Fons Magraner, 1

Paula Fons Magraner

Instructor: Purificación Ribes Traver

35339 17th and 18th century English Literature

2021-02-10

UNIT 1

1.1 Context

 1485 end of the Wars of the Roses

o New dynasty: Tudors
o King Henry VIII whose descendants were King Edward VI, Queen Mary
I and Queen Elizabeth I
 Established himself as head of the church and state
 Movement: Reformation centuries of religious faith, attitudes
and beliefs changed
 Protestantism: originated with Martin Luther’s 95 Theses (1517)
 William Caxton published the first imaginative book in England
 Sir Thomas Malory retold the Arthurian legends as Le Morte D’Arthur
 1492 Columbus travelled to the Americas
 Copernicus and Galileo: Earth was not the centre of the universe
 1628 Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood
 New devices: clocks, telescopes, microscopes, thermometers…
 Renaissance:
o New geographical and spiritual worlds
o Rebirth of learning and culture (peak in Italy)
o Early XVI century during the reign of Elizabeth I in England
o Neo-Platonic philosophy: harmony of the universe and the perfectibility
of mankind.
o Reason rather than religion

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o Writing explored the geography of the human soul, redefined its

relationship with authority, history, science and the future.
 Erasmus (Dutch): challenged the corruption of the Catholic church and wished
to return to the values of early Christian church.
o His humanism influenced writers: man at the centre of the universe.
 Martin Luther (German): agreed with Erasmus but he refused to submit to the
Pope’s authority.
 Jean Calvin (French): created a model of civic organisation and behaviour and
included a much stricter morality. It culminated in the triumph of Cromwell’s
Puritan Commonwealth.
 Renaissance literature:
o Search for individual expression and meaning
o Experimentation with form and genre
o Linguistic and literary innovation
o Man, its powers, capabilities and free will are the subject of matter
o The Reformation gave cultural, philosophical, and ideological impetus to
writing
o Exploration of human freedom
o English literature was one of the most varied of world literature
o Authorised Version of the Bible (1611)
o Names:
 Dramatists: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, and Jonson
 Poets: Sidney, Spenser, Donne, and Milton
 Prose: Bacon, Nashe, Raleigh, Browne, and Hooker
 Elizabethan age:
o Sense of stability
o Growth in wealth, political importance, and population
o Population could not normally read or write. They went to theatre.
o First public theatre (1576): forum for debate and entertainment

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o Growth of English as a national language

o Protestant extremists (Puritans): many left the country for religious
reasons and set up colonies in Virginia and Pennsylvania
o Catholic dissent: Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder (1605)
o Spanish Armada defeated (1588)
o Sovereignty over the seas

1.2 Ben Jonson

 Poet and playwright (1572-1637)

 At Westminster School he learned about classical authors
 Soldier and bricklayer
 Death of his children are recorded in ‘On my daughter’ and ‘On my first sonne’
poems
 The Case is Altered, surviving play, performed in 1597.
 Every Man in his Humour, sophisticated city comedy, 1598.
 Volpone (1606)
 The Alchemist (1610)
 Bartholomew Fair (1614)
 Wrote entertainments for the royal family
 Workes (1616), collected his entertainments, some of his poetry and plays. It set
the scene for Shakespeare’s posthumous First Folio (1623)

Introduction to Volpone

 Intensely theatrical comedy

 Moral seriousness and exuberant hilarity
 Wanted the audience to think about the power of money (greed)
 Money and how it transforms everything and everyone
 Funny and entertaining play
 The action is fast-paced, non-stop and demands out attention

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 Characters have names of animals in Italian (suggest fable)

 Set in Venice, wealthy trading city

Protagonist (Volpone)

 Venetian nobleman
 Pretends to be seriously ill so that rich fools who are even greedier than him will
give him present after present in the hope that they will be the ones to get his
treasure when he dies.
 Selfish trickster
 Complex protagonist who both attracts and repels
 In the opening act, Volpone talks to the audience.
 Adopts a disguise (medicine seller) to get a glimpse of Celia
 Celia is Corvino’s wife
 Corvino treated Celia badly because he found that she thrown a flirtatious
handkerchief towards the disguised Volpone.
 Volpone is a fun villain who makes his audience to be close confidants.
 Dramatic irony used to create the close relationship between Volpone and the
audience.
 Everyone but Mosca is a victim of Volpone’s scams
 Dramatic irony works to enhance our emotions in response to what happens on
stage because of the feeling of superiority we get when being in the know
 When Mosca betrayed Volpone he became the victim of dramatic irony
 Volpone and Mosca have no integrity
 The pursuit of riches is the reason for the constant shifting of Volpone's identity:
 Performance, not 'reality', is everything to Volpone
 Corbaccio's son Bonario rescued Celia when Volpone tried to 'force' her
 Volpone escapes the accusation by reassuming his role of moribund invalid
 Mosca is similarly motivated by performance and appearance
 The rule of money requires that everything becomes exchangeable with every
other thing

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 When money takes charge, it hollows out our sense of who we are and what is
right
 The play makes us examine our views about the kind of society we live in
 The greed of Volpone and Mosca makes them lose any sense of who they are
 Greed corrupts morality
 Audiences in Jacobean England were familiar with comedies like Volpone
o In which the protagonist always fails, and goodness triumph
 These plays which are set in London are known as 'city comedies'
 Jonson alters the genre
 Celia is a parody of the virtuous heroines of conventional city comedies
 Volpone does not end as a comedy was supposed to
 All are savagely punished
 Rather than ending in marriage it ends in divorce
 Honour is being made a slave to money

Volpone plot and character overview

 Volpone is today Ben Jonson's most performed play

 Set in Venice
 City comedy and beast fable
 Volpone dupes some foolish Venetians and foreigners with the help of his
servant Mosca
 Volpone pretends to be a wealthy old man who is close to death
 He drew the attention of three gold-diggers, the merchant Corvino, the lawyer
Voltore ('vulture') and the gentleman Corbaccio ('raven'), who believe that they
will inherit Volpone’s fortune
 When he knew that Corvino had a beautiful wife whose name is Celia, Volpone
visited her in disguise and decides to seduce her
 He convinces Corvino that his illness will only be cured by sleeping with a
young woman.
 As Volpone promised Corvino to make him his heir, he lent him Celia

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 Volpone tried to rape her

 Volpone was absolved and Celia and Bonario were arrested for adultery
 Sir and Lady Politic Would-Be, and their acquaintance Peregrine, a newly
arrived traveller from England, were manipulated for Mosca and Volpone’s
benefit.
 Volpone fakes his death and Mosca was his ‘heir’, so that he can take pleasure
of the others disappointment
 The truth of the first court case was revealed
 Mosca did not want to say no to Volpone's fortune
 Volpone revealed everything, and everyone was punished

First staged and published

 At the Globe by the King's Men in 1606

 Printed in 1607
 Preface: poems praising its excellence by poets such as John Donne,
 Included in Jonson's collected Workes (1616)