英史期末

Chaucer, Renaissance poems, and Jonathan Swift

In the literary works we covered in the past several weeks, we find that man (or the
self, the writer) has already engaged in struggling with the society he lives in.
We can perhaps divide the works we studied into two groups: one is about love and
marriage, the other about truth, honor, and death.
Group 1. Love and marriage: Chaucer: The Miller’s Tale, Wife of Bath’s Tale, The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale, The Pardoner’s Tale; four Renaissance poems.
To his coy mistresss
Passionate shepherd to his love
Shall I compare thee to a summer state
The nymph’s reply to the shepherd

Group 2. Truth, honor, death: The Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, The
Pardoner’s Tale; Shakespeare’s sonnet (Shall I compare).

Argue that this grouping helps us understand how earlier English poets have
developed the concept of the the self through struggling with society. You must first
give “the self” a definition (for example, how does Hamlet define “the self”?) and
then talk about the relationships between man (the self) and society. How does the
self find a way to resist social constraints and then achieve a certain degree of self-
autonomy （人如何在某種意義上掙脫社會制約，獲得某種程度的自由）？

“To be or not to be, that is the question”. This is a famous quote Hamlet says
when he wavers between his moral conflict and divinity. Human has been struggling
to define “self” for the past centuries as we can see from many famous literary
works. The works are mainly divided into two groups, one is about love and
marriage, and the other is about truth, honor, and death. People tend to struggle
with social conventions and finally find the balance between, gaining self-autonomy.
This essay will discuss four literary works from the two groups in the following
passages: To his coy mistress, Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Pardoner’s Tale, and Gulliver’s
Travel.
 To his coy mistress and Wife of Bath’s Tale, both show the love and marriage
aspect of the self-struggle with social constraints. In To his coy mistress, the speaker
mentions "Had we but world enough and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime."
Showing how the time is limited so they should not be restrained by society and seize
the opportunity for love and have sex with him. The self tries to persuade his lover to
not hesitate to pursue one’s desire and resist the social norms. In the Wife of Bath’s
Tale, the author conveys the idea of women gaining control over their life and
marriage and equality. The tale teaches a moral lesson about the importance of
mutual respect and equality in marriage and that women should gain self-autonomy
and sovereignty. "A man may do no sin with his wife, nor hurt himself with his knife."
This quote highlights the paramount of marriage equality. In the end, the knight
learns true nobility and had a harmonious relationship.
The second category elaborates the how humans find self-autonomy through
truth, honor, and death, including The Pardoner's Tale and Gulliver’s Travel. The two
works cover the themes throughout the story. In The Pardoner's Tale, the characters
made choices with greed, deception, and selfishness, eventually leading to their
downfall. “Avarice is the root of evil” is the moral lesson attest in the tale. Pardoners
in the medieval often ignore the restrictions of their job. The characters fight with
the desire for wealth and moral values. In Gulliver’s Travel, Gulliver travels through
four countries, and each country has different cultures and social values. The author
satires the political situation by embedding his perspectives in Gulliver’s experience.
For example, In Lilliput, the candidates willing to be the minister must dance on a
rope to entertain the Majesty, and the best will take the vacancy—Swift satires how
the government chooses representatives in politics and the corruption of political
power. The election is ridiculous and shows the flaws in society.
In conclusion, the two groups of masterpieces from different ages throughout
English Literature show the internal struggles of defining “self”, and characters
wrestling with social values and self-autonomy. Some of the characters eventually
seek self-autonomy in their dilemmas, while others carry moral lessons to readers. By
digging into these literary works, we can seek insights into the complicated
relationships between self and society, and how they compromised with and
“liberate” themselves.