figurative language in the phoenix and the turtle
He is the baseborn haggard who threatens Arthur the royal bird: Mordred, thou deceitfull kinsman, It was not merely the usual compound of simples, but a compound resulting impossibly in a simple, for here, as in the sixth stanza, a singular form (here a noun, there a verb) is used where a plural would be expected; the impossible unity is thus effected in the verse and not merely described by it. Honigmann's attempt to connect Shakespeare intimately with the Stanleys in the decade before the 1590s weaves a more than usually elaborate conjectural tissue; but space precludes doing more than raise a quizzical eyebrow at it here. Venerandum verum; So too in Alain's Anticlaudianus the ascent of Prudentia in the chariot, whose horses are the senses, is followed by receiving in a state of ecstasy the idea of human perfection, and by bringing a copy of it down to the world. It rests on the assumption that the bird sitting 'on the sole Arabian tree' must be the Phoenix since that tree has been described by Lyly, Florio and Shakespeare himself as 'the phoenix' throne' (Tempest, III, iii, 23). In spite of anything they may have been, the Phoenix and the Turtle are now not only birds, but dead birds. With goodly armony. Without denying the excellence of the relationship, it yet modifies the sophistical praise by introducing common sense. The anthem, being sung as part of a ceremony in a world of symbolic birds, leads us gradually into another world. With poignant urgency, she must proclaim the lamenting-celebratory purpose of the funeral service.2. It is rather a harmony of solemn rhetoric and inspired idealism rising to a note of triumph and universal hope. "Raritie," unmatched excellence,22 is the quality most frequently represented by the unique phoenix. The last date is today's About that time Sir John may have casually mentioned Chester's earlier poem of celebration, composed at the outset of his climb back to reputation,16to Jonson or some other of his Court-beautifying poets, who then saw in the theme of the Phoenix and Turtle unrealized possibilities for poetic exploitation. Beginning and ending thus with accented syllables, the line tends to come to a full stop and to be an independent sound and sense unit. X, 15, p. 491). The structure of Love's Martyr is loose; the book is most often seen as a miscellany.7 Chester's story of the Phoenix who fears extinction is interrupted at intervals by material which does not seem to further the narrative. The Phoenix is indeed the bird of greatest lay, in a tradition that goes back as far as Lactantius (De ave Phoenice 45 ff): Beginning to pour forth her holy melodies, D. S. Wrangham, London 1881) I 128. To vie strange formes with fancie, yet t'imagine Troth is exemplified in the actions of Phoenix and loyal Dove, in command and obedience, in mutual vows and in mutual sacrifice. The summons accordingly issues on behalf of the Phoenix and is heard and understood primarily and most naturally by the Turtle. I hope of these another Creature springs, When, for instance, Reason says that the two birds made their own deaths, instead of making a nest in which they could brood'Death is now the Phoenix nest'we know that the line can also mean that death has become the beginning of the Phoenix's new life. Because the poem itself is both proposition and exhortation, 'Let' must be taken to mean both suppose and allow. Whichever way Reason is viewed, at this point it takes over the poem. Pal. A Spenserian contrast between kinds of love is taken up in song. 29-144. For Cleanth Brooks, The Phoenix and the Turtle illustrates not only the Donnean metaphysical conceit but with equal clarity the paradoxical nature of all poetic experience. 6Boutell's Heraldry, revised C. V. Scott-Giles (London and New York, 1954), p. 60. For the omission of the second definite article, see Murray Copland, 'The Dead Phoenix', Essays in Criticism 15 (1965), 279. 10-12, and IV.xiv. Comprehension Lesson Details Much criticism of The Phoenix and Turtle has tended to focus on Shakespeare's concern with themes connected to love, chastity, and desire in the poem. Again, there is the matter of the birds' emblematic value: how much of this is received wisdom, and how far is it original to Shakespeare? This is not a hair-splitting Reason, but a Reason of common sense that says, "You may prove with your conceits and quiddities that these lovers are one, but they still seem like two to me." Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. A. Scheler (Bruxelles 1866) III lff. This turtle may be slow, but she's always "on her way" Ceremony and formality hold the poem at a distance from personal involvement and, until Reason cries out and asserts the loss more simply, the very praise is contentious. Like Shakespeare and unlike Chester, Roydon therefore departs from the myth of rebirth to enhance the hero's praise. Hir ashes flying with the winde, Nature tells Jove and the assembly of gods that though her Arabian bird is an Angel, whose beauty is 'devine maiesticall', she will soon die and leave the earth without its exemplar of perfection, because in the Arabian climate she cannot regenerate herself. Figurative Language In 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', on the other hand, the solemnity of the tone, the cryptic language, tense and terse, are not alone responsible for the heightened awareness of paradox. 1-16. The mood changes with the tense. The Turtle was a bird dedicated to Venus, yet chaste since it had but one mate in its life and therefore was a type of absolute constancy in married love.24 The chastity of the Phoenix was absolute in a different way. This, unorthodox as it may seem in terms of bestiary tradition, is the myth of the Phoenix which Shakespeare (as even his Arden editor admits) adopted from the pages of Love 's Martyr.6. Ideas that are idly fained Now let any man judge if it be a matter of meane art or wit to containe in one historicall narration, either trust or fained, so many, so diverse, and so deepe conceits.22. . The first of Shakespeare's poems, the only one in the collection without a title, is in two parts. When claiming that no prospect of rebirth is suggested in the poem I am aware that Wilson Knight identifies 'the bird of loudest lay' with the Phoenix reborn from its ashes. 11Ben Jonson, ed. Chester shows himself aware that his master consorts with better poets at Court: he would have been prepared for the Poetical Essays appended to his poem a few years later. 100-8) gives a broad survey of the classical, Platonic, and Petrarchan influences, while J. V. Cunningham tries to show that the central part, or anthem, reflects the medieval scholastic refinementand consequent displacementof Platonic (specifically Plotinian) thought. 10The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (ed. 'and the Phoenix answers with the praise of immutable love'Love is a holy, holy, holy, thing' (pp. 131-2. Simple were so well compounded. Many parallels, ranging from Michelangelo to Drayton, have been offered. With the death of the Phoenix and the Turtle the ideal conjunction is severed. Mine eyes shall answer teare for teare of thine. We may assume that once he has returned the lovers will again experience the physical union that absence for the moment denies them, though the poem shows too much delicacy to make this an obvious part of its promise. 359-9) and F. T. Prince (op, cit. 6 'The Phoenix is at the same time a figure for Elizabeth and for the monarch's body politic in which the poets see their own political identity as subjects. . This is not only to say that the whole of 'kinde' is united in mourning a poet's death (a theme that spans from Moschus' Lament for Bion to Lycidas), but that emblematically the birds can give an exemplum of love, and an insight into death and immortality, which has a purity and self-sufficiency beyond what human images of grief could convey: The skie bred Egle roiall bird, Figurative Language . "The Phoenix and Turtle - Overviews" Shakespearean Criticism That she was never yet that ever knew Reason's account of the event (lines 45b-48) is merely a conditional concession to something it cannot immediately be quite sure about. Figurative Language. - Repetto Fifth Grade Irony may be detected in the pieces signed by the 'Vatum Chorus', Marston and Jonson, but Shakespeare's poem never verges on burlesque.4 The oracular utterance, though high-pitched, never suggests mock solemnity as in Ovid's playful elegy on his mistress' parrot.5 Besides, though Shakespeare did take the notion of the Phoenix and the Turtle from Loves Martyr, he altered the story. Already a member? 4 Matchett, p. 193. What Reason has seen is, of course, the paradox in its variations. Prince, the editor of the 1960 Arden edition of The Poems, remarks (p. 179, n.) that "Most commentators agree that this bird's identity is left uncertain. They cannot therefore be anything but chaste, for concupiscence in such a relationship is not possible to either. The meaning of the invented noun "distincts" is clear: they were two separate individuals. As farre from spot, as possible defining. Indeed, some of Shakespeare's statements would correctly apply only to the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. Whatever one is to say about topical allusionsand it would be foolish to deny their existence out of handmust be said after we have considered what is manifestly the writer's main intent, and the scheme of his book or poem as a whole; we are likely to find that the more sure and satisfying the imaginative work, the less important will become the topical references, or autobiographical scaffolding.1. The bird-liturgy is combined with a love-theme in the delightful Messe des Oisiaus of Jean de Cond, in which all aspects of birds' celebrating the joys of spring, of lovers' celebrating Venus, and of priests' celebrating their mass come to be symbolically related and interchangeable. 'Beauty' and 'rarity' or uniqueness are again emphasized. Euery foule of tyrant wing. 4 By "the poet," I mean the speaker of the words, a fictional character, if you like, whose voice we hear. The opening stanzas' modification, fashioning, and refinement of emblematic allegory is what gives the poem its air of confident self-possession. Aristotle denieth this and saith, that the ravens conceive by the mouth, no more than the Egyptian ibis: and he affirmeth, that it is nothing else but a wantonness which they have in billing and kissing one another, which we see them to do often-times. Drayton's alone have been previously cited. This forcing of the word is perhaps demanded by the beginning of the next stanza: "Propertie was thus appalled, / That the selfe was not the same." p. 179) argue that no particular bird need be meant; T. W. Baldwin (On the Literary Genetics of Shakespeare's Poems and Sonnets, Urbana 1950, p. 368) and Wilson Knight (op. and exclude Phoenix's enemies, disbelief and disloyalty. XXIII, No. The story of Arthur has a special place here. She returns down through the spheres, and forms the creature who is both divine and human, who shares in the higher as in the lower world. Chester's dialogue between the Phoenix and the Turtle on passionate chastity, and the Pelican's following verses, are among the best things in his overlong poem and at least state lucidly and readably, and with a sense of drama, the arguments on ideal love which were normally confined to prose treatisesall of which, including even Hoby's Castiglione, tend towards dry abstraction.
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