“Uncursed with Reason”: Symbolism in Charlotte Smith’s “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic”

Charlotte Smith was writing as a part of the early Romanticism movement in literature, which is characterized by the poet’s self-expression of natural emotion and the preference for rural living over urbanized living. It is interesting how Smith chooses to use the sea in many of her poems to set the atmosphere rather than the farm, meadow, or forest of the typical romantic poem. The sea can represent many different things such as subconscious thought, the primal state of being, or emotion and I believe she is utilizing all of these ideas in her poem “On Being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic.” Smith characterizes the “lunatic” by making him a “wretch” (1) of the sea, in other words, the representation of the sea; she has placed the “lunatic” by the sea, rather than in a meadow or other rural area, because like the sea, his mind is wild, untamed, and uncontrollable. The speaker says, “I see [the lunatic] more with envy than with fear” (10) because “He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know / The depth or the duration of his woe” (13 - 14). This implies that the speaker is cursed with reason and the knowledge of their “woe,” which I believe woe here is referring to the speaker’s lifespan, for a rational person realizes their time on Earth is limited and is constantly burdened by that knowledge whereas the “lunatic” is as free-minded and wild as the ocean waves that come and go along the surf. Also, by setting her poem on a “giddy brink” (line 9), the speaker is physically located at the edge of a cliff but is also on the “brink” of either doing or thinking something: is the speaker on the brink of throwing her life to the “sea-born gale[s]” (5) and living freely, or is she on the brink of madness, or worse, suicide?

"‘Tis Unnatural”: A Disruption of Reality in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

In Act 1, Scene 3, Macbeth sees the three witches for the first time and they tell him the prophecy that sets the entire bloody play in action: “All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter” (act 1, scene 3, line 50). Despite the ambiguous nature of the play, Macbeth takes these words at face value and interprets them literally, including the second half of the prophecy:

1 WITCH: Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

2 WITCH: Not so happy, yet much happier.

3 WITCH: Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

So all hail Macbeth, and Banquo (act 1, scene 3)

Macbeth hears this prophecy and immediately begins plotting in his mind as soon as he sees part of it has come true. However, as it is seen in Act 4, Scene 1, the witches’ prophecies are a sort of riddle, which true meanings are only discovered after the prophecies have come true. Though Macbeth seems to complete the prophecy by killing Duncan and becoming the king himself, he does so by taking fate into his own hands and forcing the prophecy forward despite being aware that things might fall into place if he sits idly by: “ If chance will have me king, why chance may / crown me, without my stir” (act 1, scene 3, line 146 - 148). My theory is that Macbeth was never meant to become king in the way that he does, and because he does take his own course of action he causes a sort of “disruption of reality” within the play.

Hungry Like the Wulf: The Early Elegy Wulf and Eadwacer as a Werewolf Tale

The critical debate over the poem Wulf has gone on for many years but no general consensus has been made as to what exactly the poem is about except that there seems to be four characters: the speaker (presumably a woman), Wulf, Eadwacer, and the child. The translation found in The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology seems to have chosen diction that implies a love triangle in which the speaker mourns for her lost love, Wulf, as she now lives with her new husband, Eadwacer. However, this interpretation leaves holes. Who is the child? What is the meaning of the last two lines? Why would Wulf be torn to pieces? This is why I chose to use a translation by Michael R. Burch, a notable poet and scholar. In this translation, Burch uses diction that calls forth dog, or wolf, imagery which would support my interpretation that Wulf and Eadwacer is actually a tale about a werewolf. The text of the translation is attached at the end of the essay.

My interpretation of the poem is as follows:

Antigone

The title of a tragedy usually tips the audience off as to who is the tragic hero of the play. For example, Hamlet, Oedipus the King, and Dr. Faustus are all famous plays in which the hero plays the title role. However, Sophocles’ Antigone raises eyebrows when its title character dies off screen and the antagonist is left alive in the final moments of the play, full of regret and sorrow. For many years, critics have questioned if the character Creon was actually the intended hero of the play, not Antigone. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, the tragic hero is the character with whom the audience feels pity for and fears a similar condition, but the issue with Antigone is that it works on many different levels: male vs. female, subject vs. ruler, father vs. son, family vs. politics, human law vs. supernatural law. This makes it hard for the audience to resonate with only one character which is why Antigone and Creon serve the purpose of warning the audience of two different types of blindness: blindness in faith and blindness in power.

Beowulf and Christianity

A big issue with the anonymous heroic poem Beowulf is that it began as a poem that was memorized and recited orally, maybe sometime around 700 - 800, but wasn’t written down until around 1000 in the West Saxon language. So, for critics to claim that the poem is either essentially Christian or essentially pagan is a tricky feat because the content of the poem is about a pagan, Germanic culture but was believed by critics to have been written by a Christian author. Although the poem does include many references to Christianity, such as the poet’s song about the Genesis Creation, Grendel’s ancestry to Cain, and to explicit references to God’s intervention, the poem’s backbone is based on a pagan theme: good triumphs over evil through the virtues of bravery, strength, and loyalty.

“Song” by Mary Wroth

In the time of the English Renaissance, women did not have a voice. They were allowed to speak, but their opinions either fit perfectly in line with those of men or they were labeled an outspoken “shrew.” However, the Renaissance was not only a period of skepticism and doubt caused by many scientific discoveries, it was also the period in which the printing press was invented. Women’s writings could now be spread widely, though they were still expected to keep a low profile. Mary Wroth wrote “Song” as one of the ending poems of the first book of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania and she was criticized by many courtiers in her time for her “roman a clef” which featured thinly veiled “fictional” characters based on real life people.