly in the octave to intensify the idea of a love that is bothspiritual and physical, both yearning for infinity and yet answering eachday’s earthly needs. This love is given ‘freely’ and ‘purely’, instinctivelyand unselfishly. The sestet proposes an additional four ways of loving –with all the passion spent on past hopes and sorrows; with the intensity ofreligious devotion; with all the emotions of an entire life; and with eternaltogetherness in heaven. The sestet hints at an earlier religious despair in ‘alove I seemed to lose/With my lost saints’, but the speaker’s new love

provides a reason for trusting and hopingin eternal life. It would be wrong to dismissthe poem on these grounds as acharacteristic example of Victorian piety.What gives this sonnet its stature andappeal is its confident declaration of awoman’s right to speak of love.

Like Sonnets from the Portuguese, ChristinaRossetti’s sonnet sequence MonnaInnominata challenges convention byintroducing a female speaker. The titleMonna Innominata might be translated as‘the unnamed lady’, a reference to themany anonymous heroines in the history ofthe sonnet. The speaker of the sonnets isone such ‘unnamed lady’, a female

troubadour who addresses an absent man. The sequence consists offourteen sonnets – a sonnet of sonnets – written between 1866 and 1881.In her preface to Monna Innominata Rossetti refers to Petrarch’s Lauraand Dante’s Beatrice as women who have ‘come down to us resplendentwith charms, but ... scant of attractiveness’.

FIGURE 9.6 ChristinaRossetti, engravingbased on aphotograph by Elliottand Fry; Graphic, 5January 1895, vol.51,p.11


A more tender portrait might have been created, she suggests, if suchwomen had spoken for themselves. She acknowledges the example of ‘thegreat Poetess of our own day and nation’, but suggests that if BarrettBrowning had been ‘unhappy instead of happy’, she might have created amore persuasive female persona, ‘worthy to occupy a niche besideBeatrice and Laura’. In Sonnets from the Portuguese the speaker finds away of reconciling earthly and heavenly aspirations, but in MonnaInnominata the conflict between physical and spiritual love continuesunresolved. Even though the speaker in Monna Innominata appears topostpone her love on earth for the promise of a greater love in heaven,the sonnets are preoccupied with separation and unfulfilment.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 10

Now listen to the opening and closing sonnets of Monna Innominata,bearing in mind that they are part of a sequence, and follow thediscussion on the CD. You will find these sonnets printed in ResourceBook 1, A45 and A46.

8 EXPERIMENTING WITH THESONNET FORM

Some of the most innovative and experimental sonnets in the laternineteenth century were composed by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89),a poet who greatly admired Rossetti’s work and learned a great deal fromit. You might be surprised, however, to see and hear how strikinglyHopkins’s sonnets differ from Rossetti’s. (Two of his sonnets are printed inResource Book 1, A48 and A49.) I have not set exercises on his sonnets, soit’s entirely up to you whether you read them at this point. If you do, youwill note that many of the words have accents to indicate which syllablesshould be stressed. However, you may like at this stage to take a breakfrom reading, and turn instead to the audio CD where Hopkins’s ‘TheWindhover’ is read and discussed. Listen to ‘Introduction 2’ on Track 11 ofthe CD first, and then continue to Track 12 where ‘The Windhover’ isread.

As well as Track 12, you’ll find tracks 13–15 contain a range of sonnets bywriters who are not discussed in the unit. You may find it interesting nowto listen to them and the accompanying discussion. Then continue withthe text below, before moving on to your next exercise – the one on TonyHarrison in Section 9.


The many experimental sonnets that Hopkins wrote are evidence of thevitality and popularity of the sonnet form in the late nineteenth century,and these sonnets gave continuing life to the sonnet tradition andpromoted further technical innovation throughout the twentieth century.The technical daring of poets such as W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomasowes much to the example of Hopkins – as does the work of the Irishpoet, Seamus Heaney (see Heaney, 1987). The resilience and versatility ofthe form are such that many modern writers have continued to use thesonnet for a vast range of subject matter. The sonnet could be used in theservice of a noble patriotism, typified by Rupert Brooke’s 1914 sonnet ‘TheSoldier’ (‘If I should die, think only this of me...’), but Wilfred Owen,Charles Sorley, Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden showed that thesonnet was just as effective in exposing the horrors of war.

The twentieth century has introduced many new voices to the sonnet, andin accommodating these voices the sonnet has ceased to be the preserveof white European writers. The Jamaican poet Claude McKay (1889–1948)wrote many poems in his own Caribbean vernacular, but used ‘standard’

English with the eloquence of Rupert Brooke when it came to writingsonnets. He emigrated to the USA in 1912 and became a principal figure inthe Harlem Renaissance, writing poems that would highlight racialoppression. Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000), the first black American

FIGURE 9.7 Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1874. (Photograph: Photography Collection,Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)


writer to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, has also used the sonnet, likeMcKay, to write passionately and powerfully about racial conflict. TheCaribbean writer Derek Walcott has introduced to the sonnet a range ofCaribbean rhythms and cadences, including those of the creole Frenchstill spoken in his native Saint Lucia. Walcott’s sonnet sequence ‘Tales ofthe Islands’ enriches the sonnet tradition linguistically and culturally byshowing how the sonnet can be infused with Caribbean sounds andstories. ‘Tales of the Islands’ presents each sonnet in the sequence as a‘chapter’ in Walcott’s autobiographical musings on the islands he has leftbehind.

US women poets have used the sonnet with remarkable flair, the mostprolific being Edna St Vincent Millay. Sylvia Plath provides a compellinginstance of the female writer’s relationship with the sonnet. In her earlypoetry (much of it written while she was in her late teens and earlytwenties), Plath used the sonnet repeatedly as a way of practising withtraditional forms. She brought to the sonnet form a distinctively Americansubject matter, evident in ‘Mayflower’ – which you can hear on Track 15 ofaudio CD 1:

Mayflower

Throughout black winter the red haws withstoodAssault of snow-flawed winds from the dour skiesAnd, bright as blood-drops, proved no brave branch diesIf root’s firm-fixed and resolution good.Now, as green sap ascends the steepled wood,Each hedge with such white bloom astounds our eyesAs sprang from Joseph’s rod, and testifiesHow best beauty’s born of hardihood.

So when staunch island stock chose forfeitureOf the homeland hearth to plough their pilgrim wayAcross Atlantic furrows, dark, unsure—Remembering the white, triumphant sprayOn hawthorn boughs, with goodwill to endureThey named their ship after the flower of May.

(Plath: Hughes (ed.), 1981, p.60)

The poem reflects upon the name of the ship that brought the pilgrimsettlers to America. In the white flower of the hawthorn, it finds anappropriate emblem for the blessings that attend the hardships andstruggles endured by the pilgrims. Plath uses the sonnet in a careful,traditional way. The division between octave and sestet is clearly marked(the transition between them is enabled by the word ‘So’). The rhymescheme is straightforward for the reader (though demanding for a writer),with only two rhyme words in the octave and two in the sestet. It’s worth


noting that Plath, like Walcott, achieved her maturity as a writer onlythrough a long and sustained apprenticeship to highly structuredtraditional forms such as the sonnet. In fact, what Plath is working withhere is one of the versions of the Petrarchan sonnet that you met inSection 3.

Some of the most impressive developments in the sonnet form in recenttimes have been made by poets working outside the constraints ofStandard English and English culture. Striking innovations have beenintroduced to the sonnet by Scottish, Welsh and Irish poets workingconsciously at odds with official ‘English’ culture. Edwin Morgan’s‘Glasgow Sonnets’, for example, illustrate very clearly how the sonnet canbe adopted within a specific regional or national locale and infused withthe cultural and linguistic traits of that place. R. S. Thomas drawspowerfully on Welsh history and geography as he contemplates the veryact of writing a sonnet in ‘Composition’ (Resource Book 1, A54). TheScottish poet Douglas Dunn has revitalized the form and language of thesonnet, showing at the same time how the sonnet retains its powerfulemotional appeal both as a love poem and as a poem of personal loss andsorrow. Sonnets from Dunn’s Elegies are included in Resource Book 1(A57–A59).

9 TONY HARRISON: ‘MARKEDWITH D.’

We end this unit with a brief appraisal of a sonnet by Tony Harrison.‘Marked with D.’ belongs to a sequence titled ‘The School of Eloquence’,but its main concern is the struggle of the inarticulate – those people,including his own parents, who have been denied the opportunities andaccomplishments that come with eloquent speech. The opening sonnet ofthe sequence is ironically titled ‘On not being Milton’.

AUDIO CD 1, TRACK 16

Listen to ‘Marked with D.’ (Track 16 of audio CD 1) and suggest how itdiffers from other sonnets you have studied.


Marked with D.

When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an ovennot unlike those he fuelled all his life,I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heavenand radiant with the sight of his dead wife,light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,‘not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie’.I thought how his cold tongue burst into flamebut only literally, which makes me sorry,sorry for his sake there’s no Heaven to reach.I get it all from Earth my daily breadbut he hungered for release from mortal speechthat kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead.

The baker’s man that no one will see riseand England made to feel like some dull oafis smoke, enough to sting one person’s eyesand ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.

(Harrison, 1981)

DISCUSSION

Harrison’s sonnet defies convention by having sixteen rather thanfourteen lines, though it makes use of a turn (after twelve lines). It alsoretains many of the features of the traditional sonnet form, including aregular metrical pattern and rhyme scheme. This experiment had beentried by the Victorian writer George Meredith in his sonnet sequenceModern Love, but Harrison uses his sixteen lines with a much greaterfreedom and flexibility. It might be argued that a sixteen- (rather thanfourteen-) line form disqualifies a poem from being considered a sonnet.Harrison, however, is a poet who is thoroughly aware of the conventionsof the sonnet and he uses the dynamics of the form (especially itscompression and intensity) with powerful effect. He occasionally finds thetraditional closing couplet of the sonnet not quite long enough for hisneeds. In ‘Marked with D.’ he ends with a closing quatrain. ‘Marked withD.’ has two groups of twelve and four lines with a turn between, but inother sixteen-line sonnets the pattern can be four quatrains, or threequatrains and two couplets, or eight couplets. ‘Marked with D.’ has aconsistent rhyme scheme, but some lines (such as the opening line) carryadditional syllables.


‘Marked with D.’ is an elegy for Harrison’s father, a baker, and many ofthe images in the poem allude to his father’s work. The title is taken froma popular nursery rhyme and recalls the practice of marking bread withinitials and symbols:

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Baker’s man,Bake me a cake as fast as you can;Pat it and prick it, and mark it with B,And put it in the Oven for Baby and me.

FIGURE 9.8 Tony Harrison. (Photograph: Moira Conway, reproduced by permissionof Bloodaxe Books)


Interestingly, with Harrison we move full circle from the sonnet back tothe nursery rhyme. The point is an important one, because part ofHarrison’s endeavour is to break the sonnet’s long association with classprivilege and elevated diction and open it up to the influence of popular,working-class culture. The nursery rhyme about the baker’s man hoversalongside Harrison’s sonnet. D is for Dad as well as Death, and it alsostands for Dunce.

‘Marked with D.’ cleverly brings together two sets of images, from workand death. The dead father’s flesh is ‘chilled dough’, and his cremationrecalls the oven at which he worked; his ashes are like flour ... enough for‘one small loaf’. The steady progression of the sixteen-line form allows thevoice of the poem to modulate from sorrow to anger. The repetition of‘sorry’ midway through the poem reinforces its concern with language,class and education. Many of the words and images in the poem have todo with a working-class father’s ‘hunger’ for articulate speech and withfeelings of inferiority induced by class condescension. ‘The baker’s manthat no one will see rise’ combines the earthly and heavenly associationsof bread, as does the earlier reference to ‘daily bread’ (an appropriateallusion to the words of the prayer, ‘Our Father’). The line expresses bothregret at the father’s limited opportunities on earth, and scepticism abouteternal life.

In Harrison’s hands the flexibility of the sonnet is such that an intimateelegy can shift into an angry condemnation of England and its deeplydivisive class society. The sonnet still strives for eloquence, but it is surelya testimony to its resilient and versatile form that it should have started lifein the medieval courts of southern Italy and come to be a powerfulinstrument for the voice of the northern English working class.

In tracing the development of the sonnet as a traditional poetic form, wehave looked at only a few prominent examples. Even so, we have seenhow complex the sonnet form can be, and we have seen a great deal ofvariety in the kind of subject matter the sonnet can accommodate. Thepurpose of this unit has been to show that literary forms have a distinctivehistory and tradition: that forms are made and re-made in different,changing contexts. We cannot confidently and adequately say what aliterary work means without some knowledge and understanding of howthese forms are made and how they function.


GLOSSARY

caesura (pronounced ‘si-zéw-ra’) strong pause in a line of verse, usuallyappearing in the middle of a line and marked with a comma, semi-colonor full stop.

couplet pair of rhymed lines, often used as a way of rounding off asonnet; hence the term ‘closing couplet’.

dialogue spoken exchange between characters, usually in drama andfiction (novels and stories), but also in poetry.

diction writer’s choice of words. Poetic diction – the kind of languageused by a particular poet – might be described, for instance, as formal orinformal, elevated or colloquial.

elegy poem of loss, usually mourning the death of a public figure, orsomeone close to the poet.

ellipsis omission of words from a sentence to achieve brevity andcompression.

enjambement (pronounced ‘on-jómba-mon’) the use of run-on lines inpoetry. Instead of stopping or pausing at the end of a line of poetry, wehave to carry on reading until we complete the meaning in a later line.The term comes from the French for ‘striding’ (what we might describe as‘legging it’ in English).

epigram witty, condensed expression. The closing couplet in some ofShakespeare’s sonnets is often described as an epigram.

iambic rhythm that repeatedly uses an unstressed syllable followed by astressed syllable.

imagery special use of language in a way that evokes sense impressions(usually visual). Many poetic images function as mental pictures that giveshape and appeal to something otherwise vague and abstract; forexample, ‘yonder all before us lie/Deserts of vast Eternity’. Simile andmetaphor are two types of imagery.

metaphor image in which one thing is substituted for another, or thequality of one object is identified with another. The sun, for Shakespeare,becomes ‘the eye of heaven’.

metre (from the Greek metron, ‘measure’) measurement of a line ofpoetry, including its length and its number of stresses. There are differentmetres in poetry. Most sonnets written in English are divided into lines often syllables with five stresses – a measure known as pentameter (fromthe Greek pente for ‘five’). The sonnet also tends to use a line known as


the iambic line, as in this line: ‘If I should die, think only this of me’. Mostsonnets, then, are written in iambic pentameter.

narrative the telling of a series of events (either true or fictitious). Theperson relating these events is the narrator.

octave group of eight lines of poetry, often forming the first part of asonnet.

pun double meaning or ambiguity in a word, often employed in a wittyway. Puns are often associated with wordplay.

quatrain group of four lines of poetry, usually rhymed.

rhyme echo of a similar sound, usually at the end of a line of poetry.Occasionally, internal rhymes can be found in poetry: ‘Sister, my sister, Ofleet sweet swallow.’

rhyme scheme pattern of rhymes established in a poem. The pattern ofrhymes in a quatrain, for instance, might be arranged as ABAB or ABBA.

sestet group of six lines of poetry, often forming the second part of asonnet.

simile image in which one thing is likened to another. The similarity isusually pointed out with the word ‘like’ or ‘as’: ‘Like as the waves maketowards the pebbled shore,/ So do our minutes hasten to their end.’

syllable single unit of sound or pronunciation. ‘Sun’ is one syllable;‘sunshine’ is two.

tercet group of three lines in poetry, sometimes referred to as a triplet.

turn distinctive moment of change in mood or thought or feeling. In thesonnet, the turn usually occurs between the octave and the sestet, thoughthe closing couplet in Shakespeare’s sonnets is often thought to constitutea turn.

REFERENCES

AGAJANIAN, S.S. (1985) ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ and the Love SonnetTradition, New York, Philosophical Library.

DODSWORTH, M. (ed.) (1976) William Shakespeare, the Sonnets and aLover’s Complaint, London, Everyman.

HARRISON, T. (1981) Continuous: 50 sonnets from ‘The School ofEloquence’, London, Rex Collings.


HEANEY, S. (1987) The Haw Lantern, London, Faber and Faber.

HUGHES, T. (ed.) (1981) Sylvia Plath: the collected poems, New York, Harperand Row.

MAIN, D.M. (ed.) (1880) A Treasury of English Sonnets, Manchester,Alexander Ireland.

PAULIN, T. (ed.) (1990) The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, London, Faberand Faber.

ROBINSON, E. and SUMMERFIELD, G. (eds) (1966) Selected Poems and Prose ofJohn Clare, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission toreproduce material in this unit:

Plath, S., ‘Mayflower’ from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath edited byTed Hughes; copyright # 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of SylviaPlath; editorial material copyright # 1981 by the Estate of Ted Hughes;reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. and Faber andFaber Ltd.

Harrison, T., 1981, ‘Marked with D.’, Continuous: 50 sonnets from ‘TheSchool of Eloquence’, by permission of Gordon Dickerson.


UNIT 10INTRODUCTION TOHISTORY, PART 1:ISSUES ANDMETHODSWritten for the course team by Arthur Marwick

Contents


Units 10, 16 and 17 and their relationship to A123 sofar and to the rest of Block 1 88

1 What is history? 89

2 Why study it? 90

3 Primary and secondary sources 93

4 The past has gone for good 98

5 Searching out the sources and working out astrategy 100

6 The immense variety of primary sources 101

7 The fragmentary and opaque character ofprimary sources and the implications of theirfallibility for the production of history 105

8 Subjectivity in history 108

9 Is history culturally determined? 111

10 The place of controversy in history 111

11 Technical terms, conceptual terms, collectivenouns and clichés 113

Technical terms 113

Conceptual terms 114

STUDYWEEK

TEN

Collective nouns 115

Clichés 116

12 The family, from Roman Britain to the present:myths, sources and issues 116

Myths 118

Glossary 120

References 121

STUDY COMPONENTS


1 Resource Book 2,Illustration Book

– Arts Good Study Guide

Aims and objectivesThe aim of this unit is to:

introduce you to the basic purposes, methods and principles ofhistorical study (to be continued in Block 3, Units 16 and 17).

The following objectives list what you should be able to do once youhave reached the end of each section (as numbered below). You may findthis rather overwhelming, so just run through the objectives at this stage,returning to the appropriate one as you start on a new section. I amparticularly anxious to take you step by single step through what it meansto study history.

1 Explain the distinction between ‘the past’ and ‘history’.

2 Summarize the argument that ‘history is a social necessity’.

3 Explain the distinction between primary and secondary sources.

4 Explain why the past cannot be apprehended directly, but onlythrough the traces it has left (primary sources).

5 Explain what historians mean by ‘leg work’ and ‘strategy’.

6 Describe the enormous range and variety of primary sources, andexplain why different types of source have different strengths andweaknesses.

7 Discuss the problems historians face because most primary sourcesare fragmentary, imperfect and difficult to interpret.

8 While recognizing the subjective elements in history, make the casefor the objective basis of historical knowledge.

9 Relate the activities of historians to the argument that all humanactivities are culturally determined.

10 Explain the significance of controversy in history.

11 Outline the problems involved in the use of technical terms,conceptual terms, collective nouns and clichés.

AGSG, ch.2, sect.3.4,‘Setting targets’

87STUDY WEEK TEN: INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY, PART 1

12 Relate the issues discussed in the unit – and, in particular, the way inwhich the great range of primary sources can be used to challengemyths – to an outline history of the British family from Roman times tothe present.

Units 10, 16 and 17 and their relationship to A123 sofar and to the rest of Block 1So far, among other things, you have been introduced to the ways inwhich works of art and literature are created, and to ways in which youshould analyse and respond to them. Unit 10 and Units 16 and 17 (inBlock 3) continue that approach in that they analyse how history comesto be produced and discuss some of the basic principles of historicalstudy. They are also intended to provide you with essential ideas andinformation for the studies of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau(pronounced ‘Rouss-oh’), and the artist Jacques-Louis David (pronounced‘Dav-eed’) (in Block 3, Units 16–20). Rousseau (1712–78) lived during aperiod in which there was intense discussion among educated peopleabout human rights, equality, liberty, and the nature and legitimacy ofgovernment, and in which myth and superstition were challenged byrationality. This period was referred to, both at the time and since, as ‘theEnlightenment’. It has often been said that Enlightenment philosopherssuch as Rousseau (another famous one is Voltaire) provided theintellectual arguments upon which later the claims of the Frenchrevolutionaries were based; certainly when the French Revolution didbegin in 1789, Rousseau was widely hailed as the originator ofrevolutionary ideals. In the following years many statues were put up tohim, and in April 1794 his ashes were transferred to the Pantheon – theburial place for French heroes. David (1748–1825) lived through theRevolution and is sometimes seen as its ‘official painter’, representingrevolutionary ideals in his paintings. Thus these history units have quite asharp focus on the French Revolution.

In Block 2 we study some aspects of ‘the classics’, and we introduce thenotion of ‘the classical tradition’ as a vital theme in the history of westernculture. Some of the French revolutionaries saw themselves as reviving thebest practices of the Roman Republic; David was overtly classicist in hispainting (and was a proponent of Neoclassicism – ‘new classicism’ – inpainting). In these two history units the example of the French Revolution(and one or two other topics as well – including the history of the Britishfamily) will be used in explaining what history is and why and how wedo it.

88 STUDY WEEK TEN: INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY, PART 1

1 WHAT IS HISTORY?

One of the most fundamental lessons to be learned from study at thislevel is that most of the really important words we use have severalmeanings. When talking about ‘culture’ or ‘class’ or ‘history’, we cannotsay: ‘this word shall have this meaning and no other’. What we have to doall the time in academic work is make absolutely clear what meaning wehave in mind when we use certain important words. Now, my contentionis, we will not make progress in our study of history if we do not make aclear distinction between, on the one hand, ‘history’ and, on the other,‘the past’ (a distinction, I fully admit, that is not always made in ordinaryconversation – nor indeed among some of those who approach the studyof history in a different way from mine). Think about it yourself for amoment or two: can you see the distinction that could be made between‘the past’ and ‘history’? To avoid misleading you, let me say that by ‘thepast’ I really mean ‘the human past’; there’s a long past (the ‘cosmic past’)before the advent of human beings, but that’s not what is at issue here.

EXERCISE

What is the difference between ‘the (human) past’ and ‘history’? Here is aclue: we can talk about ‘taking a course in history’ but would be unlikelyto say ‘a course in the past’, or you might speak of a ‘history book’ thoughscarcely of a ‘past book’.

DISCUSSION

The distinction is that between, on the one hand, what actually happenedin the (human) past (whether or not historians have written about it),which is what we mean when we say ‘the past’, and, on the other hand,the accounts of the past provided by historians, that is, ‘history’. It is adistinction fundamental to our study of what history is and how you do it.

In fact, the two definitions do need more careful spelling out, so here aretwo more elaborate definitions which you can use for reference, thoughthere is no need to memorize them.

The (human) past is: ‘what actually happened, existed, developed andchanged, appeared and disappeared – events (battles, assassinations,invasions, general elections, etc.), societies and dynasties, ideas andinstitutions, eating habits, marital customs, all aspects of human behaviour,matters large and small – in the past’. The past is there, or rather wasthere, independently of the activities of historians.


History is: ‘the study of the past; the past as we know it through thestudies of historians; the bodies of knowledge about the past produced byhistorians’. It is an activity of human beings and the products of thatactivity. By this definition there are analogies between history and thenatural sciences: historians study the past to produce history as scientistsstudy aspects of the natural world to produce science (chemistry, physics,biology, etc.). ‘Study the past’, as we shall shortly discover, is actually arather unsatisfactory phrase, and it would be better to say, ‘carry outresearch into (aspects of) the past’. To a great extent, as will be stressed inthese two units, this means carrying out research into the evidence, orsources, left by the past.

Self-evidently, ‘what actually happened in the past’ is almost infinite.Inevitably historians select which topics and problems they wish to study(as do scientists). No doubt topics which ‘ought’ to have been addressedhave sometimes been ignored. On the whole the range has expandedremarkably over the years since the end of the nineteenth century, whenhistory as a scholarly discipline became firmly established.

My hope in this unit is to induct you into the thought-processes of thehistorian, to get you – up to a point at least – to ‘practise history’ (thoughinevitably you will be practising it on carefully preselected sources) and toapply the basic principles of historical study. I hope also that my approachwill encourage you to think about ‘the history all around you’ (a loosephrase but let it be for the moment) in buildings and museums, and aboutthe issues coming up in the next section on the historical origins of majorcontemporary developments and events, always there in your newspaperand on your television screen. The word ‘history’, meticulously andcorrectly used, covers a range of activities and products: research, thewriting up of that research, specialist books and textbooks at variouslevels, teaching (very important and usually ignored), studying at variouslevels. A big enterprise, though I hope we can make it a shared one. Butwhy get involved in the enterprise in the first place? Why study history?

2 WHY STUDY IT?

The key lies in the importance which the past has for the present.Because of this, I argue, societies need history. Societies need to be ableto distinguish between reliable knowledge and mere myth. This is theargument that history is a social necessity.

AGSG, ch.6, sect.1.2,‘Studying the arts andhumanities’


EXERCISE

Can you think of any ways in which what happened in the past hasdetermined what is happening in the present? Give examples.

DISCUSSION

It is generally agreed that most of the problems of the world today havetheir origins in the past. If we are to have any chance of coping withthem, we need to have systematic knowledge of these origins (the rise,spread and splintering of religious beliefs, conquests and atrocities, theoppression of the then weak by the then mighty) – that is, history. Modernideas of democracy, liberty, feminism, etc. originated in specificcircumstances in the past; ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ – as you may know– was a slogan of the French Revolution, a past event which seems tostand out as demanding close and systematic attention.

Putting it generally, the human past has determined much of our presentenvironment, field patterns and roads, as well as streets and buildings, thepolitical boundaries which divide country from country, their forms ofgovernment, the precise character of social and economic distinctions, thesources of tension within and between nations, their values and customs.

The basic point is that the past governs the present, so the systematicstudy of the past is a necessity. No historian would claim that historyprovides clear answers, only that without history no answers would bepossible. However, there is one very vital conclusion to be drawn fromthis justification for history: it is that the historian, like the scientist, isconcerned with establishing well-substantiated knowledge, based on asystematic methodology, about specific topics, not with generalspeculation about the major issues of human existence.

Briefly, I want to consider the question of myth. The characteristic of mythis that, while containing some element, usually highly attenuated, offaithfulness to what actually happened in the past, it is also highlydistorted or exaggerated, almost invariably with a view to supporting oneparticular nation or community or religion or point of view. Myths exploitthe past in order to serve some current national, political or religiouspurpose, or, at the very least, they fool people into believing somethingthat simply isn’t true. The distinguished French historian Marc Ferro (in abook translated as The Use and Abuse of History: or how the past istaught, published in 1984) discussed the way in which myths areperpetuated not just among white, former colonialist countries, but also inblack Africa, India, the West Indies, and so on. As he pointed out, therecan be no true freedom and no peace between nations as long as we arein thrall to myths.


It is a vital function of history – part of what makes it a social necessity –

to challenge myths. Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland longsubscribed to different myths, thus keeping old animosities very alive. Ihave heard many people assert that while Britain is a class-ridden society,France is not because France had the French Revolution. This is acomplete myth. If you study the subject carefully, France today is just asdivided by class as Britain is. Politicians preach the virtues of the‘traditional family’, but once you examine the question you find thatbeliefs about the ‘traditional family’ are riddled with myths. The socialvalue of history is that it enables us to challenge myths.

Now I am going to summarize Sections 1 and 2 in diagrammatic fashion. Asimple way to define history is as follows:

History = sources + expertise (that is, the expertise historians apply tosources).

Tongue in cheek, and with a blackboard handy, I sometimes write this upas H = S + E! Combining everything in the two sections about the past,sources, myths and history, we have Figure 10.1.

Now you personally, as a student, could probably think of many moreimmediate justifications for the study of history – that it is enjoyable, that itstretches the mind, etc. – but for the moment I simply want to concentrateon one which is particularly relevant to this interdisciplinary foundationcourse and to this unit.

EXERCISE

In Units 16 and 17 you will be learning about the philosopher Rousseauand the artist David. Have you any idea what essential function historyperforms in such studies? (This is a difficult question so don’t waste timeover it.)

apply theirexpertise to

theHISTORIANS

to (among otherthings) challenge

and producecontributions to

knowledge of the pastwhich together make upthe body of knowledge

known as

HISTORY

THE PAST

givesrise to

MYTHS

but alsoleaves

SOURCES

FIGURE 10.1


DISCUSSION

To appreciate fully and understand such figures you need to know aboutthe society in which they lived, the events they lived through – ‘thehistorical context’, as we sometimes call it. It is the task of history, nosimple one by any means, to provide the historical context. This is acentral point in history’s relationship to other disciplines in thehumanities. No surprise at all if you did not think of it.

3 PRIMARY AND SECONDARYSOURCES

Because I am concerned with the basic principles of historical study, Ishall be choosing my examples from various periods and topics. But inorder to provide some unity, I shall refer to (a) the history of the Britishfamily (a central topic in social history), and (b) the origins, course andaftermath of the French Revolution (a major historical event and essentialto your study of Rousseau and David).

To explain the differences between primary and secondary sources, I amgoing to take the most traditional of these three topics, the FrenchRevolution. Think for a moment about what you would do if you wantedto find out a bit about the French Revolution. You might look it up in anencyclopaedia or on the Internet. But if you were truly serious in yourquest for knowledge about the French Revolution, you would, I am prettysure, look it up in one or more books. Where do the authors of thesebooks get their knowledge from? The answer may well be ‘from otherbooks’. But if you got a really detailed, specialized book on the FrenchRevolution or some aspect of it, then you would find the author drawingupon materials actually belonging to the time of the French Revolutionitself – speeches by revolutionary politicians, letters and diaries written bythe various people involved, decrees and laws passed by the revolutionarygovernment. Such things are the real, basic ‘raw material’ of history. Theyare what we call primary sources – sources which came into existencewithin the actual period being studied. The books written up later byhistorians, drawing upon those primary sources, are secondary sources. Itis perfectly proper for you simply to use an encyclopaedia or perhapseven a simple textbook. These, as I say, will have drawn on other, moredetailed books by historians, that is to say, secondary sources. But a truework of historical research, while making use of secondary sources inevolving a research strategy, will fundamentally be based on primarysources. In the serious study of history, the distinction between secondary


sources (books and articles by historians) and primary sources (materialsoriginating within the period being studied) is absolutely crucial.

Four clarifying points need to be made:

1 With regard to secondary sources we really have to make a furtherbroad distinction between research-based specialist work, which willusually appear in the form of articles in learned historical journals oras specialist books, and more general works with the character oftextbooks and the function of summarizing and synthesizing thespecialist work. You need to understand not just the distinctionbetween primary and secondary sources, but also that there aredifferent types and levels of secondary source. These range from themost highly specialized research-based work, through high-qualitytextbooks which incorporate some personal research as well assummarize the work of others, to the simpler textbooks, and then onto the many types of popular and non-academic history books,encyclopaedias and so on.

2 Because a source comes in the form of a printed book, that does notnecessarily mean it is secondary. A book which originates within theperiod being studied is a primary source – it might be a description offamily life, a work of political philosophy, an analysis of popularmusic or a ‘conduct book’. If produced within the period studied, it’s aprimary source. Rule number one: look at the date!

3 Primary sources in their original form are usually to be found only inspecialist libraries, such as the British Library, or record offices, suchas the Lichfield Record Office. However, it is usual to provide studentswith specially edited (and, if necessary, translated) collections ofprimary sources, and I do want here to stress the value of selectedprimary sources in the teaching and learning of history. While you willalways need the textbooks and other secondary works, you will alsofind that actually reading the words of, or looking at the artefactscreated by, the people of the past society you are studying can giveyou a more direct and vivid understanding of that society than anysecondary account. To sum up: primary sources are indispensable forresearch and the production of historical knowledge, but selected andedited (and, if necessary, translated) they are also vital in the teachingand learning of history.

4 Although research would not be worthy of the name if not largelyconducted in the primary sources, researchers do have to usesecondary sources as well. To embark upon a piece of historicalresearch you need to have a thorough knowledge of the field, andthat can be acquired only by reading the books (the secondarysources) written by other historical experts. Reading other historians’books in the same field will give you pointers as to sources to studyand the archives in which they can be found, as well as to issues and


problems to be addressed. They will save you from duplicating workwhich has already been done and will give you a clear idea of whatwork needs to be done, or perhaps re-done. They will beindispensable in developing your initial strategy.

Not all secondary sources are equally worth reading, and my hope is that,after both history units, you will be in a strong position to make choicesfairly quickly. Of course, you can’t really know what is in a book until youread it. But here is just a very simple preliminary step.

EXERCISE

Say you had the choice between two books on the French Revolution(which everyone agrees broke out in 1789 – there is less agreement aboutwhen it ‘finished’), one published in 1855, the other in 1998. Which, foryour purposes as a history student, would be likely to be the more worthreading? Give reasons (always the important point!).

DISCUSSION

The 1998 book, because it ought to reflect the most recent research. Ihave had students get this one wrong, arguing that 1855 is better becausenearer to the French Revolution. That is to confuse the qualities of primaryand secondary sources. Primary sources are the more valued the closerthey are to the events or topics being studied. But a book published in1855 could not be a primary source for the French Revolution, and an out-of-date secondary source is of low value.

EXERCISE

Here is a list mixing up primary and secondary sources. Indicate whichare primary (P), which secondary (S). Indicate which relate to the FrenchRevolution (including its origins) (R), to the family (F), to the 1960s (60),or to none of these (0). The last source listed is a particularly tricky, butparticularly illuminating, one. You’ll need to give a brief word ofexplanation for your decisions on this one. Before you start I suggest youreread the first two of the clarifying points I set out a moment ago, andparticularly note ‘rule number one’. If you feel you can distinguishbetween the more specialized secondary sources and the more textbook-like ones, do that as well, but don’t waste too much time on that sincebare titles are not terribly illuminating. Sorting out the primaries and thesecondaries is the thing.

1 W. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford, 1989.2 A. Goodwin, ‘Calonne, the Assembly of French Notables of 1787 and

the Origins of the Révolte Nobiliaire’, English Historical Review,vol. 61, 1946.


3 P.R. Hanson, Provincial Politics in the French Revolution: Caen andLimoges, 1789–1794, Baton Rouge, 1989.

4 P. Jones, The Peasantry in the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1988.5 J. Necker, A Treatise on the Administration of the Finances of France,

London, 1785.6 A letter dated 13 November 1462 from Margaret Paston to her husband

John.7 R. O’Day, The Family and Family Relationships, 1500–1900: England,

France and the United States of America, London, 1994.8 L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800,

London, 1977.9 Margaret Stacey, ‘Tradition and Change: A Study of Banbury, Oxford,

1960’ (a sociological study).10 The diary of Thomas Turner, 1754–65.11 Decree of the Parlement of Paris, 5 December 1788.12 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London, 1859.

DISCUSSION

1 S.R. Straightforwardly, a historian’s later account. If you got that wrongyou’ll have to read through this section again. The title suggests ageneral overall study; in fact, this is a very high-quality textbookdrawing both on the author’s specialist researches in primary sourcesand an enormous range of articles and books by other historians.

2 S.R. Learned article by a historian – a highly specialized piece of work,appearing in what is in fact the most traditional and austere of Britishhistorical journals. Though dating back to 1946, that’s still a long timeafter the French Revolution. Because the article is so highlyspecialized it is still considered of value today – the phrase ‘revolt ofthe nobility’ (révolte nobiliaire) is widely used to describe events justbefore the outbreak of the Revolution; Calonne was King Louis XVI’schief finance minister.

3 S.R. Straightforward again. A highly specialized secondary sourceconfined to two French towns over a five-year period.

4 S.R. Another highly specialized secondary source confined to studyingthe peasantry during the Revolution.

5 P.R. The date, within the period of the origins of the FrenchRevolution, gives this away. Necker was the finance minister toLouis XVI prior to being disgraced and replaced by Calonne. It wasnot unusual for contemporary French works (this one set out the direfinancial problems of the then French government) to be published inLondon.

6 P.F. If you got this wrong you probably need to read the wholesection through again.

7 S.F. General (covers three countries) rather than highly specializedwork. Another high-quality textbook.

8 S.F. High-quality secondary source.


9 P.60. Slightly trickier perhaps, and my sympathies if you got it wrong.But as a sociological study from within the 1960s, this must count as aprimary source for the period.

10 P.F. As with 6, though I can’t blame you if, from the dates, youthought it was related to the origins of the French Revolution. Actually,as an English diary, it’s very useful on family relationships.

11 P.R. As with 5.12 P.0. As I warned you, the one students most usually get wrong.

Published in 1859, this can’t be a primary source for the period of theFrench Revolution. People are often tempted to see this novel aboutthe French Revolution as a secondary source for the FrenchRevolution. But a novel is a novel is a novel (that is, a deliberatelycreated work of the imagination): a historical novel, no matter howcarefully researched, is (like a historical film) always a primary sourcefor the time period in which it was written. If A Tale of Two Cities is aprimary source for anything, it is for attitudes and values in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly with respect to fear of revolution orthe power of the mob. It’s a primary source, but not for any of ourthree main topics.

EXERCISE

How would you describe the following sources (all relating to the periodof the French Revolution and its origins): primary or secondary?

1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions, written between 1759 and1770, first part published 1782, second part 1789.

2 Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, painting, 1784–5.3 J.-L. David, The Death of Marat, painting, 1793.4 J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762.5 Analytical, Critical and Philosophical Commentaries on Paintings

Exhibited at the Salon (official art gallery), 1791.6 Memoirs of Mme de Genlis, who lived from 1737 to 1830, published in

printed and edited format in Paris in 1857.

DISCUSSION

They are all primary sources (they originate from within the period beingstudied). Numbers 1–4 are philosophical or artistic works. Number 5contains contemporary critical comments on the works of David andothers. Memoirs as a direct account, unmediated by a historian, bysomeone who lived during the period studied are regarded as primarysources, though they do have to be treated with especial caution as theyare usually written up later. For the true researcher the printed and editedversion mentioned here would be only a start, and recourse would haveto be made to the original manuscript.


Please do be sure that you understand the distinction between primaryand secondary sources before proceeding.

4 THE PAST HAS GONE FOR GOOD

Most of us have little difficulty in believing in a past that actuallyhappened, in believing that past societies had a real existence. The specialproblem of historical study is that these societies, by definition, no longerhave a real existence; the past is gone for good. For all the literature,weighty and trivial, about defying time, time capsules and travel in time,there is no escape from the passing of time and from human mortality.

EXERCISE

Think about this one (but if it throws you, just go straight to mydiscussion). Have the 1960s ‘gone for good’? How about ‘yesterday’?

DISCUSSION

I think we have to recognize that the 1960s have gone for good. In the UKwe have the songs, the films, the TV programmes, the clothes, the firstOpen University building, the Acts of Parliament making divorce easier,lowering the age of adulthood to eighteen; we have, in the NationalLibrary of Scotland, the minutes of the experimental Traverse theatre, andin the Modern Records Centre at Warwick we have letters from ordinarypeople to their local MPs: just see how rich is the range and variety ofprimary sources. But, yes (to answer the question), the 1960s have gonefor good. So has yesterday, though yesterday’s newspapers still exist, andsomeone else will just be receiving that letter you wrote and now wishyou hadn’t.

To drive home the point, I’m going to extremes here. Historians aren’tusually concerned with single days. The, as it were, ‘basic unit of study’ ismore likely to be a decade, a century, a generation, or a particular topicor institution over a period of time, such as ‘industrialization’ or ‘thefamily’.

Now, obviously, the family, as an institution or social practice, exists today.



EXERCISE

The family, I have just said, certainly exists today. Think very carefully(and remember that we are discussing history): what is it, relating to thefamily, that has gone for good?

DISCUSSION

What has gone is the family in past periods – the Romano-British family,the medieval family, the Victorian family. Stop and ponder very carefullywhat I am saying here: the past itself, though it leaves memories, relicsand traces (the sources), has gone for good – you cannot apprehend itdirectly and you cannot visit it.

EXERCISE

So, what is it, relating to the family, that still survives? Before answering,read back through my discussion of the previous question.

DISCUSSION

The sources survive – as I’ve just remarked. Let me list some exampleshere: Roman funeral inscriptions, parish registers of births, marriages anddeaths, family letters (like the Paston one I mentioned in a previousexercise), diaries (like the Turner one in the same exercise), familyportraits, family photographs, census data, personal memoirs.

The novelist L.P. Hartley produced the famous remark, ‘The past is anothercountry ...’, which has subsequently been rather misused by other writers.Although illuminating on one aspect of the past, the statement is utterlymisleading on the main aspect, which we have just been addressing. Theremark is misleading in that, as I’ve just put it, you cannot visit the past(there are no boats or jets to the past such as you could take to ‘othercountries’). The illuminating point made is that, like foreign countries, thepast is different (and, indeed, that was the very point Hartley was makingin the remainder of the quotation). As will be explained in Unit 8, wehave to try to see people who lived in the past in terms of their own time,and get away from expecting them to think and behave in exactly the waywe do. Some of the attitudes and behaviour of the 1960s already seemquaint – though ‘quaint’ is a word we should avoid, our task being tounderstand. The classicism of eighteenth-century intellectuals may nowseem strange, but we have to try to understand the hold it had over them.

The ineluctable fact that the past has gone for good has inescapableconsequences for the way in which knowledge of the past – that is,


history – is produced. Since past societies are no longer real, historianscannot, as is sometimes said by fashionable postmodernists, ‘represent’or ‘reconstruct’ them. The reality that historians engage with consists ofthe only things we have: the primary sources. You can see them, feelthem, sometimes even smell them. Forget ‘represent’, forget ‘reconstruct’;it is out of these sources that historians produce knowledge aboutparticular aspects of the past.

5 SEARCHING OUT THE SOURCESAND WORKING OUT A STRATEGY

There is a notion in some quarters that history is about the differentinterpretations historians produce based on an easily accessible commonpool of ‘data’ or ‘facts’. Actually, in considerable measure, history is aboutgetting round the relevant libraries and archives, following up leads whichtake you to still other libraries and archives: leg work, in short.

EXERCISE

1 In my brief list of some sources for the 1960s, I mentioned at leastthree geographical locations. Note down what these were, and if youcan think of any other places implied in my list, include them too.

2 In discussing the history of the family, I mentioned one absolutelycentral type of source, specific examples of which, almost bydefinition, are scattered round the country. What type of source isthat?

3 If you were doing research on some aspect of the French Revolution,where would you have to go?

DISCUSSION

1 Milton Keynes (the Open University), Edinburgh (National Library ofScotland), University of Warwick (Modern Records Centre). For Acts ofParliament and parliamentary debates, and for newspapers, you’dneed a major library, such as the British Library in London, theNational Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, or one of the olderuniversity libraries in the UK. Despite the availability of videos, youmight still have to go to the National Film Archive. For clothes you’dhave to seek out a fashion and design museum.

2 Parish registers of births, marriages and deaths. Some are in theoriginal parishes; most are collected in local record offices – but stillyou have to travel to get to them.


3 I hope at least you said Paris; bonus marks if you said archives in theFrench provinces. For the crucial point I want to introduce here is thatit was only when historians went out and combed the Frenchprovinces for sources that we got a fully rounded account of theFrench Revolution, not one confined to events in Paris.

In travelling around searching out primary sources, historians do notsimply operate arbitrarily or haphazardly. But nor do they set out withsome predetermined theory which, at all costs, they intend to ‘prove’.Historians set out with a strategy. From reading all the secondary sourcesrelevant to the topic they are interested in, they derive a sense of whatquestions need answering, and at least a provisional inventory of thearchives they will need to visit. Of course, new questions keep croppingup; new sets of sources have to be investigated. But historians addresslimited, manageable sections of the past. Aided by the work of others, byprofessional societies and journals, by librarians and catalogues, they firstestablish a clear, rational strategy – just as scientists do.

6 THE IMMENSE VARIETY OFPRIMARY SOURCES

There is an immense variety of primary sources – that’s becoming prettyclear, isn’t it? I particularly want you to be aware of the significance of‘non-traditional’ sources such as physical artefacts, films, works of art, andso on, any sources which are not written or printed, or which are worksof the imagination. But I do have to be careful not to exaggerate. For alarge number of historical investigations, traditional written sources areparamount. Still, many people are unaware of how varied written sourcesare. One of the aspects of the ‘searching out’ functions of the historian,and one of the characteristics of the most outstanding historians, is thefaculty for thinking of the way knowledge can be extended by thedeployment of new or unusual sources. For example one of the othermajor advances in the study of the origins of the French Revolution hasbeen through turning to sources related to the French publishing industryin the eighteenth century – and using computers to analyse them. We arenow in a much stronger position to assess the influence of such writers asRousseau, for example.

Different types of source have different strengths and different weaknesses(depending ultimately upon what particular topic you are studying). HereI shall just make certain broad contrasts, and draw attention to the specialvalue of, and conversely the special problems inherent in, certain sources.


1 The contrast between public and private sources. The simple contrasthere is between sources which were intended to be seen or read bysubstantial numbers of people (such as Roman Imperial inscriptions,Acts of Parliament, newspapers) and sources generated purely for theuse of one person or certain specified persons (such as diaries, letters,secret diplomatic documents).

We cannot say that one sort is automatically more reliable than theother. We could make the initial presumption that someone writing intheir own diary or to a close friend would be unlikely to tell deliberatelies. Conversely, some types of public document may be deliberatelydesigned to mislead, and here my distinction concerning ‘documentsof record’ (see 2 below) is important. On the other hand, the fact thata document is public and ‘open’ may create pressures for it to beaccurate (I’d say that, for example, of a report by a reputable journalistin a reputable newspaper).

2 The contrast between ‘documents of record’ and what I shall call‘discursive sources’. A ‘document of record’ is one which by its veryexistence records that some event took place – it is not someone else’saccount, but, as it were, it embodies the event itself. Prime examplesare Acts of Parliament, peace treaties, charters (like Magna Carta), andminutes of meetings. An Act of Parliament itself embodies the event ofa law being passed, as a peace treaty embodies the event of a peacetreaty being concluded: both may be full of waffle and hypocrisy, andthey may indeed never be implemented, but they still recordsomething that definitely happened. The actual existence of MagnaCarta (in several copies) does tell us that the issuing of Magna Cartaactually took place. Minutes (of cabinet meetings or, say, the localmarriage guidance council annual general meetings) can beuninformative or even misleading, but provided they are not fakes(and that goes for everything) they are records that the meetings didtake place. Discursive sources – somebody else’s report that a meetingtook place or description of the signing of a treaty – will have theirown uses, but are not the best and most direct sources for the eventsthemselves.

3 Here I want to take together three categories of source once ratherneglected but now much used by social historians. These are: (a)books advising on social behaviour and etiquette, sometimes knownas ‘conduct books’; (b) studies of customs and folklore; (c) guides,handbooks, directories and other works of reference.

The last category can be given a high rating for potential accuracy,since customers wouldn’t buy them if they weren’t reliable. Thesecond one should be accurate, though there is always the danger ofthe enthusiast being tempted to romanticize. The first category offers


most problems – are the authors writing about behaviour as it actuallyis, or are they describing some ideal?

4 Similar problems can come up with laws, legal decisions, sermons andother moralistic texts such as religious treatises. We have to try to findout how far laws and legal decisions are actually carried out, not justassume that they record something that has happened or will happen;similarly we have to check whether sermons and treatises refer tothings actually happening or things the authors devoutly wish wouldhappen. On the other hand, there may be a fair presumption thatactivities frequently condemned in sermons are actually happening.

5 One important source you might not think of, but which can haveamazing uses, is wills. Wills may be the best way of establishing howrich a person was. They can also be used to infer how much, or howlittle, affection existed between married couples and between parentsand children. Much work with primary sources – this is a general point– is done by indirect inference.

6 For some years now ‘oral history’ – recording people’s memoriesbefore they die – has been very fashionable. Very useful (but only, ofcourse, for recent history), particularly with respect to ordinary peoplewho usually do not leave written records. Of course, it is very subjectto the fallibility of the human memory. We have, and can stillgenerate, oral history for the 1960s, but none for the FrenchRevolution or almost all of the long history of the family. Some peopledo leave autobiographies or memoirs. Though these are almost alwayswritten up late in life and subject to all the problems of memory,afterthought and hindsight, we do count them as primary sources.Biographies, however, unless actually written from direct knowledgeduring the subject’s own lifetime, we consider to be secondarysources.

7 There is much talk of ‘statistical sources’. In fact, statistics can beextracted from many different types of source: parish registers, censusreturns, estate records, government reports, etc. What is critical is themethod of analysis; computers make it possible to use much largerand more representative quantities of data. But if the figures weredubious in the original document, no amount of processing through acomputer will make them any more reliable.

8 There is glamour in film, archaeology, ‘history on the ground’

(surviving buildings, streets, etc.), posters and furniture. Historians canlearn much from all of them. But we must always be aware of thedifference between the teaching/learning function on the one hand,and the genuine research one on the other. Non-traditional sourcescan be awfully good for driving a point home vividly, but it is oftenthe case that our knowledge of that point originally came from morehumdrum written sources.


9 Historians should make use of poems, paintings, novels, works ofmusic. They can often tell us much about attitudes, values, standardsof taste, and cultural achievements. But we do always have toremember that such sources are deliberately works of the imaginationin a way in which other sources are not.

EXERCISE

Look at the reproduction of David’s Oath in the Tennis Court, 1790–1(Plate 120 in the Illustration Book), a sketch for a painting which wasnever proceeded with. On the morning of 20 June 1789, in the early stagesof the Revolution, deputies to the newly revived Estates General (thenearest French equivalent to the British Parliament), finding the doorsclosed against them, assembled in a nearby indoor court designed for thegame of ‘royal tennis’ and took an oath never to disperse until France hadbeen granted a constitution.

1 How useful a source for that event do you think this drawing is? Is itas useful as a photograph would be, say?

2 Is there anything else which you think it a particularly useful sourcefor?

DISCUSSION

1 Well, it’s not really very like a photograph is it? – unless thephotographer had had the opportunity to pose everyone taking part,unlikely in a sudden and impetuous historical event. Photographerscan pose small groups of protagonists and can choose their angles soas to frame a particular composition, but I really can’t believe anyphotographer could have achieved this effect. Think about it if yourinclination is to disagree with me. Clearly the artist himself hascarefully posed the participants to drive home the heroic and historicnature of the event, but as an accurate record of how it actually wasthis is scarcely of much use. Perhaps we get some sense of what it waslike to be inside a ‘tennis court’, but that’s about it. If you’d alwaysthought the oath was taken on the equivalent of your local publiccourts, at least this is a corrective. Note, anyway, that the drawing wascomposed some two years after the event.

2 ‘Heroic’ and ‘historic’ are key words here. A source like this is notstrong on actual physical evidence, but it is excellent for attitudes in1791. I mentioned at the beginning that David was a kind of officialpainter for the revolutionary regime, so this is good evidence of howthat regime was now glorifying the early events of the Revolution and,as it were, wrapping them up in the respectable imagery of classicism(as you will see in Unit 11, this drawing is severely ‘classical’ in itsstudiously balanced composition).


7 THE FRAGMENTARY ANDOPAQUE CHARACTER OF PRIMARYSOURCES AND THE IMPLICATIONSOF THEIR FALLIBILITY FOR THEPRODUCTION OF HISTORY

In commenting on some of the different types of source I have suggestedthat nearly all have drawbacks of some sort. Some sources are extremelydifficult to decipher and some even are badly damaged (see Figures 10.2and 10.3). For some topics there is an overabundance of sources – toomuch to analyse efficiently. More usually there is a paucity of sourcesrelating to the questions on which we dearly want answers. The crucialthing to remember about primary sources is that they were brought intobeing by people in past societies for their own purposes, not to make lifeeasier for historians. Even where the sources are adequate andmanageable in quantity, they still present considerable problems ofanalysis and interpretation. Many of the conclusions historians draw have

FIGURE 10.2 Part of an early seventeenth-century English commonplace book ofWalter Bagot, Blithefield, Staffordshire. Water damage is evident from staining on thepaper and bleeding of ink from the left-hand page to the right-hand one, which make itdifficult to read the text. Blithefield Hall, Staffordshire. (Photograph: Trevor White,OUPC)


to be made indirectly or by inference; sometimes it is hard to draw anydefinite conclusions at all. It is easy to become swamped in miscellaneousinformation, with the sources themselves not necessarily being veryhelpful in suggesting interconnections and explanatory relationships.

Much reflection and intellectual effort is called for, therefore, and muchscope ensues for differences of interpretation between different historians.Some historians are anxious to present bold, clear patterns, while othersprefer to accumulate masses of detail; some historians draw heavily uponconcepts developed in the social sciences, while others prefer to useconcepts of their own. Lawrence Stone, in the book I included in my listof primary and secondary sources, The Family, Sex and Marriage inEngland 1500–1800 (1977), invented the concept of ‘affectiveindividualism’ to pin down what he saw as a major change taking place infamily life in the three centuries he was concerned with. This was the

FIGURE 10.3 This pot from the eastern Mediterranean was found in fragments in alayer of soil in London deposited after the fifth century CE. Taken in conjunction with itsprovenance (where it was found), this source suggests that trade between London andthe eastern Mediterranean continued after the fifth century into the so-called ‘DarkAges’. Museum of London. (Photograph: Open University)


change from, to put it crudely, marriage as essentially a businessarrangement to marriage as a matter of personal choice and affection (thatis, affective individualism). While most other historians of the familyrecognized that there were elements of truth in Stone’s boldly statedarguments, many felt that he exaggerated the nature of the change andoverstated the case that it took place within certain definite dates(basically, he claimed, after 1640). That sort of disagreement is fairlycommon among historians and can arise, as we shall see in a moment,from a number of causes. But, and this is the point of this section,fundamentally it arises from the unsatisfactory nature of primary sourceswhen it comes to settling matters of that sort.

For long years the focal point of argument over the French Revolutionwas the question of whether or not the Revolution marked the overthrowof the feudal aristocracy by the rising middle class (or bourgeoisie). Inthis case the thorough exploitation of new sources has led to a prettycomplete rejection of this rather simplistic analysis (based on Marxism).The dominant class before the Revolution is revealed as a mixture ofaristocratic and bourgeois elements, with no evidence of any sharpconflict between the two. The actual revolution, quite manifestly, wasprecipitated by the devastating economic crisis facing the monarchistgovernment. But on the specifics of this much room for debate remains,simply – to return to my main point – because such economic statistics ascan be found in the sources are so imperfect. Clearly the Revolution was amassive event, but pinning down its precise significance in specific areasis not something on which the sources provide unambiguous evidence.Some historians maintain the traditional position of identifying massivechanges in the way society was organized and governed; othersconcentrate purely on the impetus given to political ideals ofrepresentation and democracy; others again stress continuity as betweenthe old regime and the new.

Combining knowledge and expertise, historians can produce a remarkableamount from the most intractable and inscrutable sources. They learn, as Isometimes like to put it, to ‘squeeze the last drop’ out of their sources. Butperhaps occasionally, understandably, they squeeze out drops that aren’tactually there. There are always areas in which the evidence from thesources is insecure, ambivalent or even in conflict. Historians have to dotheir best, striving always to present accounts which are intellectuallycoherent; different historians will ‘do their best’ in different ways.


8 SUBJECTIVITY IN HISTORY

What we have come back to is the human factor. History, remember, isnot the past; it is the knowledge of the past produced by fallible humanbeings, historians. There is bound to be a personal, ‘subjective’ element inhistory (‘subjective’ is the opposite of ‘objective’; ‘objective’ means‘unbiased, strictly in accordance with the evidence and uninfluenced byany social or personal factors or prejudices’). Human elements come intothe sciences as well (and, of course, disagreements between scientists arecertainly far from unknown). But what I have been stressing in theprevious section is that there is a special reason why history should bemore subjective than most of the natural sciences: in history, because ofthe intractable and imperfect nature of the sources, ‘the evidence’ is oftennot in itself conclusive.

However, you may very well feel that there are far more straightforwardreasons for historians to disagree with each other, that there are obviouspersonal attitudes which affect the way historians write their history.

EXERCISE

What sorts of personal attitude might be likely to affect the accounts givenby different historians? Give as many precise examples of ‘personalattitudes’ as you can.

DISCUSSION

The obvious answer that the question invites is something like: political,religious and ideological attitudes. As precise examples one could thenlist: conservative, Marxist, liberal, monarchist, social democratic,republican, feminist, Catholic, Protestant. The exact labels you used don’tmatter, but I trust you were thinking along these lines.

Actually I think it is too simplistic to draw correlations between politicalbeliefs and the kind of history produced. For many historical topicspolitical belief is practically irrelevant, as it is for most problems in thenatural sciences. However, that said, there is the crucial point that, unlikethe sciences, history is concerned with human actions, human beliefs,human values. Thus some kind of personal or political engagement ispractically impossible to avoid. Much depends on the particular topicbeing studied.

One of our topics is one on which feminists could be expected to havestrong views. That topic, you might guess, is the family. Indeed theconcept of patriarchy (that is, domination of the family by the male and


the organization of the family – as well of the rest of society – in theinterests of men), a concept pioneered by feminists (following Karl Marxand his collaborator Friedrich Engels), figures prominently in all studies ofthe family. Many feminists see the family as an instrument of theoppression of women. However, other feminists have concentrated onbringing out the vital managerial role women have always had to playwithin the family. So actually it would be wrong to think that all feministswill have one particular approach to historical issues, just as it would bewrong to think that there will always be one conservative approach, oneMarxist approach, etc.

Too much attention can be given to differences of approach. There arebasic principles of historical study – which I am setting out – and theseestablish firm limits on the extent to which historians can simply indulgetheir own personal attitudes. What we should concentrate on is theremarkable amount of secure knowledge historians have produced, whilealways being aware that there are important areas where there can be noreal certainty.

But historians are no angels. While too much attention does tend to begiven to political views, not enough attention is given to the way in whichcareer pressures can lead historians to exaggerate a particularinterpretation (the more to stress the originality of their position) or linethemselves up as supporters of a particular side in some great historicaldebate – these tendencies are not unknown in the sciences.

My final word on the question of subjectivity in history is that we shouldpay less attention to historians as individuals and more to the bodies ofknowledge produced by the labour of many thousands of historians. Weshould remember, above all, that the works of historians, even the mostfamous, are merely contributions to knowledge, and are subject to debateamong professional colleagues, and to qualification and correction.Readers do not have to believe everything they read in a history book –

with a little effort that which is securely established (this is why scholarlybooks have footnotes) can be separated out from that which is merelyspeculative or polemical. Let me advance the Marwick 20 per cent rule: atleast 80 per cent of what a scholarly historian writes is likely to be soundlybased – but always be ready to reject up to 20 per cent, which can be dueto ‘bees in the bonnet’, ‘playing to the gallery’, humble error, or variousother reasons already identified. And there are, after all, textbooks whichset out honestly to summarize for us what is securely known. In theintroductory history units for this course, I will be forced to dwell on thenames of a rather limited number of historians – Lawrence Stone and PeterLaslett, for instance – not because I think they are all that important asindividuals, but because they represent two rather distinct approaches(followed by hundreds of others) to historical study. We should think ofhistory as a profession, not as the product of isolated geniuses. In historythere are no Rembrandts, no Shakespeares, no Beethovens. The work of


historians is constantly being revised, modified, updated: on the whole wedon’t go in for revising Rembrandt or updating Beethoven. (Of course,messing around with great creative figures to suit contemporary taste hasgone on throughout the centuries; still, what Shakespeare or Beethovenactually wrote remains a matter of serious concern. In thirty years I doubtif anyone will care tuppence what Peter Laslett or Lawrence Stone actuallywrote; their well-substantiated contributions will pass into the textbooks,while the rest will be forgotten.)

It is always worth going back to the fundamental question of ‘Why studyhistory?’ and the answer, ‘Because societies need history’. Historians arepaid by society. If all that historians could say is, ‘Sorry, we all have ourown opinions, and we don’t agree on anything,’ they’d be failing in theirbasic duties. You, as a student or as an intelligent citizen, are entitled todemand that historians provide you with a clear, coherent, well-substantiated account of, say, the French Revolution. Quite an effort willbe required from you as well, of course. But with two or three top-qualitytextbooks (and some selected primary sources) you can get a clear idea ofwhat is securely known along with where and why there aredisagreements. History properly presented (and intelligently andenergetically entered into by you) will give you the means to makechoices for yourself where there genuinely is, for good reasons,disagreement among historians. To this day the French Revolution is a liveissue in French politics and in political philosophy generally. Where thereare big differences in the history books, these relate to the really bigissues, which almost go beyond the competence of history to settle(though without the work of historians we couldn’t even begin to discussthem). Historians are in broad agreement about the immediate origins ofthe Revolution, about its course (usually taken as running up to 1799when Napoleon was declared ‘First Consul’, 1802 when he became‘Consul for Life’, or 1804 when he was crowned emperor) and about thedifferent social and political groups involved (though, in the nature of thesources, there is variation in the assessment of precise roles andmotivations). The big disagreements are over the more profound ‘causes’of the Revolution and over its ‘consequences’: did it, for example, makepossible industrialized/’capitalist’ Europe, or was it in fact a seriousinterruption in developments already taking place in that direction?Historians also disagree over the horrific bloodshed and hideous crueltywhich unquestionably accompanied the Revolution: is this to becondemned, or excused as ‘inevitable’ or even ‘just’? But, when we cometo it, I shall hope to show you that even on these enormous issues thewritings of historians (if not those of popularizers and political fanatics)are reasoned and evidence-based, and that while historians do, for careeror personal reasons, often identify themselves with a particular school orapproach, their actual writing is characterized more by agreement thandisagreement. We shall see!


9 IS HISTORY CULTURALLYDETERMINED?

This section offers a very brief treatment of an issue which, as you willcome to find out as you proceed with your university career, lies at theheart of many debates over the nature of history and the other humanitiessubjects.

Are we all irredeemably products of the culture (that is, the society andperiod) in which we live (defined by some as ‘bourgeois culture’)? Is ittrue that the dominant ideas of our culture determine everything we do,whether it is reacting to a member of the opposite sex, painting a work ofart, writing a piece of history or, indeed, contributing to scientificknowledge?

Historians recognize that we are all culturally influenced but deny thattheir work (that is, history) is culturally determined. Historians argue that,far from being prisoners of their own culture, they are, by the very natureof what it is they study, particularly well qualified to understand theinfluences operating on them and, therefore, escape from them. Theirclaim is that, in the nature of what they do, historians are studying pastsocieties and the way in which people in these societies were affected bythe culture in which they lived. Historians, in other words, are experts oncultural influences. Accordingly, they are very aware of the danger ofbecoming prisoners of the dominant ideas of their own society. Historiansrecognize that they can never escape from these entirely, but believe thatthey are well equipped to make a good try. Historians further maintainthat they have principles and methods which, in their own way, are just asrigorous and systematic as those of the sciences (it is my purpose in theseintroductory history units to set out these principles and methods). Thusthey can produce knowledge which has an objective basis, thoughbecause of the imperfect nature of the sources there will always be gapsin that knowledge and disagreements over it.

10 THE PLACE OF CONTROVERSY INHISTORY

Historians do disagree with each other, for reasons we have just beenworking through. So do scientists. Controversy and debate are essentialcomponents of the intellectual world, where we always have to be awarethat many matters are not firmly fixed or conclusively settled. I want you

AGSG, ch.6, sect.7,‘Beliefs and theories’


to take seriously, and be able to present in your own words, thearguments about history in this unit (and in Units 16 and 17), but I alsowant you to be open to the arguments of those who disagree with me.Obviously, if my arguments are open to debate, so too are the argumentsof those who maintain that all knowledge is culturally determined orconstructed.

Here I want to focus briefly on controversy in history. There arecontroversies over the family, the French Revolution, the 1960s and – tochoose some examples you’d encounter in further history courses – theorigins of the Second World War, the social consequences of the FirstWorld War, the powers of Louis XIV, the role of nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe. I want to make two points:

1 It is important not to become obsessed with controversy anddisagreement among historians. There are (in my view) far too manybooks with titles such as The Debate over the French Revolution, TheControversy over the Origins of World War I. One should never forgetthe very real achievements of historians in illuminating often obscureand complex topics which none-the-less, as I have already argued, areof vital interest to society today.

2 But having said that, controversy and debate – if treated in an openand constructive way and not as ends in themselves – can servevaluable purposes in the advance of historical knowledge.

EXERCISE

This isn’t easy, but can you think what these purposes might be?

DISCUSSION

1 Controversy can open up new lines of enquiry. Historians who haveresearched deeply into some problem can become blinded to theexistence of wider perspectives and alternative lines of enquiry whiledelving ever deeper into the subject. If the articles and booksproduced by them are then attacked boldly by colleagues, they will beforced to defend themselves and give consideration to alternativeinterpretations. Out of all this the total sum of historical knowledgemay be increased considerably.

2 It can lead to new synthesis (that is, a combination of the best fromtwo or more opposing interpretations). The sharp exposure ofconflicting views can make it possible for another historian (perhapsthe writer of one of the high-quality general surveys or textbooks Imentioned earlier) to bring together the best of the conflictinginterpretations, and again make an advance in historical knowledge.


11 TECHNICAL TERMS,CONCEPTUAL TERMS, COLLECTIVENOUNS AND CLICHES

The writing of history requires the utmost precision in the handling oflanguage. Easily said but very hard work to achieve. Nothing is easier thanto slip into a weary cliché (‘sick as a parrot’, ‘over the moon’, ‘don’t takesources at face value’, ‘written sources are bread and butter to thehistorian’, ‘Rousseau made the intellectual ammunition, the Frenchrevolutionaries fired it’), flog old metaphors which explain nothing (‘warsare catalysts of change’), use a fancy word because it sounds trendy evenif we’re not quite clear exactly what it means (‘discourse’, ‘ideology’), or,most common in history, use some vague concept whose scope andmeaning is far from clear – the classic instance being ‘public opinion’

(everybody’s opinion, the opinion of a few newspaper proprietors, orwhat?). My contention is that in writing history it is essential to be preciseand explicit, as it is in scientific writing. This, in my view, is one of theways in which a work of history differs totally from a novel or a poem: acreative writer may quite deliberately exploit the ambiguities andresonances of language, but a historian should make special efforts to beas clear and explicit as possible, and to separate out unambiguously whatis securely established from what is basically speculation. For the momentI just want to make some brief points about four types of problem youencounter the moment you start reading any history at all: technical terms,conceptual terms, collective nouns and clichés. By clichés I mean wordsor phrases we slip into so readily that we have ceased to considerwhether they really are the best words for what we want to say, andwhether indeed they actually do say anything precise.

Technical termsSome technical terms belong to the past societies we are studying, whilesome are coined later by historians. In writing about past societies thereare times when we simply cannot avoid using the terms people in the pastused, even if these terms no longer exist today. And if they no longermean anything to us today, we have to be very exact in knowing whatthey meant to people in the past. Obvious examples are ‘serf’, ‘peasant’,‘yeoman’ – all country-dwellers of some sort – and ‘burghers’, ‘burgesses’– both townsfolk of some sort. Quite frankly, we’ll get nowhere instudying the French Revolution if we are not familiar with the names andfunctions of the main political institutions, and with the different kinds oftax and their strange names. At the time of the Revolution there werethirteen parlements across France, including one in Paris which hadjurisdiction over about one-third of the French population. Parlements,

AGSG, ch.2, sect.2.3,‘Academic language’


unlike the British Parliament, did not pass legislation, but were responsiblefor confirming acts and decrees of the king’s government and for makingjudicial decisions. The Estates General, famously brought back into beingat the time of the Revolution, was a medieval body, a little more akin tothe British Parliament; it was divided not into two ‘houses’ but into three‘estates’, each representative of one of the three orders or estates intowhich medieval France was held to be divided: the clergy (the ‘firstestate’), the nobility, and the ‘third estate’ – the remaining 95 per cent ofthe French population (save that women didn’t really count). The basicFrench direct tax (another technical term – a tax levelled directly onincome or property) was the taille (pronounced ‘tie’), levied as frequently,and at as high a rate, as the king’s government thought it could get awaywith. There were loads of indirect taxes (taxes that you pay every timeyou buy some commodity or service, like value-added tax (VAT) in the UKtoday) – including the hated gabelle levied on that absolute necessity, salt.

‘Citizen’ is a key technical term for the Revolution. All full members (thatis, not servants, not slaves) of the ancient Roman Republic were ‘citizens’.Seeing themselves as re-establishing the liberties of ancient Rome, theFrench revolutionaries took this term to themselves, together with manyclassical symbols.

Good examples of technical terms invented later by social scientists andadopted by historians are ‘nuclear family’ (husband, wife and children)and ‘extended family’ (the former plus other relatives and perhaps even‘retainers’). To describe the violence which broke out in the Frenchcountryside in the autumn of 1789, in which the peasants themselvesfeared they were being attacked by brigands hired by the nobles,historians have coined the term ‘the Great Fear’.

Conceptual termsWe need concepts to help organize our thoughts, to describe what weperceive as happening in human and social relationships and activities butfor which no ordinary words exist, and to bring the intellectual, thinkingelement into our writing of history.

EXERCISE

Can you think of any such concepts we have already encountered?

DISCUSSION

‘Affective individualism’ and ‘patriarchy’. You might also have referred tothe concept of the ‘bourgeoisie’ (as in the bourgeoisie allegedlyoverthrowing the aristocracy in the French Revolution).


We hit rough seas at once. Is the ‘bourgeoisie’ a concept, or is it an actualentity with a real existence in the sense that, for instance, we could tot upall those in France in 1788 who belonged to the bourgeoisie? ‘Bourgeois’and ‘bourgeoisie’ are obviously French words; they were used by theFrench in the eighteenth century and are still used by the French today.Actually their meaning in eighteenth-century France was pretty precise: abourgeois was not a noble, so that gives us the boundary ‘at the top’, as itwere; and a bourgeois did not work with his or her hands, so that gives usthe boundary at the bottom. Trouble can arise when this French word isapplied to other countries, such as Britain, or in more recent periodswhen its usage has become much vaguer. So if you encounter the word‘bourgeoisie’, try to establish how it is being used; if you use it yourself,be sure how you are using it. If as part of a broadly Marxist approach (noban on that), be sure that you understand all the assumptions involvedwithin that approach. One could define certain conceptual terms as beinglabels which describe something that we recognize does exist but which,in a particular usage, carry with them a load of theoretical assumptions.

Conceptual terms may either:

1 be borrowed – most usually from some grand theory, such asMarxism, or from the social sciences (where ‘extended family’ and‘nuclear family’ come from);

2 be invented by historians as part of the interpretation or hypothesisthey are trying to put over. Stone’s ‘affective individualism’ is a goodexample of this.

Technical terms you can’t avoid; you just have to get them right.Conceptual terms, treat with caution. That men have often oppressedwomen is abundantly clear from the sources, but that does not necessarilymean it is true that something called ‘patriarchy’, with all the theoreticalassumptions embedded in that term, actually existed. The term mayindeed be legitimate, but you must think things through very carefullybefore you decide to use it. Stone thought that envisaging what he called‘affective individualism’ clarified an important point about thedevelopment of the family. Marx thought that envisaging the bourgeoisieand the proletariat as he defined them clarified central points about thedevelopment of humanity. He may have been right. Equally he may havebeen wrong. All concepts demand constant scrutiny.

Collective nounsMany of the trickiest technical terms, conceptual terms and indeed clichésare labels for collections or classes of individuals: bourgeoisie, nobility,middle class, sansculottes. (This last French term literally means ‘withoutbreeches’; as a group it included town-dwellers of varying social statuswho, as a deliberate political gesture, wore workmen’s trousers rather than


gentlemanly breeches. Sansculottes were important in the FrenchRevolution.) ‘Class’ itself is a tricky word. All societies, in some way oranother, divide up into distinctive social groups, some wealthier and morepowerful than others. What I want to signal here is that one of the mostdifficult tasks facing historians is ‘mapping out’ past societies into suchgroups (bourgeoisie, working class, etc.). Should one try to use the termspeople in the past themselves used, should one use the clear-cut butrather abstract terms of Marxist theory, or what? Much historicalcontroversy arises from this process of ‘mapping out’ being done indifferent ways.

ClichésI’ve concentrated on the hard stuff, but don’t forget my opening phrasesthat we should all try to avoid slipping into less obvious clichés.

12 THE FAMILY, FROM ROMANBRITAIN TO THE PRESENT: MYTHS,SOURCES AND ISSUES

In Section 2, ‘Why study it?’, I remarked that beliefs about the traditionalfamily are riddled with myths. There is, I think, one great central mythabout the family, and then a number of lesser ones, some perhaps inconflict with each other.

In doing the exercises in this section, I want you to draw on things I havebeen saying about the family throughout this unit.

EXERCISE

1 What secondary sources could you turn to in studying the history ofthe British family?

2 List some of the printed primary sources that could be used. Try toindicate, in general, the strengths and weaknesses of each type ofprimary source.

3 List as many other kinds of source for the family as you can think of.Again indicate strengths and weaknesses.

DISCUSSION

1 R. O’Day, The Family and Family Relationships, L. Stone, The Family,Sex and Marriage, Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost. There was


also the article in the historical journal, Social History, ‘The emergenceof the modern life cycle in Britain’ by Michael Anderson. (It is in sucharticles, incidentally, that history most strikingly shows its resemblanceto the sciences.)

2 Conduct books. They tell you about contemporary ideas about thefamily (strength), but they are quite likely to be describing what theauthors thought the family ought to be like rather than what the familywas really like (weakness). Another kind of printed primary sourcementioned in the unit is the autobiography. Not all autobiographiesdiscuss family life, of course; the main technical weakness is thatautobiographies are usually written up after the events dealt with havepassed, and may be spoiled by bad memory, deliberate evasion, etc.On the other hand (strength), autobiographies may be the only sourcewe have for certain people and their families (if no private papershave survived, for example). The working-class autobiographies whichbegan to appear throughout the nineteenth century are valuable –

though often elusive and reticent – sources for working-class familylife.There is an enormous array of other sorts of printed primary source,many not directly related to the family. Published volumes of censusstatistics are enormously valuable, their ‘weaknesses’ being theabsence of emotional content and the other things they leave out. Actsof Parliament – for example, the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 or theFamily Law Reform Act of 1968, which reduced the age of majority to18 – relating to the family are ‘documents of record’ (great strength),but they don’t tell us whether they are actually carried out or not(weakness). Reports of government investigations, sociologicalinvestigations, etc. could be very useful. You’d really need specificdetail on each one to check out strengths and weaknesses (I go intothis in Units 16 and 17).

3 Going chronologically through the sources discussed and adding in afew others already mentioned in the unit, you could come up with:– Roman funeral inscriptions: very valuable if you know how to

interpret them and have information from other types of source,but can be misleading (easy to jump to the wrong conclusionsabout who carved figures are, what they are doing, etc.).

– Parish registers: indispensable but the information is very bare –

no detail about lives of individual families.

– Commonplace books: depend, of course, on what the ownerchooses to put in them (potential weakness) but can confirmfascinating information – about attitudes to children other thaneldest sons, for instance.

– Family letters and diaries.


– Portraits: add an extra dimension but may be highly stylized ratherthan faithful likenesses.

– Handwritten census enumeration returns: invaluable statisticalinformation but many gaps.

– Film: depends on the film, but in the case of The Family Way,which was written by someone who was himself working class, itdoes give direct evidence of 1960s housing, etc. However, the filmis concerned with deeper human truths rather than historical ones,and probably its writer (Bill Naughton) was thinking as much ofhis own family in the 1920s and 1930s as of families in the 1960s.Another source might be novels about family life – but, as withfeature films, remember that novels are always deliberately worksof fiction.

MythsThe big myth is of the ‘traditional’ family having been highly stable,undisturbed by such disruptions as divorce. In fact it could very readily bedisrupted by the death of either the husband or the wife.

A lesser myth is that for much of the past the family was a purelyeconomic unit. Linked to this myth is another one, that families wereconcerned only about the eldest son – charged, according to the myth,with perpetuating the family’s fortunes.

The most complicated myth is the one that there has been a universalchange from the large ‘extended’ family of the past to the smaller ‘nuclear’one of the present. One problem was that there was confusion between‘family’ (consisting of close blood relatives) and ‘household’ (includingservants, retainers, young house-guests from other families, usually insome kind of ‘apprenticeship’ relationship, etc.). Again it was Peter Laslettwho attacked the myth of the extended family in The World We Have Lost(1965). And while extended households were common among the verywealthy, they were non-existent among the poor.

Of course, there have been important changes in the family over thecenturies, particularly with respect to the roles of women and of children.I shall now conclude with a couple of paragraphs by one of Laslett’s mostdistinguished disciples, Keith Wrightson, taken from a long essay on ‘Thefamily’ in The Illustrated Dictionary of British History, followed – ofcourse! – by a few more questions.

Within marriage women were, at least until very recent times, legallyinferior, subject to a sexual double standard and expected to besubordinate to their spouses. Actual behaviour, however, must bedistinguished from legal and moralistic prescriptions. Early diaries and


letters indicate strong companionate elements in the marriages ofpeople of middling rank, with couples sharing productive, decision-making and leisure activities. Peasant women and the wives ofworkers in domestic industry also shared fully in family production.Confinement to housekeeping was a later product of industries whichoffered no female employment and removed work from thehousehold (though the Industrial Revolution gave many womenfactory work). It would be unwise to make too sharp a dichotomybetween ‘traditional patriarchal’ and ‘modern companionate’ marriage.Both situations have a long history as the poles of an enduringcontinuum in marital relations.

Similarly, social change can be shown to have altered the conditionsof children’s lives more than the nature of attitudes towards them.Before the 19th century children were expected to work and wereemployed at home or put into service at an early age. Nevertheless,this situation was not incompatible with parental recognition of theindividuality and care for the welfare of their offspring. Child-rearingin the past, though not conforming to modern practices, was certainlyless severe than is commonly alleged and there is substantial evidencethat parent–child relations were warm and affectionate. The abolitionof child labour and introduction of compulsory education haveprolonged effective childhood, while economic and social changehave afforded greater opportunities for the overt demonstration ofparental care.

(Wrightson, 1980, p.110)

EXERCISE

1 ‘Legal and moralistic prescriptions’. What types of source andproblems inherent in them (I’ve already discussed these) are beingreferred to here?

2 How impressed are you by Wrightson’s arguments about attitudestowards children?

DISCUSSION

1 Well, conduct books for a start. But also laws and legal decisions,sermons and religious treatises. In each case we must not jump to theconclusion that what is said in such sources is actually carried out orcorresponds with ‘actual behaviour’.

2 You may not have felt this at all, but personally I thought Wrightsonwas overstretching his case that the nature of parents’ attitudestowards children in the past did not differ from those of later parents,and therefore he was not very persuasive. As good historians willalways do, he states the circumstances honestly (children wereexpected to work, etc.). But, it seems to me, that brings out just how


different parental attitudes were then (even though it remains a myththat parents in the past had no affection for their children).

You’ll find this a lot in historical study. You don’t have to accept theparticular emphasis Wrightson gives his material. The material itself isaccurate and in many ways coincides with parts of Stone’s interpretation(save that Stone, for his part, overstates his own case). It is a centralcontention of mine that the real disagreement between historians is oftenmuch less than, for professional reasons, they represent it as being. Withthat thought in mind, we shall move on to a detailed study of the sourcesfor, and the issues entailed in, the French Revolution, in Block 3, Units 16and 17.

GLOSSARY

bourgeoisie is a term whose precise meaning depends very much on thecontext in which it is used. In eighteenth-century France the bourgeoisieincluded those who were neither members of the nobility nor artisans/workers. Marx and his followers defined the bourgeoisie as the dominantentrepreneurial class of capitalism. In the twentieth century it has beenused more loosely to include the ‘middle class’ generally.

Marx/Marxism Karl Marx (1818–83) argued that events andcircumstances in the past move in a series of stages, or epochs, eachterminated by revolution. In France, he said, the French Revolution endedthe feudal epoch dominated by the aristocracy, and replaced it with thecapitalist epoch dominated by the ‘bourgeoisie’. According to Marx, the‘proletariat’ (working class) would soon overthrow the bourgeoisie.

postmodernism is a theory that began in France in the 1960s with thewritings of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, and wasembraced by Anglo-American academics in the 1970s. According topostmodernism, we and our world are permeated by a hidden,impersonal structure of language which is contaminated with ‘bourgeois’values. Postmodernist historians argue that history is inextricably linked tothe historian; it is a constructed narrative similar to literature. HaydenWhite, Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University,described works of history as ‘verbal fictions, the contents of which are asmuch invented as found’. According to this view, history is a way ofordering the world rather than a way of producing knowledge of the past.


REFERENCES

FERRO, M. (1984) The Use and Abuse of History: or how the past is taught,London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

LASLETT, P. (1965) The World We Have Lost, London, Methuen.

STONE, L. (1977) The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800,London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

WRIGHTSON, K. (1980) ‘The family’ in A. Marwick (ed.) The IllustratedDictionary of British History, London, Thames & Hudson.


UNIT 11 REASONINGWritten for the course team by Nigel Warburton

Contents


Study note 124

1 Introduction 125

2 What is philosophy? 125

3 Argument structure 126

Argument 126

Truth and validity 128

A formal fallacy 130

Deduction and induction 132

4 Reading philosophy 134

Introduction 134

A note on ‘thought experiments’ 134

Reductio ad absurdum 137

5 Conclusion 138

Answers to exercises 139

Glossary 141

References 142

Suggestions for further reading 142

Revision test 142

Answers to the revision test 145

STUDYWEEK

ELEVEN

STUDY COMPONENTS


1 Resource Book 1 – Arts Good Study Guide


1 explain what philosophy is;

2 introduce and put into practice some basic skills of argument analysis;

3 provide exercises in critical reading;

4 examine moral questions about animal rights and the move to banboxing as examples of philosophical reasoning applied to real issues.


1 recognize what is distinctive about a philosophical approach tovarious issues;

2 identify and use some basic tools of argument analysis;

3 read a short philosophical article critically.

Study noteThe aim of Unit 11 is to encourage you to engage actively with what youare reading rather than to absorb it passively. The structured analysis ofphilosophical texts will give you the tools to do this; the exercises willgive you feedback on your progress and the chance to put into practicewhat you have learnt. As with Units 9 and 10, there is a glossary at the endto help you with unfamiliar words.

STUDY WEEK ELEVEN: REASONING124

1 INTRODUCTION

Philosophy is different from many other Arts subjects in that to study ityou need to do it. To be an art historian, you needn’t paint; to studypoetry, you needn’t be a poet; you can study history without being aprofessional historian. Yet to study philosophy you have to engage inphilosophical argument. Not that you have to operate at the level of thegreat thinkers of the past; but when you study philosophy, you will bedoing the same sort of thing as them. You can play football withoutreaching the level of Pelé, and you can get a great deal of intellectualsatisfaction from philosophizing without the originality or brilliance ofWittgenstein. But in both cases you will have to develop some of the skillsused by the great practitioners. That’s one of the reasons why philosophycan be such a rewarding subject to study.

2 WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

The word ‘philosophy’ is derived from the Greek for ‘love of wisdom’. Butthat isn’t particularly helpful in understanding how the word is used now.Philosophy is a subject at the core of most humanities courses. It focuseson abstract questions such as ‘Does God exist?’, ‘Is the world really as itappears to us?’, ‘How should we live?’, ‘What is Art?’, ‘Do we have genuinefreedom of choice?’, ‘What is the mind?’, and so on.

These very abstract questions can arise out of our everyday experience.Some people caricature philosophy as a subject with no relevance to life,a subject to be studied from an armchair for purely intellectual satisfaction,the academic equivalent of solving crossword puzzles. But this is a seriousmisrepresentation of large parts of the subject. For instance, the heateddebate about whether boxing should be banned can only be answered byaddressing important abstract questions. What are the acceptable limits ofindividual freedom in a civilized country? What are the justifications forpaternalism, for forcing people to behave in a particular way for their owngood? In other words, this debate is not simply about gut reactions to thesport, but depends on fundamental philosophical assumptions.

The analysis of reasons and arguments is a particular province ofphilosophy and the focus of this unit. In fact, inasmuch as philosophy hasa distinctive method, it is this: the construction, criticism and analysis ofarguments. Philosophical skills are applicable in any area wherearguments are important, not just in the realms of abstract speculation.They are particularly useful when you are writing essays, since you are

AGSG, ch.2, sect.3,‘Reading strategically’

STUDY WEEK ELEVEN: REASONING 125

usually expected to make a case for your conclusions rather than simplyassert them. For this reason, a basic grounding in philosophy is extremelyvaluable, whatever academic subject you intend to pursue.

3 ARGUMENT STRUCTURE

We’ll begin by looking at the underlying structure of a straightforwardargument, the kind of argument that most of us have used or criticized.Then we’ll move on to a passage on the moral topic of how we shouldtreat animals. Apart from its intrinsic interest, this passage should give youpractice in critical reading and a chance to identify and analyse reasoningtechniques.

ArgumentFirst of all it’s important to establish what philosophers mean when theytalk about arguments. An argument provides reasons or evidence insupport of a conclusion. Arguments are very different from mereassertions. It is probably easiest to demonstrate this with some examples.

Here is an assertion:

‘Extra-terrestrials do not exist.’

This is the sort of statement you might hear in ordinary conversation. As itstands it is simply an unsupported declaration of one person’s belief: itmay even be a prejudice, a view the speaker has arrived at withoutbothering to consider reasons or evidence for or against it. The obviousquestion to ask is ‘Why?’ ‘Why do you believe that extra-terrestrials do notexist?’ As soon as the speaker provides some reasons in support of theview, it ceases to be mere assertion and becomes part of an argument,though not necessarily a good one. Our speaker might back up the initialassertion in this way:

Because if extra-terrestrials do exist, then there would be conditions tosupport life outside the Earth.

This statement alone does not lead to the conclusion ‘Extra-terrestrials donot exist.’ But in most contexts it would be fairly obvious that the speakermeant you to realize that there is no evidence of such conditions. Thisbelief about the lack of evidence is unstated, or implicit. If we make itexplicit, then we get:

1 If extra-terrestrials did exist, then there would be conditions tosupport life outside the Earth.

AGSG, ch.4, sect.3.4,‘Presenting acoherent argument’


2 There is no evidence of such conditions.

3 So extra-terrestrials do not exist.

(1) and (2) are premises from which the conclusion (3) is supposed tofollow. Premises are the building blocks of arguments.

It’s important to realize that I’m not saying that extra-terrestrials do notexist. I’m merely saying that if the two premises are true, then theconclusion that extra-terrestrials do not exist must be true. You may wellbelieve that the second premise (‘there is no evidence of such conditions’)could be false; certainly, astronomers and scientists have devoted a greatdeal of energy to finding such evidence. But what we are doing here isseparating the content of the argument from its structure or form. Whenanalysing the structure of an argument, we put on one side for the timebeing the question of whether or not the premises are true. Instead weconcentrate on the question of whether or not the conclusion reallyfollows from the premises given.

Notice that the conclusion ‘So extra-terrestrials do not exist’ was the firstrather than the last thing said. The word ‘conclusion’ can be slightlyconfusing because it suggests that it should come at the end, like theconclusion of a story. But in fact, in ordinary discussion, conclusions areoften given before the reasons that support them, and are sometimessandwiched between reasons. When analysing an argument, however, it isa good idea to rearrange premises and conclusion so that theirrelationship can be seen clearly.

Content and form

Perhaps it’s easier to understand the distinction between content and formof arguments if you consider another argument with the same underlyingform as the one above:

If the thief had escaped through your garden, there’d be footprints inthe flower-bed.

There are no footprints in the flower-bed.

So the thief did not escape through your garden.

Like the previous argument, if the premises are true, then the conclusionmust be true. You can question whether or not the premises are true (forinstance, you might think that the thief could have got away through yourgarden without leaving any footprints in the flower-bed). But if they aretrue, then the structure of the argument is such that it follows that it’s truethat the thief did not escape through your garden.

Sometimes a conclusion is indicated by words such as ‘therefore’, ‘so’, ‘itfollows that’ or something similar. However, this isn’t always the case.Often these words are left out because the structure of the argument is


fairly obvious and doesn’t need to be signposted. Similarly, in somecontexts you can leave out a premise that is strictly necessary for theargument. For instance, if I said:

Grasshoppers are insects.

So they have six legs.

it is fairly obvious that I intended you to realize that I believe the unstatedpremise:

All insects have six legs.

even though I hadn’t spelt that out. With more complicated arguments, itis often a good idea to make explicit any such unstated premises so thatthe underlying structure of the argument becomes clear. To make sureyou’ve grasped the idea of implicit premises, try the following exercise.

EXERCISE ONE

What is the unstated premise in each of 1–5 below? For each one, writeout your answers in the following form:

Unstated premise:Stated premise:Conclusion:1 Fred is a cat, so of course he likes tuna fish.2 Your car tyres are bald, so your car will never pass the MOT.3 George Eliot was a woman, so she was mortal.4 Studying philosophy helps to improve your thinking skills. So you

should study philosophy.5 I think, therefore I exist.

Now check your answers against those at the end of this unit.

Truth and validityWe looked earlier at the following argument:

If extra-terrestrials did exist, then there would be conditions tosupport life outside the earth.

There is no evidence of such conditions.

So extra-terrestrials do not exist.

This is a valid argument. If the premises are true, then the conclusion mustbe true. Philosophers use the words ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ only to refer tothe structure of arguments. An argument cannot be true or false; it canonly be valid or invalid. On the other hand, statements, conclusions,



assertions, assumptions and premises may be true or false. This use oflanguage differs from everyday uses of the words ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’: youwill quite often hear people say ‘that’s a valid point’ or ‘that view isinvalid’. What the speaker means in each case is ‘what you said is true’

and ‘that view is false’. There is a great difference between validity andtruth.

A valid argument has a structure that guarantees a true conclusionprovided you feed in true premises. It is ‘truth-preserving’. You couldvisualize it as a kind of ticket machine, like the machine that gives youtickets for the London Underground. Its machinery is such that (assumingthat it is working properly), if you insert genuine coins (= true premises),then you are guaranteed to get a ticket (= a true conclusion). If, however,you use counterfeit money (= false premises), you may or may not get aticket (= true conclusion); you certainly couldn’t be certain of getting aticket.

For instance, in the argument we’ve been examining, if the premises aretrue, then the conclusion that extra-terrestrials don’t exist must be true. Ifyou said that the assumption and premises were true and also that theconclusion was false, you would be contradicting yourself. It would belike saying, ‘London is the capital city of England; but London isn’t thecapital city of England’. However, if one or both of the premises are false,there is no guarantee that the conclusion is true, despite the argument’svalidity. The question of whether or not an argument is valid can beaddressed separately from the question of whether or not its premises andconclusion are true. The question of validity is about the form of theargument; the question of the truth of premises and conclusion is about itscontent.

Philosophers are particularly keen to present valid arguments with truepremises since that’s the best way of guaranteeing true conclusions. Theyuse the word ‘sound’ to describe any valid argument with true premises(and therefore, also, a true conclusion).

At this point it is worth pausing to revise some of the key termsintroduced so far. The following exercise is meant to give you feedbackon your understanding of the material and to give you a chance to putinto practice what you’ve learned. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t getthe right answers first time around: use the answers and explanations atthe end of the unit to help you revise the material covered.

EXERCISE TWO

1 Underline the conclusion in each of the following arguments:(a) Vegetarians don’t eat animals. Prawns are animals. I eat prawns.

I’m not a vegetarian.


(b) Your party cannot win the next election. The only way to win anelection is to reduce taxation. Your party won’t reduce taxation.

2 Which of the following are valid arguments?(a) Vegetarians don’t eat animals. Peanuts are animals. So vegetarians

don’t eat peanuts.(b) All humans are mortal. Flamingos are birds. So flamingos are

mortal.(c) Anyone who buys a lottery ticket has a small chance of winning.

My sister has bought a lottery ticket. So she has a small chance ofwinning.

(d) All forms of killing are morally wrong. Capital punishment is aform of killing. Therefore capital punishment is morally wrong.

3 Match the following terms with the appropriate definitions, (a)–(h):argument; assertion; prejudice; conclusion; implicit assumption; soundargument; premise; valid argument(a) an unstated premise(b) a structure that guarantees a true conclusion if the premises are

true(c) a statement from which an argument’s conclusion is derived(d) a statement given without providing any reasons or supporting

evidence(e) a belief that is formed without considering evidence for or

against it(f) a statement derived from premises and from which it follows(g) reasons leading to a conclusion(h) a valid argument with true premises.

A formal fallacyLike the word ‘valid’, ‘fallacy’ is used in a technical way by philosophers.In ordinary conversation you often hear people say ‘That’s a fallacy’,meaning simply that what someone has just said is untrue. However, whenphilosophers use the word ‘fallacy’ they usually mean that an argument isinvalid. A fallacy in the strict sense, usually known as a formal fallacy, isan invalid argument. An example should clarify this.

Consider the following argument:

All punks wear safety-pins.

Johnny Rotten wears safety-pins.

So Johnny Rotten must be a punk.

Is this a valid argument? Well, at first glance you might take it to be so.One reason for this is that the structure seems quite close to a well-wornexample of a valid argument:

AGSG, ch.2, sects 2.3and 2.4, ‘Academiclanguage’ and‘Academic writingstyle’


All men are mortal.

Socrates was a man.

So Socrates was mortal.

However, if the punk example had precisely the same form, then it wouldlook like this:


Johnny Rotten is a punk.

So Johnny Rotten wears safety-pins.

In fact the argument


Johnny Rotten wears safety-pins.

So Johnny Rotten must be a punk.

is an invalid one: it is an example of a fallacy. The conclusion does notfollow logically from the premises, regardless of whether or not theconclusion happens to be true. The conclusion is a non sequitur (Latinfor ‘it does not follow’). This is because the way the supposed argument isstructured allows for the fact that someone can wear safety-pins and yetnot be a punk. One way of understanding this is by thinking in terms of adiagram (Figure 11.1).

Circle A stands for the class of punks and circle B for the class of allsafety-pin wearers. As you can see, circle A is within circle B, but there isstill the possibility of being in circle B without being in circle A. So youcannot conclude from the fact that you are in circle B that you must alsobe in circle A. That’s why it is a fallacy: the structure of the argumentdoesn’t reliably give true conclusions, even if you always feed in truepremises. The argument is invalid.

Here is a second example of the same fallacy:

All witches keep black cats.

My neighbour keeps a black cat.

So my neighbour must be a witch.

Again you can see that the conclusion would only follow if the firstpremise read ‘All and only witches keep black cats’. But it doesn’t saythat. So regardless of whether or not it is true that my neighbour is awitch, the argument is fallacious: it is an invalid structure, one which is nottruth-preserving. Even if the two premises are true, there can still bepeople who keep black cats who are not witches. This is precisely thekind of faulty reasoning that has fuelled witch-hunts of various kinds in

A B

FIGURE 11.1


the past. Such witch-hunts, in addition to using faulty reasoning, werebased on the (possibly false) premise that witches actually existed.However, more recent ‘witch-hunts’, such as the anti-Communistcampaign implemented by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s in the USA,often committed the fallacy outlined above. The fact that an individualshared some characteristic with known Communists, such as beinginterested in workers’ rights, was taken as conclusive evidence that thisperson was a Communist. However, just as having a black cat doesn’tmake you a witch, being interested in workers’ rights doesn’t make you aCommunist, even if all Communists are interested in workers’ rights.

EXERCISE THREE

Which of the following are formal fallacies?

1 All great artists have been slightly crazy. I’m slightly crazy, so I’ll endup being a great artist.

2 All babies cry. You’re a former baby. So you must have cried.3 If you break the speed limit, you’ll get stopped by the police. You’ve

been stopped by the police. So you must have been speeding.4 Some philosophers are terrible writers. You’re not a philosopher. So

you must be a good writer.5 All fish have gills. Dolphins are fish. Therefore dolphins have gills.

The answers are given at the end of the unit.

Deduction and inductionThe examples of arguments we have considered so far have all beendeductive arguments. Deductive arguments are so constructed that if thepremises are true, then the conclusion must be true. However, there isanother important type of argument which does not guarantee the truth ofthe conclusion even if all the premises are true. Inductive arguments areusually based on evidence which by its nature cannot be conclusive: theirconclusions can only ever be probable, never certain. For instance, thefollowing is an inductive argument:

All the flamingos I have ever seen were pink.

Therefore all flamingos are pink.

The fact that I have seen quite a few flamingos, and they were all pink,seems to support the conclusion that all flamingos are pink. However, asit only takes one non-pink flamingo to undermine the generalization thatall flamingos are pink, I cannot be absolutely sure that every flamingo inthe world is pink. For all I know, there are some albino flamingos. Ifnaturalists who have watched flamingos for decades report that they have


never seen a flamingo that wasn’t pink, this lends further support to myconclusion. Yet even then the slight possibility would remain that a non-pink flamingo might show up. This inductive argument is very differentfrom a deductive one since with a deductive argument, provided that thepremises are true, you can be absolutely certain that the conclusion istrue. This is not to say that induction is to be despised for its unreliability:we happily rely on inductive reasoning every day of our lives.

EXERCISE FOUR

Which of the following are examples of deduction? Which of induction?

1 All gods are immortal. Zeus is a god. So Zeus is immortal.2 The sun has always risen in the past. So it will rise tomorrow.3 All the students I have ever met enjoyed Open University summer

schools. So all students enjoy Open University summer schools.4 If you add the milk too quickly, the sauce will go lumpy. You added

the milk too quickly. So the sauce will go lumpy.5 All mammals are sensitive to pain. Rats are mammals. Therefore rats

are sensitive to pain.

The answers are given at the end of the unit.

EXERCISE FIVE

You’ve now been studying philosophy for at least a couple of hours, butdo you have a clear idea what the subject is? Stop and jot down a fewnotes in answer to the question: What is philosophy? It’s not an easyquestion to answer, but try to identify several distinctive features of thesubject. If possible, discuss the question with other students.

DISCUSSION

When you’ve written down your own answer, read B1–B4 in ResourceBook 1 where you will find a range of responses. There is no single rightanswer to the question: philosophers have at various times disagreedprofoundly about the nature of their subject. Thinking about the questionyourself, before looking at other people’s answers, should have helped tofocus your reading.

AGSG, ch.2, sect.5,‘Making notes’


4 READING PHILOSOPHY

IntroductionReading philosophy is a skill that has to be learned. To do it well requiresmore concentration than many other types of reading. It is an active ratherthan a passive process: you have to think critically about what you arereading as you read it. You need both to understand the author’s position,and also to decide whether the author has really put forward a coherentcase for that position. This involves analysing arguments. However, thearguments that philosophers use when writing books and articles areoften not as clearly stated or as straightforward as the ones we’ve beenconsidering so far.

In this section of the unit we’ll be looking closely at a passage ofphilosophy by the eighteenth-century philosopher, Jeremy Bentham.

A note on ‘thought experiments’First of all, it is important to appreciate the role that ‘thoughtexperiments’ play in philosophy.

Typically, philosophers will often use two imaginary cases to support anargument. Often these examples are deliberately far-fetched, the sort ofthing that you might expect in a science fiction novel. That shouldn’tmake you treat them less seriously: by eliminating the distracting andirrelevant details of real-life examples, and by exaggerating certainfeatures, philosophers aim to bring out what is really at issue.

For instance, if someone claims ‘All that human beings ever want out oflife is pleasurable feelings’, a philosopher might concoct a thoughtexperiment in order to show that this view is implausible. In thoughtexperiments, as in scientific experiments, conditions are kept controlledso that you can be reasonably sure of the source of your results. Imaginethat you could have electrodes plugged into your head for the rest of yourlife and that these electrodes produced intensely pleasurable feelings foryou whenever you pressed a lever. Would you choose to spend the rest ofyour life in an armchair pressing the lever? Well, you might. But manypeople wouldn’t.

What this thought experiment is intended to reveal is that many of uswant more out of life than a succession of blissful mental states, a life ofpleasurable feelings. The example is deliberately far-fetched: but that’sbecause it’s the best way of making the point.

AGSG, ch.2, sect.3.2,‘Reading speed’


Extract Bentham on the status of animals

The following is an extract from a book by the philosopher JeremyBentham (1748–1832). It is a famous passage in which he questions thebasis of granting rights to humans but not to animals. Most of the difficultyin making sense of this passage stems from the language: Bentham waswriting in the eighteenth century and used several words and phrases thatare no longer common (the book from which this extract is taken,Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, was published in1789). I have added explanations of these in square brackets. As with theprevious passage, read this one through several times before moving on toExercise 6:

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquirethose rights which never could have been withholden [withheld] fromthem but [except] by the hand of tyranny. The French have alreadydiscovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why humanbeings should be abandoned without redress to the caprice [whim] ofa tormentor [torturer]. It may one day come to be recognized that thenumber of the legs, the villosity [hairiness] of the skin, or thetermination of the os sacrum,* are reasons equally insufficient forabandoning a sensitive being [capable of feeling] to the same fate.What else is it that should trace the insuperable line [a division thatcan’t be crossed]? Is it the faculty of reason [ability to reason], orperhaps the faculty of discourse [ability to speak]? But a full-grownhorse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a moreconversable animal [capable of communication], than an infant of aday, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they wereotherwise, what would it avail? [what difference would it make?] Thequestion is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? But Can theysuffer?

(Bentham, 1789)

*Note: a bone at the end of the backbone, i.e. whether or not an animalhas a tail

EXERCISE SIX

Summarize the above passage using no more than 75 words. Yoursummary should include only the main points. Compare your summarywith mine at the end of the unit.

I now want to discuss three basic questions:

1 What is the author’s main conclusion?2 What reasons does he give in support of this conclusion?3 How good is his argument?


DISCUSSION

1 What is Bentham’s main conclusion?

Bentham’s main conclusion comes at the end of the passage: it is that therelevant question to ask is not whether animals can reason, or whetherthey can talk, but whether they can suffer.

2 What reasons does he give in support of this conclusion?

Bentham doesn’t offer any reasons directly in support of his conclusion:he simply asserts it. However, he does argue against the idea that theability to reason, or the ability to speak, decides the issue. We’ll examinethese arguments in more detail below. By eliminating the alternativeaccounts of the features that determine whether or not an animal deservesrights, Bentham gives indirect support to his conclusion.

3 How good is his argument?

In favour of Bentham’s argument it might be thought that, once he haseliminated reason or speech as the appropriate criterion for decidingwhich animals have rights, there is only one plausible alternative left: thecapacity to suffer.

However, against Bentham, we might point out that he has not explainedwhy the capacity to suffer is relevant. It is also worth looking in moredetail at his comparison between children and other animals. He askswhether we can draw a line between humans and animals on the groundsthat humans can reason and speak, and he concludes that we can’t. Notethat his argument depends on the assumption that children merit rights.Nowhere does he state this explicitly, but it is clear that he takes it forgranted and expects his readers to do so too.

Given this assumption, he shows that if we relied solely on ability toreason as the way of distinguishing those that have rights from those thatdon’t, then we would have to give rights to some non-human animalssince they have a greater capacity to reason than some new-bornchildren. Similarly, new-born children don’t have the ability to speak, andyet some animals can understand and communicate to a certain extentwith human beings: so if ability to speak is all that counts, we wouldprobably have to exclude some babies from our category of those animalsthat merit rights. However, since Bentham assumes (quite reasonably) thatall human babies merit rights, this conclusion is unacceptable.


Reductio ad absurdumThe underlying argument that Bentham uses here takes the form of areductio ad absurdum (literally a reduction to absurdity). This is atechnique for showing that a position is false. Here Bentham wants toshow that neither capacity to reason nor capacity to speak is relevant tothe question of rights. In order to show this, he considers what it wouldbe like if they were relevant. He supposes for the sake of argument thatthey are relevant, and demonstrates the absurd consequences that wouldthen follow logically. Here is the underlying argument:

Implicit assumption: Babies have rights.

Premise: Rights are based on capacity to reason or speak.

Premise: Babies can do neither.

Conclusion: So babies don’t have rights.

As can be seen, the implicit assumption that babies have rights is directlycontradicted by the conclusion that babies don’t have rights. Obviously

FIGURE 11.2 Photograph: Hulton Getty Picture Collection


the implicit assumption and the conclusion can’t both be true: that wouldbe absurd. So because the argument leads to a contradiction, we canconclude that there is something wrong with it, namely that thesupposition that rights are based on the ability to reason or speak issimply false.

The important point is that Bentham was offering a refutation of thebelief that ability to reason or use language determined whether or not ananimal had rights. Another way of looking at the same refutation is to seeBentham as pointing out that consistent application of the theory thatability to reason is the most important feature would lead to theconsequence that some young babies would not merit rights. This isobviously an unattractive and implausible consequence.

However, you might want to question his comment that some non-humananimals are better at communicating than some babies. You might want toreply that most babies have the capacity to develop into sophisticatedlanguage-users, but no non-human animal does, and that this is therelevant criterion for drawing a line between those animals that meritrights and those that don’t. By talking about actual rather than potentialcommunication, Bentham avoids this issue. So his argument needs to beexpanded somewhat to make this a convincing case.

5 CONCLUSION

This unit has introduced some of the basic skills and vocabulary neededfor reading and writing philosophy. Obviously much more could be saidabout each of the topics touched on in the examples: the aim here hasbeen to concentrate on the structure of arguments rather than on thedetail of their content. The emphasis throughout has been on argumentanalysis. This is a central feature of philosophy. Philosophers presentarguments; they also analyse and criticize the arguments used by otherphilosophers. This is how the subject moves forward. As I stressed at thebeginning of the unit, in order to read philosophy effectively, you have tothink critically about what you’re reading. This can be difficult at first, andslow. But the rewards in terms of transferable thinking skills and theintrinsic interest of the subject make it well worth the effort.


ANSWERS TO EXERCISES

Exercise One

1 Unstated premise: All cats like tuna fish.Stated premise: Fred is a cat.Conclusion: So of course he likes tuna fish.

2 Unstated premise: If your car tyres are bald, your car will never passthe MOT.Stated premise: Your car tyres are bald.Conclusion: So your car will never pass the MOT.

3 Unstated premise: All women are mortal.Stated premise: George Eliot was a woman.Conclusion: So she was mortal.

4 Unstated premise: You should study subjects which help to improveyour thinking skills.Stated premise: Studying philosophy helps to improve your thinkingskills.Conclusion: So you should study philosophy.

5 Unstated premise: Everything that thinks exists.Stated premise: I think.Conclusion: Therefore I exist.

Exercise Two

1 (a) I’m not a vegetarian.(b) Your party cannot win the next election.

2 (a) valid (even though one of the premises and the conclusion are false)(b) invalid(c) valid(d) valid

3 a = implicit assumptionb = valid argumentc = premised = assertione = prejudicef = conclusiong = argumenth = sound argument


Exercise Three

1 Formal fallacy. From the premise ‘All great artists have been slightlycrazy’, it doesn’t follow that anyone who is slightly crazy will end upbeing a great artist.

2 Valid argument.

3 Formal fallacy. Speeding is not the only possible explanation of whyyou have been stopped by the police. So the conclusion cannot bededuced from the premises.

4 Formal fallacy. The first premise doesn’t state that only philosophersare terrible writers. So the conclusion does not follow from thepremises, since you could still be a terrible writer even though youweren’t a philosopher (and, incidentally, you could still be anexcellent writer even though you were a philosopher).

5 Valid argument (despite its false premise: dolphins aren’t fish).

Exercise Four

1 deduction

2 induction

3 induction (provided that I haven’t met every student)

4 deduction

5 deduction

Exercise Six

Here is my summary of the passage. Don’t worry if yours is slightlydifferent, provided it includes the main points:Non-human animals may one day be given the rights they deserve.Neither reasoning ability nor the ability to use language can be the basisfor drawing a line between those creatures that merit rights and those thatdon’t, since many animals have a greater ability to reason and are better atcommunicating than young children. But even if this weren’t so, itwouldn’t matter, because the only relevant ability is the ability to feel pain.


GLOSSARY

argument reasons or evidence leading to a conclusion.

assertion unsupported statement.

assumption premise for which no argument is given; one which isaccepted for the purposes of the argument.

contradiction saying two things that cannot both be true.

deduction type of argument that always gives true conclusions providedthe premises are true.

explicit stated.

formal fallacy strictly speaking, an invalid argument; however, the word‘fallacy’ is sometimes used in a looser sense to mean any unreliable wayof reasoning.

implicit unstated.

induction type of argument which, even if the premises are true, doesn’tguarantee the truth of the conclusion; a generalization based on a range ofobservations.

invalid argument one in which the conclusion does not follow logicallyfrom the premises.

non sequitur statement that does not follow logically from what hasgone before.

prejudice belief formed without weighing the evidence for or against it.

premise statement from which a conclusion is derived.

reductio ad absurdum literally a reduction to absurdity. Strictlyspeaking it is a technique for showing a position to be false by supposingthat the position is true and then demonstrating that this leads to acontradiction.

refutation demonstration that a position is false.

sound argument valid argument with true premises, and so a trueconclusion.

thought experiment imaginary situation designed to bring out aparticular point.

valid argument one in which the conclusion follows logically from thepremises, whether or not the premises and conclusion happen to be true.


REFERENCES

BENTHAM, J. (1789; reprint 1948) Introduction to the Principles of Moralsand Legislation, New York, Hafner.

Suggestions for further readingYou are not required to read the following as part of your year’s work onA123. However, you may find it helpful and interesting to read one ormore of them if you wish to pursue an interest beyond your A123 work:

GLOVER, J. (1977) Causing Death and Saving Lives, Harmondsworth,Penguin.

NAGEL, T. (1987) What Does it All Mean? A very short introduction tophilosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

SINGER, P. (ed.) (1986) Applied Ethics, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

WARBURTON, N. (1995, 2nd edn) Philosophy: the basics, London, Routledge.

WARBURTON, N. (1996) Thinking from A to Z, London, Routledge.

REVISION TEST

The multiple-choice questions that follow are intended to give you somefeedback on how much of the unit you have absorbed. The answers are atthe end of the unit.

QUESTION 1

Which of the following three statements is/are true?

1 Premises can be valid.

2 Arguments can be sound.

3 Formal fallacies can yield true conclusions.

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) 3 only

(d) 2 and 3 only

(e) none of the above


QUESTION 2

Which of the following statements contradict each other?

1 Fish have gills.

2 Sharks don’t have gills.

3 Sharks aren’t fish.

4 Fish don’t have gills.

(a) 1 and 2

(b) 1 and 3

(c) 1 and 4

(d) 3 and 4


QUESTION 3

Which of the following statements is/are false?

1 A sound argument is valid and has true premises.

2 Valid arguments can have false premises.

3 Non sequiturs are the same as contradictions.

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) 3 only

(d) 1 and 3 only

(e) 1, 2 and 3

QUESTION 4

Which of the following is/are valid?

1 All humans are mortal. Queen Elizabeth the First was human.Therefore Queen Elizabeth the First was mortal.

2 If you can catch a ball on your nose, you must be a seal. You cancatch a ball on your nose. So you are a seal.

3 All Open University students are highly motivated. You are highlymotivated. So you must be an Open University student.


(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) 3 only

(d) 1 and 3 only

(e) 1 and 2 only

QUESTION 5

‘Boxing should be banned because it causes brain damage.’

Which of the following could be an implied premise of the aboveargument?

1 All sports that cause brain damage should be banned.

2 All sports that cause physical damage to participants should bebanned.

3 All activities that cause brain damage should be banned.

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) 3 only

(d) 1 and 2 only

(e) 1, 2 and 3

QUESTION 6

Bentham believed that:

(a) animals should be treated as badly as, or worse than, slaves;

(b) animals’ capacity to suffer was the most relevant consideration whendeciding how to treat them;

(c) the ability to talk is what should determine how we treat othercreatures;

(d) intelligent animals should be treated better than week-old humanbabies;

(e) we should give equal moral weight to a full-grown horse and a week-old human baby.


QUESTION 7

Which of the following statements is true?

1 Philosophers aren’t interested in argument.

2 Philosophy has no relevance for any aspect of our lives.

3 Philosophy is simply the history of who thought what.

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) 3 only

(d) 2 and 3 only


ANSWERS TO THE REVISION TEST

1 d

2 c

3 c

4 e

5 e

6 b

7 e


UNIT 12 READINGWEEKThis is the second of a series of built-in spaces in the course,designed to help you keep up, and also consolidate and reflect onthe work you’ve done in the preceding study weeks.

If you are behind, how can you learn from this experience andpace yourself better in future? Take a quick look at the volume anddensity of your note taking and how much you’ve marked up theunits. It would be very understandable if you started by makingnotes on everything and then tailed off. We’ve all gone overboardwith a highlighter at some time – and discovered that markingeverything just takes us back to where we started. If this hashappened to you, try to take a slightly more relaxed attitude to thebeginning of units or new sections. Things probably will makemore sense as you go along, and any plunge into a new area canbe a bit overwhelming at first. You can always go back.

Did you skip the exercises as you realized time was rushing by?That was probably not a wise move, as the exercises are designedto slow you down so that a key point gets home. If you skippedand then floundered, you probably lost time.

Did you get interrupted too much? Try to decide whether you were(a) just distracted, (b) blown off course by a major crisis or (c)swamped by everyday life. If (a), remember that you can start workbefore you colour-code your paper-clips; if (b), tell your tutor.However, (c) is the tricky one because it goes on all the time:young children often get sick, washing machines break down,birthdays come round and when isn’t there a rush on at work? Tellyour family and friends you need a bit more space; they’ll benefit ifyou’re happier.

If, however, you have kept up, you should still try to put in at leastten hours during this week. You can go back over the units in theblock, re-reading the sections you found most difficult, or thesections you’ve found most rewarding. You may already be surethat some subjects are not for you, but don’t give up just becauseyou found something particularly difficult. After all, you committedyourself to an intellectual challenge when you undertook thecourse.

This course is designed to help you make informed choices amongall the options available for future study, but it isn’t wise to excludeany option too soon, not least because the popular interdisciplinaryarts courses call for a full range of skills. In this course, the

STUDYWEEK

TWELV

E

AGSG, ch.2, sects3.4 and 5, ‘Settingtargets’ and ‘Makingnotes’

disciplines are linked in various interdependent combinations so that if,for example, you left a unit, you would put yourself at a disadvantage. Soif you are already making choices, plan to give one or two disciplines lessattention rather than leaving them out altogether.

148 STUDY WEEK TWELVE: READING WEEK

INDEX

This index includes references to the Colour Plates and Plates in the Illustration Book;these are indicated by Col. Pl. for Colour Plates and Pl. for Plates. Fig. refers to figures inthe text:

Aadequacy, demand of 36see also works of art

affective individualism 106alienation, in Clare’s sonnets 71angle of visionchanging perspective 19–21in still lifes 24–5, 26Portrait of Agatha Bas 22,Pl. 8

The Artist in his Studio 39,Col. Pl. 3

animals, treatment ofstatus of, Bentham on 135–6

argument 126–38content and form 127–28deduction 141deduction and induction132–3

invalid 141see also formal fallacies

meaning of 127prejudice 126premises 127–8reductio ad absurdum 137–8refutation 138, 141truth and validity 128–9valid 141see also formal fallacies

Artist in his Studio, The Col.Pl. 3see also Rembrandt van Rijn

artistsdates of birth and death 9–10pronunciation guide 9

assertion 126, 141assumption 141Auden, W.H. 76

BBarrett Browning, Elizabeth 72,Fig. 9.5‘How do I love thee?’ 73Sonnets from the Portuguese73

Bentham, Jeremy see animalsbiblical allusionin Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 63–8

Blunden, Edmund 76Boleyn, Anne 53Book of Genesis 18Brooke, Rupert, ‘The Soldier’ 76Brooks, Gwendolyn 76Burns, Robert, ‘O my luve’s likea red, red rose’ 58

Ccaesura 82in Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 65

in Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 62

caprice 135Caribbean poets 76–7childrenfamily roles 119parent–child relationships103, 117, 119, 120

rights 136songs 48

Clare, John 68, Fig. 9.4‘Emmonsails Heath in Winter’69

class see social classclosing couplet in Shakespeare’s

‘Shall I compare thee to asummer’s day?’ 60, 62

Thomas Wyatt and HenryHoward 52–3

‘Composition’ see Thomas, R.S.Constable, John, WivenhoePark, Essex 24, Pl. 11

contradiction 141, 143couplet 82see also closing couplet

Courbet, Gustave, Still Life withApples and Pomegranate 23,25–6, 29–30, 31–2, 33–4, 37,Col. Pl. 9

Crabbe, George 68critical form 35–6, 43Rembrandt’s The Artist in hisStudio 42, Col. Pl. 3

see also form

DDante, Alighieri 52, 72Vita Nuova 52

David, Jacques-Louis 24Delacroix, Eugène 10Return of ChristopherColumbus 24, Pl. 10

della Francesca, Piero 10dialogue 82in sonnet form 50

diction 82in Clare’s ‘Emmonsails Heathin Winter’ 68, 71

Dou, Gerard 10A Painter in his Studio 42–3,Pl. 15

dramaform of 35in sonnet form 50, 55

dramatic effect 22see also drama

Dunn, Douglas 78Dürer, Albrecht 10

EEarth-stopper on the Banks ofthe Derwent, The Pl. 7see also Wright, Joseph

elegy 80, 82see also Harrison, Tony

‘Marked with D.’ellipsis 82in Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 66

emotional effectin still lifes 26–8

Engels, Friedrich 109‘England in 1819’ see Shelley,Percy Bysshe

enjambement 82in Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 65

epigram 82in sonnets 60

explicit belief about evidence126, 141

FFace of the Moon, The Col. Pl. 5see also Russell, John

family, the 86, 88, 92, 93, 96, 97,99, 103feminist viewpoint 109from Roman Britain to thepresent 116–20

nuclear family 114, 115form 5and meaning in poetry 48–9and space in painting 15, 18,22

critical form 35The Artist in his Studio 38,Col. Pl. 3

A Painter in his Studio 42,Pl. 15

inBarrett Browning’s ‘Howdo I love thee?’ 73

Clare’s ‘Emmonsails Heathin Winter’ 71

Harrison’s ‘Marked with D.’81

philosophy 127–8plays 35

Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 63

sonnets 50–3reductio ad absurdum 138

formal fallacies 130–2, 140, 141see also argument

French Revolution, 92, 107, 110primary sources, 93

Ggender of artist, 28genres of art, 24‘Glasgow Sonnets’ see Morgan,Edwin

HHarlem Renaissance, the 76Harrison, Tony 60, 80, Fig. 9.8

‘Marked with D.’ 78‘On not being Milton’ 78‘The School of Eloquence’ 78

Heaney, Seamus 76Heem, Jan Davidsz de 10Still Life with Fruit andOysters 30, Col. Pl. 11

history painting see paintingHopkins, Gerard Manley 75, 76,Fig. 9.7‘The Windhover’ 75

Iiambic pentameter see rhythmIce Floes Col. Pl. 6see also Monet, Claude

iconographyin still life paintings 33–4

illusionin painting 17

illusionistic planes 22literal plane 19, 22, 39picture plane 22, 25, 39Rembrandt’s The Artist in hisStudio 42, Col. Pl. 3

imagery 82in poetry 59in Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 59

see also simile and metaphor

implicit belief aboutevidence 141assumptions 137–8, 139premises 126–7

induction 141see also argument

Italian sonnets 51

Llandscape painting 14, 23, 24Laslett, Peter 109, 110, 118The World We Have Lost 116

Lentino, Giacomo da, 51Life of Man, The Pl. 12see also Steen, Jan

lightimagery ofHarrison’s ‘Marked with D.’79


in paintings 14, 16, 18in Rembrandt’s The Artist inhis Studio 40, Col. Pl. 3

in still lifes 25, 26lighting and modelling 22‘When I consider how mylight is spent’ 67

listeners (and readers)of poetry 48, 49, 63

literal plane see illusionisticplanes

Loggia with a View of DelftPl. 7see also Vosmaer, Daniel

‘London, 1802’ see Wordsworth,William

loveas an abstract idea 58‘How do I love thee?’ 73–5in the sonnet 50, 51, 52, 54

M‘Marked with D.’ see Harrison,Tony

Marx, Karl 109‘Mayflower’ see Plath, SylviaMcKay, Claude see Caribbeanpoets

meaning 5, 43

INDEX150

double-meaning 58, 62inClare’s ‘Emmonsails Heathin Winter’ 71

history 89, 113, 115Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’65, 67

painting 17paintings 15poetry 49, 63Rembrandt’s The Artist inhis Studio 42, Col. Pl.3

still lifes 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,34

the sonnet 54see also enjambement

Meredith, GeorgeModern Love 79

metaphor 82in history 113in Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 59

in still life 32see also imagery and simile

metre 82in the sonnet 60see also rhythm: iambic

Millay, Edna St Vincent 77Milton, John 63, 64, Fig. 9.3

‘When I consider how mylight is spent’ 65

Modern Love, see Meredith,George

Moillon, Louise 10, 33Still Life (with a Basket ofFruit and a Bunch ofAsparagus) 23, 25, 28, 29,Col. Pl. 8

Monet, Claude 10Ice Floes 22, Col. Pl. 6

Monna Innominata, seeRossetti, Christina

Morgan, Edwin 78

Nnarrative 83in history 120in sonnets 50, 52, 67

Newman, Barnett 10The Void (untitled drawing)18, Pl. 3

non sequitur 131, 141, 143novel, the 36emergence as dominantliterary form 67

Ooctaves, in sonnets 51, 83byBarrett Browning 73, 74Clare 71Milton 65, 66Plath 77Shakespeare 59, 60, 62

see also Petrarchan sonnetoil paints see paintings: medium‘On not being Milton’ seeHarrison, Tony

‘One day I wrote her nameupon the strand’ see Spenser,Edmund

Owen, Wilfred 76‘Ozymandias’ see Shelley, PercyBysshe

PPainter in his Studio, A Pl. 15see also Dou, Gerard

paintingfigure–ground relationship 17,21see also angle of vision

form and space in 14–18grammar of 14ground-plan 39, 40, 44,Fig. 8.13

history painting 24light see light: in paintingsmodelling 22–3perspective 19–20,Figs 8.3–8.11

spatial relations 22, 23still life 12, 30–3vanishing point 21see also genres of art

paintings 12–43medium 11The Artist in his Studio 38,Col. Pl. 3

size 12still lifes 23–30

Paolo, Giovanni di 10pastels see paintings: mediumperspective see paintingVredeman de Vries, Hans 21Petrarchan sonnet 51, 52, 73, 78Barrett Browning’s Sonnetsfrom the Portuguese 73

Thomas Wyatt 53see also sonnets: octaves

philosophyabstract questions 125assumptions 125, 141French Revolution 110reading 138thought experiments 134, 141see also argument

picture plane see illusionisticplanes

Plath, Sylvia 77-8‘Mayflower’ 77

poetryform and meaning 48–9narrative, in sonnets 50, 52,67

power of 49rhyme schemes 51, 60, 65, 73,77, 79, 83

rural life in 68see also sonnets

politicsFrench Revolution 93, 110in Milton’s poetry 63, 67in sonnets 50, 53in Wordsworth’s poetry 68their influence on Courbet 32

Pope, Alexander 67Portrait of Agatha Bas Pl. 8see also Rembrandt van Rijn

Portrait of Nicolaes vanBambeeck Pl. 9see also Rembrandt van Rijn

portraiture 24prejudice 141in history 108see also argument

premises 126–7see also argument

pun 83

INDEX 151

see also double-meaningpunctuationin Clare’s ‘Emmonsails Heathin Winter’ 70, 71

in poetry 35, 47in Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 61, 62, 63

puritanism, and Milton 63

Qquatrains 83inHarrison’s ‘Marked with D.’79

Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 65


the Petrarchan sonnet 51

Rracial conflict 76–7readers see listeners (andreaders)

reductio ad absurdum, seeargument

refutation see argumentrelationship, betweenform and meaning 5images and words 14lighting and modelling 22spectator and artist 42spectator and subject 26spheres 19the five senses 31the paint and the painting 17

relationships see children:parent–child relationships

relevance, demand of see worksof art

Rembrandt van Rijn(Rembrandt) 9, 10, 13Portrait of Agatha Bas 22, 27,41, Pl. 8

Portrait of Nicolaes vanBambeeck 27, 28, 41, Pl. 9

The Artist in his Studio 7, 8,10, 13, 38, 41, Col. Pl. 3

Return of ChristopherColumbus, see Delacroix,Eugène

rhyme schemes see poetryrhymed couplet see closingcouplet

rhythmCaribbean 77iambic 60, 82in sonnets 62

Rossetti, Christina 73, 74, Fig. 9.6Monna Innominata 75

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 50rural life see poetryRussell, John 10The Face of the Moon 16, Col.Pl. 5

SSade, Laura de 52Sassoon, Siegfried 76‘School of Eloquence, The’ seeHarrison, Tony

Scottish poets and sonnets 78self-portraitRembrandt’s The Artist in hisStudio 38, Col. Pl. 3

still life as a 29, 32, 33senses, the 5, 31, 34sestet, in sonnets 51, 83byBarrett Browning 73, 74Clare 71Milton 65, 66, 67Plath 77Shakespeare 59, 60, 61, 62

see also Petrarchan sonnetShakespeare, William 55, 56,Fig. 9.2‘Shall I compare thee to asummer’s day?’ 63

Shelley, Percy Bysshe‘England in 1819’ 67‘Ozymandias’ 67

Sidney, Sir Philip 54, Fig. 9.1‘With how sad steps, Omoon...’ 53

simile 83in Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 59

see also imagery andmetaphor

single-point perspective 20size see paintingssocial activityart as a 16, 42

social class 116bourgeoisie 107, 115, 120in Britain 92in Clare’s ‘Emmonsails Heathin Winter’ 68

in Harrison’s ‘Marked with D.’81

sansculottes 115‘Soldier, The’ see Brooke,Rupert

sonnet, theform 52structure 49, 50, 58, 60, 61, 62,66, 71, 74as a joke 60

see also Petrarchan sonnetsonnets 50–81as love poems 51, 52, 54, 58,73-5, 78, 83

by women 75Caribbean see Caribbeanpoets

Clare 71Harrison 81Milton 68punctuation in seepunctuation

Scottish 78Shakespeare 63sixteenth-century English50–81

Welsh 78Sonnets from the Portuguese,see Barrett Browning,Elizabeth

Sorley, Charles 76sound argument 141see also argument: valid

Spenser, Edmund 53‘One day I wrote her nameupon the strand’ 53

Steen, JanThe Life of Man 24, Pl. 12

Steenwyck, Harmen 10

INDEX152

Still Life (An Allegory of theVanities of Human Life)30, 31, Col. Pl. 10

still life 12, 14and the senses 31as a genre 24iconography in seeiconography

‘Vanitas’ 31Still Life (An Allegory of theVanities of Human Life) Col.Pl. 10see also Steenwyck, Harmen

Still Life (with a Basket of Fruitand a Bunch of Asparagus)Col. Pl. 8see also Moillon, Louise

Still Life with Apples andPomegranate Col. Pl. 9see also Courbet, Gustav

Still Life with Fruit and OystersCol. Pl. 11see also Heem, Jan Davidsz de

Still Life with White Swan Pl. 13see also Utrecht, Adriaen van

still lifes 33age and gender of artist 28emotional or expressivequality see emotional effect

meaning see meaning in stilllifes

see also Courbet, Gustave;Moillon, Louise

Stone, Lawrence, 109structureof argument see argumentof the sonnet see sonnet

Surrey (Henry Howard), Earl of52‘Set me whereas the sun dothparch the green’ 53

‘The golden gift that Naturedid thee give’ 53

syllablesin Harrison’s ‘Marked with D.’79

in Manley Hopkins’ ‘TheWindhover’ 75

in Shakespeare’s ‘Shall Icompare thee to asummer’s day?’ 59

see also metresyntaxin Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 66

T‘Tales of the Islands’ seeWalcott, Derek

tempera see paintings: mediumtercetsin Milton’s ‘When I considerhow my light is spent’ 65

in poetry 83in the Petrarchan sonnet 51

texturein still lifes 25, 31, 34see also paintings: medium

Thomas, Dylan 76Thomas, R.S.

‘Composition’ 78thought experiments seephilosophy

triplet, in poetry see tercetsturn, in the sonnet 51, 59, 60,65, 71, 73, 79, 83

UUtrecht, Adriaen van 10Still Life with White Swan 23,Pl. 13

Vvalid argument see argument:valid

vanishing point see painting‘Vanitas’ see still lifeVeen, Otto van 10Vita Nuova, see Dante, AlighieriVoid, The (untitled drawing)Pl. 3see also Newman, Barnett

volta, see turn, in the sonnet

Vosmaer, Daniel 10Loggia with a View of Delft21, Pl. 7

WWalcott, Derek, ‘Tales of theIslands’ 77

Walt Disney Studios,background drawing 21

‘When I consider how my lightis spent’ see Milton, John

‘Windhover, The’ see Hopkins,Gerard Manley

Wivenhoe Park, Essex Pl. 11see also Constable, John

women artists 33Louise Moillon 28

women poets see sonnets: bywomen

Wordsworth, William 67‘London, 1802’ 68

works of art 5, 12, 13, 28, 31as a social activity see socialactivity

critical form see formdemand of adequacy 36–7demand of relevance 38reading captions 11reproduction, effect of 23titles 11see also paintings

Wright, Joseph 10The Earth-stopper on theBanks of the Derwent 22,Col. Pl. 7

Wrightson, Keith, The IllustratedDictionary of British History118-9

writing, compared with painting15

Wyatt, Sir Thomas 52, 53

INDEX 153

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