Throughout history, humans have endured everything from plague and famine to war. Despite these hardships, they have always found a way around them, and a great example is literature.
Literature is a powerful ally in the evolution of humankind. It allows them to write down personal events, beliefs, etc., in the forms of narratives, poetry, and prose. It may sometimes be difficult to understand why the material and form of the literary work are so important to the author. Still, after a little bit of re-reading and note-taking, it will finally become clear. The literary works of Olaudah Equiano (Interesting Narrative), Eliza Haywood (Fantomina), John Milton (Paradise Lost), William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night), and Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen) are no exception. Each of these authors bases their poems, plays, and prose on real-life events in their world or their own lives. Therefore, the material and form of the text are especially important to the message they seek to convey to their readers.
Starting with Spenser’s The Faerie Queen… It is written as epic poetry, following the modern epic form (a story about a hero embarking on a great adventure that will change them forever).
Spenser lived during the Protestant Revolution, when the Roman Catholic Church was under attack.
The whole poem is an allegory, a literary work that conveys a hidden meaning. Spenser is writing about his frustrations with the Catholic Church. There is a line in Book 1, Canto 1 that gives away his message. The knight, Redcrosse (who symbolizes Christians of the time), defeats the monster Error, and what follows afterward is this: “Her vomit full of books and papers (Book 1, line 26).”
This short but powerful line represents Catholic propaganda. It says that, while Redcrosse defeated the monster, he still fell for the heinous act of conversion (i.e., he was easily deceived). In a way, it almost reads like a curse was put on Redcrosse when the vomit hit him, making him an easy target for the evil wizard Archimago. He tricks Redcrosse into thinking that his Lady, Una, slept with another man. The result? Redcrosse leaves her. This symbolizes the so-called falsehood of the Roman Catholic Church and those who are trying to convert Catholics to Protestantism. The material and form of this epic poem are so powerful and camouflaged that it is sometimes difficult to pick up on what Spenser is trying to say.
Paradise Lost by John Milton is another religious piece that represents the fall of human nature (when Eve ate the apple from the tree). Like The Faerie Queen, it is an epic poem, but it reads more like an epic narrative than a poem (with dialogue and conflict). Interestingly, the hero in the epic is Satan, and God is the enemy. The work also incorporates forms of tragedy, with the fall of Adam and Eve.
Milton did not begin writing literature until later in his life, after a series of unfortunate events that damaged his reputation as a Parliamentarian. As with Spenser, Milton is not pleased by a change in religious prospects, and he spends some time in jail.
He bases Paradise Lost on his personal experiences and on how they have hurt him as a person. Milton writes very long sentences that take some time to get used to, but each sentence helps develop the plot and characters to their maximum. Satan’s interaction with Eve is similar to Redcrosse’s experience with Archimago. Even if someone does not want to convert, there will always be another force challenging them.
In Book 9 of Paradise Lost, Satan fools Eve by disguising himself as a snake, and he tells her that if she eats the fruit from the tree, then she will become a god: “Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods (Book 9 lines 708-709).” Eve does, and the poem ends with her and Adam accepting the new lore of human nature—in Milton’s case, the rise of the Royalists. Paradise Lost is a poem that says that life is full of changes, changes that not everyone is proud of, but will eventually have to accept.
Shakespeare is a well-known writer best known for his plays. However, he also wrote sonnets that carry symbolism of the real world and lessons people must learn. A sonnet follows a certain rhyme scheme and is always fourteen lines, so there is not much to work with. Therefore, the poet must work hard to convey their message to their audience.
Sonnet 1 by Shakespeare comprises a lesson about losing yourself to your own being (beauty). The sonnet form and material are difficult to track down, but after a few re-reads, the message becomes clearer. In this case, the message comes into play in lines 6-9 on Page 723 in The Norton Anthology: “Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel…thyself thy foe…Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament.” This means that if you lose yourself to your own beauty, then you will never find the joys of life. However, it also has a double meaning. The second message is that you need to stop keeping your beauty to yourself. Everybody is meant to do something good for the world, but it will be difficult to find it if you don’t get out and make sacrifices. It is a very powerful message for such a short poem, but Shakespeare applies it magnificently.
Moving away from the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Century to The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, literature changes as a whole. Poems become less abundant, and the novel rises. One of the earliest forms of a novel is Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina. Well, it is actually more of a novella than a novel, but it still has a very different writing style than people are used to. A novel has an exposition, a conflict, rising action, falling action, and a climax. Fantomina’s novel-like features change the world forever. Nevertheless, just like past writers, she bases her book on personal experiences. She especially touches on her “unfortunate marriage” and how it has changed her forever (Norton Anthology, Restoration and The Eighteenth Century, page 608). It is a story about how one event can change a person.
The character of Fantomina is hard to understand and hard to enjoy, but by the end of the novella, it becomes clear how her actions have affected her. Haywood herself touches on this towards the end when she says, “Though the injury you have done to your family is of a nature which cannot justly hope forgiveness…excuse you when satisfied of the truth… (Norton Anthology, Restoration and The Eighteenth Century, page 627).” As a whole, she says that, even though what Fantomina did was unjust and immature, one day she will be forgiven for her sins. And well, the first thing she needs to do is to go to a monastery in France. One day, though, she will find herself again, just like how Haywood did after her marriage. Just be careful what you wish for.
Finally, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative is a form of not just prose, but also an autobiography. Out of all the texts mentioned so far, his story is frank and clear. He was once a slave, but he eventually won back his freedom. He worked hard, endured a fierce beating that almost killed him, but he never gave up. Equiano knew that one day, he would be free. The most striking feature of his autobiography is its title, which reads The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. Just looking at it, it says a lot about the book. Equiano lost his African heritage when he became a slave and was now another man named Gustavus Vassa, but he regained it when he paid the forty pounds to his Master for his freedom.
Equiano’s book is a captivity narrative, a genre that usually describes someone captured by “savages.” The captivity form is evident in Equiano’s description of his voyage across the Middle Passage. In this case, the savages were the crewmembers. He described them as “if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair (Norton Anthology, Restoration and The Eighteenth Century, page 982).” Equiano saw things no man had ever seen, yet he never lost himself to fear and grief, because he was an optimistic man. His Interesting Narrative is the start of a brand-new step in the evolution of literature as a whole…writing an autobiography.
All five of these writers have talent, and they are prime examples of how literature affects someone as a whole. Sometimes the best way to talk about someone’s fears and experiences is to write them down. It now makes sense why so many modern humans like to keep diaries and journals. Even just the material and form of the literature itself is enough to convince a reader just how powerful literature is. It shows the evolution of the art, and why it is so important to writers. A goal for a writer is to provide the reader with information they never thought was possible, so trying different writing techniques is especially necessary. The works of Olaudah Equiano, Eliza Haywood, John Milton, William Shakespeare, and Edmund Spenser are examples of this constant and shifting change in literary history.
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