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Innovation: Journal of Scholarly and Creative Works
2016
Volume 4, 2016
Innovation The Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works
www.highpoint.edu/urcw/hpu-journal/ journal.urcw@highpoint.edu Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works High Point University One University Parkway High Point, NC 27268
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Innovation: Journal of Scholarly and Creative Works
2016
Editor-in-Chief
Dr. Joanne D. Altman, PhD Director, Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Professor of Psychology
Student Editor
Rebecca Irons High Point University Class of 2016
Cover design by Laura Schramm Laura Schramm, creator of Innovation’s cover design, was a nonprofit business major and graphic design minor at High Point University. Schramm won the journal cover design competition hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works in the fall of 2012. She began by brainstorming different ideas and jotting down anything she thought of in her sketch book. She decided to use light bulbs because they symbolize all majors and the trial and error it takes to come up with that one brilliant idea. Schramm graduated High Point University in May 2013 and today works as a graphic designer in North Carolina.
Copyright @ 2016 High Point University
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2016 Board of Reviewers Dr. Joanne Altman Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works and Professor of Psychology Dr. Jennifer Brandt Assistant Professor of English and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies Ms. Kathryn Brandt Instructor of Interior Design Dr. Matthew Carlson Assistant Professor of English Dr. Kelly Curtis Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Deborah Danzis Associate Professor of Psychology Dr. Nahed Eltantawy Associate Professor of Communication Dr. Christian George Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Mr. James Goodman Assistant Professor of Media Production
Dr. Sadie Leder-Elder Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Kirsten Li-Barber Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Cheryl Marsh Instructor of English Dr. Virginia McDermott Associate Dean of Communication and Associate Professor of Communication Ms. Charisse McGhee-Lazarou Coordinator of Media Fellows Program and Assistant Professor of Communication Mr. Jay Putnam Assistant Professor of Performance and Directing Dr. Donna Scheidt Assistant Professor of English Ms. Georgeanna Sellers Assistant Professor of English Dr. Larry Simpson Professor of History
Dr. Stefan Hall Chair of Media Production and Studies and Associate Professor of Communication
Dr. Kirstin Squint Assistant Professor of English
Dr. Nathan Hedman Assistant Professor of English and Theater
Dr. Karen Summers Instructor of English
Dr. Martin Kifer Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Survey Research Center
Ms. Benita VanWinkle Instructor of Art Dr. Cynthia Vigueira Assistant Professor of Biology
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Letter from the Editor-in-Chief The office of Undergraduate research and Creative Works (URCW) encourages and supports the establishment of collaborative partnerships between nurturing faculty mentors and enterprising students. Within these partnerships, critical inquiry, brainstorming, debate, and mutual discovery intertwine, leading over time to the production of finished work suitable for presentation, exhibition, and publication. This journal gives students the opportunity to follow their completed work all the way through the professional process to publication. Thus, URCW is pleased to publish the fourth volume of the refereed journal, Innovation: Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works. In this issue, we include 11 submissions in a range of disciplines from students who have completed independent undergraduate creative or scholarly work, including a play, a documentary, and exhibited artwork. We hope this journal inspires many young scholars to consider publishing their undergraduate academic work before they graduate college. Joanne D. Altman, Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Editor-in-Chief of Innovation: Journal of Creative and Scholarly Works
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Innovation: Journal of Scholarly and Creative Works
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Table of Contents TIES Eliza Albritton ............................................................................................................. 6 Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas: A Work of Operatic Compromise Catherine Bakewell....................................................................................................... 21 A Puritan’s Petition for Peace Katelin Brownfield ...................................................................................................... 27 Gather the Family around the Fire: Relationship and the Rhetorical Strategies used in FDR’s First Fireside Chat Rebecca Irons ............................................................................................................... 32 Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and the Limits of the Self Mollie McKinley ......................................................................................................... 38 Bioassay and nutrient limitation experiment on the Piedmont Environmental Center pond in High Point, North Carolina Skylar Nerone .............................................................................................................. 46 Who is Blamed the Most? An Investigation into the Factors that Affect the Amount of Blame Attributed to the Victims of Crime Lauren Rubenstein ....................................................................................................... 51 Beautiful Terror: John Keats and the Burkean Sublime Jose San Miguel .......................................................................................................... 61 One Vision: A Guide Dog Documentary Macaulley Quirk .......................................................................................................... 71 Footing and Language in One Tree Hill Meg Thomson .............................................................................................................. 72 To See Too Much Kayla Twomey ............................................................................................................. 80
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TIES Eliza Albritton Eliza Albritton, a senior theatre performance major, originally became interested in her current topic of creative work during a theatre design class. In this class, she was assigned to do a project on Sara Ruhl’s play “Eurydice”, and while doing research came across the myth “The Red String of Fate.” The myth, which details two people bound together who may not want to be so, was dramatically interesting for Albritton. She decided to create a short piece exploring what would happen if the myth occurred in real life. For Albritton, the most fulfilling part of creative work is the reward of stepping back from a final product and feeling a sense of pride for what she’s made. She credits her mentor, Mr. Ed Simpson, with being amazing to work with. “He has been supportive since day one, offering boundless advice and encouragement.” After graduation, Albritton plans on taking a year off to write and save money while applying to graduate school programs for dramatic writing.
Abstract The legend of the Red String of Fate, found in Asian folklore, says that we are all tied by an invisible red string to the person that we are destined to meet and connect with. The question I pose with Fate/Choice is, do true “soul mates” exist? If they do, what if they aren’t whom you would initially expect? When the Girl wakes up with a literal red string tied to her finger leading out into an unknown abyss, she has to decide if she accepts her fate or rejects it. However, fate doesn’t give her much of a choice when the Boy comes from the abyss carrying all of the string that connects them and knocks on her door. A choice must be made – will they take this risk together and release themselves from the string, or go on living separate lives, knowing that they will always be connected? This work contains some adult language.
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bed and a door dress the stage. There is a GIRL sleeping in the bed. Her hand is dangling off of the bed. There is a bright red string tied to her pinkie finger that leads out the door and into the abyss.
THE GIRL slowly wakes up, stretches, rubs her eyes. She notices the string and is startled by it. GIRL No…no no no no— GIRL tugs on the string, trying to pull it off of her finger to no avail. She pulls the other end of the string, working herself into a frenzy. There seems to be a never-ending amount of string coming from the abyss. She collapses. NO!
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Enter MOTHER MOTHER Honey, are you okay?! What’s wrong? GIRL holds up the finger with the string on it. Oh. So soon. GIRL Can you get me some scissors? MOTHER exits. GIRL sits. Fiddles with the string. MOTHER enters. MOTHER I’m not sure this will work. GIRL I don’t care. GIRL attempts to cut the string. Several attempts are made. No result. Silence. MOTHER Well…are you going to follow it? GIRL No! MOTHER Okay. Do you have any plan? GIRL No. MOTHER You haven’t thought about this at all? GIRL No, I’ve been busy living my life, mother.
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MOTHER Hey, watch the tone, okay? GIRL Sorry. They both sit in silence. GIRL is staring out into the abyss. What the fuck? MOTHER Excuse you? GIRL I’m sorry, okay, but what the fuck? MOTHER What? GIRL THIS! Yanks on the string, only filling her room with more of it. Why now? I am so not ready for this. MOTHER There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s there. GIRL There’s no way to get rid of it? MOTHER Only to find who’s on the other end. GIRL Shit. MOTHER glares. GIRL rolls her eyes. Sorry. Silence. I’m 19 years old. It’s too soon. I always thought I would have more time. You know, shop around a bit, see the world before I got tied down to someone. Silence.
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MOTHER You know, this could be a really exciting thing for you. GIRL Oh my god. MOTHER I’m serious! It could be fun. GIRL I’m having a blast already. MOTHER Oh hush. You’re lucky. Some people wait years for this. GIRL They can have it. MOTHER What would make you feel better right now? GIRL Not having this string on my hand. MOTHER Well that’s not an option right now. Pick something else. GIRL I don’t know. MOTHER Who would you like it to be? GIRL What? MOTHER This is the person you’re going to be with for the rest of your life, it might be nice to at least have an idea of what you’re hoping for. GIRL Do my preferences even matter? MOTHER I should hope so. Even if they don’t, it’s nice to think that way. Now, describe him to me. Silence. GIRL is stubborn. Is it…going to be a him? Or— GIRL Yes, him! At least I think so.
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MOTHER Okay. If it’s not, you know that’s okay. GIRL Let’s just deal with that on a case-by-case basis, yeah? MOTHER Got it. So, tell me. GIRL Fine. If I’m really going to spend the rest of my life with whoever the hell is at the end of this string, he needs to be a compatible zodiac sign. He needs to be someone who cares about people. He needs to have something that he loves. And he should appreciate things. He doesn’t need to like everything I like, but he needs to understand why I like them. He has to hold my hand. He has to laugh. And he has to be able to cook. I am not about to fall directly into that gender role. MOTHER He sounds wonderful. GIRL Yeah, if he exists. MOTHER The universe works in mysterious ways, dear. GIRL What if it’s someone I don’t know? Or worse, what if it’s someone I DO know? MOTHER Would it really be that bad? GIRL Mom, you have no idea. MOTHER Okay. They both sit in silence. GIRL Is this weird for you? Beat. MOTHER A little bit. GIRL I’m sorry.
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MOTHER Oh, honey, don’t be sorry. I’m happy for you, really. GIRL I just don’t want it to be weird because you never got yours. MOTHER Your father was a wonderful man. And hey, I got you, didn’t I? GIRL That’s true. Pause. MOTHER Can I do anything for you? GIRL I’m okay. I think I just want to be alone now. MOTHER All right, well let me know if you need anything. GIRL I love you. They hug for a long time. MOTHER exits. GIRL sits on her bed. Fiddles with the string. After a while, BOY enters from the abyss on the other side of the door. He is carrying an armful of red string. He drops it on the ground and hesitantly knocks on the door. GIRL is startled by the knock. She slowly makes her way over to the door. She opens the door a little bit and looks out at BOY. BOY Hi! GIRL slams the door in his face and sits on the ground against the door. Um…are you okay? GIRL Go away! BOY What? GIRL Leave.
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BOY Why? GIRL I don’t know you. BOY Does that matter right now? GIRL Yes, it matters! BOY Can I please come in? GIRL No. BOY Okay. BOY sits on the ground against the other side of the door. GIRL Why are you here? BOY Really?
GIRL Why now? BOY I wanted to see what you were like. GIRL Great. The feeling isn’t mutual.
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BOY Good to know. We don’t have to do anything about this now. GIRL Wasn’t planning on it. BOY Do you have someone else? GIRL How is that any of your business? BOY Well we’re supposed to be “soul mates” or whatever so I feel like you having someone else would be at least a little bit of my business. GIRL Well, I don’t. But even if I did, it still wouldn’t be any of your business. BOY I’m in love with someone. GIRL Oh god, please don’t say it’s me, I don’t think I could take it. BOY Someone else. GIRL Oh! Perfect. BOY It’s nothing against you. GIRL Of course not. Why would it be? We’re only meant to be together for the rest of our lives, how could I ever take that personally? BOY I just always thought it would be her. GIRL How sad for you. Truly heartbreaking. BOY I can just leave if that’s what you want. GIRL You mean you don’t want to find out if we’re really “soul mates?” BOY It doesn’t seem like we’re the most compatible people.
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GIRL Oh darn. BOY You know what? All I wanted to do was meet you and see what you were like. I thought it would be nice! But I get here and you berate me through a door! You can’t look at me while you hate me? You’re that scared? I’m scared too. Excuse me for trying to look my fear in the face instead of pushing it away. GIRL GO AWAY. BOY FINE. BOY walks off into the abyss. GIRL realizes her mistake. As she opens the door to follow him, BOY walks back on stage. When they make eye contact, there is an intense connection. This is the first time they have really seen each other. As BOY makes his way towards her, she slams the door again. They both stand on their sides looking at the door. GIRL I’m sorry. BOY You’re beautiful. Silence. What are you thinking about right now? GIRL I don’t know. BOY Okay. GIRL What about you? BOY I don’t know either. It’s a lot, right? GIRL Yeah. It’s weird. BOY Very weird. They both sit in silence, each very aware of the person on the other side of the door. Time passes. They both eventually fall asleep. GIRL becomes restless and jumps awake, letting out a scream, which wakes up BOY.
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GIRL AH! BOY Are you okay?! GIRL It was just a dream. BOY Oh, good. GIRL You were in it. Everything was black except for the string. I was tied to one end and dangling off of some ledge. You were looking down on me from the ledge and asked me if I needed any help. I said “yes, please help me, I’m terrified!” and then you said “don’t worry we’ll get through this together” and smiled down at me. Then you pulled out a huge knife and cut the string. And I fell into the darkness alone. Pause. BOY That’s insane. GIRL Is it? BOY Definitely. GIRL I just met you, how would I know? BOY Because our life isn’t a scene from The Lion King. We may not both be totally on board with what’s happening here but I wouldn’t just abandon ship like that.
GIRL That’s good to know. BOY There. Now you know at least one thing about me. GIRL I’ll start a list. Silence. BOY What do you like to do?
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GIRL What do I like to do? BOY Hey, if you’re starting a list, so am I. GIRL Okay. So, what do I like to do? BOY Yeah. GIRL I don’t know. BOY How do you not know? GIRL That’s one of those questions that has so many answers that you can’t answer it. It’s like asking “do you like music?” You can’t ask me that. BOY What can I ask you, then? GIRL Ask me about my passions. Ask me about the time that I laughed the hardest or a moment where I fell flat on my ass. Questions with substance. Ask me about my dreams. BOY I think we both know how your dreams have been recently. GIRL You know what I mean. These are the things that make us who we are. You can’t really know someone without knowing those. BOY Well you also can’t really know someone while just looking at their bedroom door, either. Beat. GIRL Point taken. GIRL and BOY both face the door and slowly stand up. GIRL puts her hand on the door knob and leaves it there for a while. Finally, she flings the door open, startling BOY. They stare at each other, taking it all in. After several moments, in unison— GIRL Do you want to— BOY
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—May I come in? GIRL Please. BOY picks up his pile of string and crosses the threshold from the abyss into her bedroom. He drops the pile on the floor and looks around her room. BOY This is not what I thought it would look like. GIRL Are you getting to know me better now? BOY I’m getting to know that nothing will ever be what I expect with you. GIRL So what now? BOY I don’t know. Should we…hug or something? GIRL What? BOY Soul mates hug, right? GIRL I guess. GIRL and BOY awkwardly hug. Once in the hug, they try to adjust it so it feels right, but never quite get there. GIRL Wow. BOY How do you fuck up a hug? GIRL I don’t know, but we did it. Is that a sign? BOY You’re just waiting for this to fail, aren’t you? GIRL Sorry. BOY It’s okay, I get it. I just think we need to give this a fair shot.
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GIRL You’re right. GIRL takes BOY’s hand. BOY Looking at their clasped hands. I love holding hands. GIRL Me too. They sit for a while just holding hands. BOY Okay, let’s run through some hypotheticals. Best case scenario, we do this thing, eventually get married, one or both of us becomes extravagantly wealthy, we have a few kids and have an idyllic life in a mansion out in the country somewhere. GIRL And worst case? BOY I leave here, we never speak again and each marry people who suck. GIRL In that scenario, do I still have the chance of becoming extravagantly wealthy? BOY I don’t see why not. GIRL Then I would be okay with either of those scenarios. BOY You’re saying you would rather just be rich than be with someone who’s perfect for you? GIRL You think you’re perfect for me? BOY The string sure does. GIRL That is yet to be determined. BOY Whatever you say. GIRL Plenty of people go their whole lives without getting their string and they’re still happy.
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BOY But lucky for us, we don’t have to be those people. We have a chance for something bigger. GIRL You know, for a guy who came in here saying he was in love with someone else, you seem very positive about this. BOY You want to mess with destiny? GIRL Who’s to say that she’s not better for you than I am? A string? BOY It’s destiny! Fate! GIRL I’m not even sure if I believe in it. BOY Gestures to string What is this, a practical joke? GIRL Tell me about her! BOY No way. GIRL Tell me! I need to know what destiny is up against. BOY What do you want to know? GIRL How does she make you feel? BOY Amazing. Beat. We met when she was tutoring me in calculus. She can make anything sound interesting – I never knew math could be so exciting. I could listen to her talk for hours. Whenever we’re out at a party or something, even if we’re not right next to each other, I always know she’s there. I can see her laughing with her friends from across a room and warmth fills me. GIRL Wow.
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BOY Yeah. GIRL I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. BOY It’s weird. That’s the first time I’ve really thought about her since I’ve been here. Beat. GIRL So say that we do this. We get together or whatever. What if you start to miss her? What if I’m not as good as her? BOY I don’t know the answer to that. Of course I’ll miss her, but I guess I’ll figure out a way to handle it. Don’t worry about comparing yourself to her, you’re different people. GIRL Okay, well, what happens if we become really happy together and we head toward that beautiful ending and then we grow apart? We start getting into fights and then eventually we have to face the idea that maybe perfect people and soulmates don’t actually exist. BOY That’s life. I’m not a perfect person, neither are you. Beat. As much as you probably don’t want to hear this, I think the only way to answer all of our questions is just to go for it. GIRL You’re right, I don’t want to hear that. Silence. They both consider the options. GIRL So? BOY I’m terrified. GIRL Don’t worry. We’ll get through this together. GIRL gently kisses BOY. They both take a deep breath. BOY takes the scissors and successfully cuts the string. They both exhale. Lights fade. The end.
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Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas: A Work of Operatic Compromise Catherine Bakewell Catherine Bakewell, a junior Spanish major and French minor, had a previous interest in opera and French history before she started her research. During her experience in the High Point University Summer Research Institute, she combined her field of interest with Dr. Alexander’s extensive knowledge on 17th and 18th century English history to examine one of the first and most significant English operas. The most fulfilling part of her undergraduate experience has been producing her finished product and being able to passionately talk about what she’s learned through her research. Bakewell also greatly enjoyed working with Dr. Alexander and having her as a historical resource, editor, and cheerleader while Bakewell conducted her research. Dr. Alexander was supportive through the whole process, encouraging Bakewell to pursue her interests, as well as providing her with opportunities to continue with her research in avenues like local graduate conferences. After she graduates, Bakewell hopes to get her PhD in Spanish literature and to spend time traveling in Spain or France. Abstract During a century where opera reached great heights in Italy and in France, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1687) was one of the first and only English operas during the late seventeenth century. My objective in my research was to learn how this opera came to be despite being born in a country that loathed the art form. Contemporary English theatergoers were not accustomed to opera, finding it to be too long and too foreign. Although the opera still retains its French musical stylings, the libretto itself eased audiences into this new art form by incorporating characteristics of the popular genre of the Heroic Drama, such as fantastical characters and a hero overcoming obstacles in the name of love. Furthermore, this work displays ideals of English nationalism by being written in English and by including allusions to contemporary politics concerning the much-maligned king, James II, who was unabashedly Catholic while ruling a protestant nation. I argue that this opera successfully brings together French musical stylings and features of English drama to bring a new art form to the English court.
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n the year 1687, King James II (r. 1685-1688), a Catholic, reigned over the staunchly Protestant England. At the same time, all across Europe, opera had already begun to flourish, with baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully’s final works playing in the court of the Sun King, and Italian masters still following in the footsteps of great musicians like Monteverdi and Cavalli. England, on the other hand, had not yet combined music and drama to the extent that her neighbors had done. Playwright Nahum Tate (1652-1715) and Royal Composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) crafted Dido and Aeneas as this first work that would bring an already-successful 21
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art form to England, and would at the same time cater to and represent English ideals. Even Purcell knew the limits of his own country’s taste in music, saying in the dedication of his 1690 Dioclesian, “Musick is yet but in its Nonage, a forward Child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the Masters of it shall find more encouragement” (qtd. in Price 264). Purcell knew that his country could not compete with the other giants in opera; he knew that his works did not yet have a place in his motherland or even in his lifetime. Even so, neither Purcell nor his works have been forgotten with time. His works survived and continued to be published even after his death. In the next century, England would be the birthplace of great oratorios and operas, and Purcell would be counted as one of the pioneers of opera in his country. With the support of James II and with their handling of English tastes in theater, Purcell and Tate were able to bring a new genre of musical drama to their reluctant homeland. It is all too appropriate that French music and English drama come together in a story about star-crossed lovers. Dido and Aeneas represents a watershed moment in musical history in that, by combining music in the French style and drama written with tones of English nationalism, opera as an art form was finally introduced to the English courts. Opera as we have come to know it—a drama told in song throughout—did not exist in England before the 1680’s, especially when one compares the art form to its French and Italian neighbors. France and Italy had already created and normalized a combination of drama and music with uninterrupted singing. Purcell was truly one of the first English composers to create a sung-through work in his time; until then, semi-operas or masques were more popular. Whereas French and Italian opera had a heavy focus on music and ballet, masques were more like plays featuring some singing, usually performed by members of court wearing masks. Robert Etheridge Moore states that English audiences considered musical works such as masques to be dramas firstly—another form of theater, only in song form (Moore 4). Masques and semi-operas were also much shorter than the musical works of England’s neighbors. As for opera, some works such as John Blow’s Venus and Adonis premiered in the English court in 1682, and later went on to be performed at Josias Priest’s boarding school for girls in 1684. Although not much is known about Dido and Aeneas’ premiere, it is likely that Purcell’s opera premiered first at the English court, since, following in Blow’s example, it also played at the same school for girls in 1689. Purcell scholar Dr. Andrew R. Walkling places a court premiere for Dido and Aeneas in about 1687, suggesting that a court premiere would have been expected of the court composer (Walkling 1). Additionally, the year 1687 is significant in that it premiered during the short reign of James II. The deep-seated distrust of anything that was foreign, and anything associated with England’s rivals, kept England separated from opera. When James II came to the English throne in 1685, he brought with him a friendly attitude towards foreign art and artists in general, which would prove to be a significant advantage for Purcell and Tate in premiering this work to the English court. Being both an outspoken Catholic and having spent a good part of his life living in France, James II gave artists a window of opportunity for bringing new art forms to England. It was during his reign that Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione premiered in London in 1686. Lully’s music influenced Purcell’s compositions in many ways; in fact, Purcell was said to have had the score of Cadmus et Hermione with him while he composed (Demarquez qtd. In Site Lully). While Dido and Aeneas retained many English features--the language being the most obvious one--it introduced many tropes and musical stylings found in French opera specifically. French opera, having evolved from ballet, has a particular focus on dance. There are whole sections of operas where the drama will stop in order to have a scene dedicated to dance, like the 22
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sommeil (sleep) scene in Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys. Although there is more of an emphasis on drama in Dido and Aeneas—as with other British musical-dramas—the hunting scene in Act II serves as a slight break in the drama in the same way as the sleep scene has in Atys. Purcell’s music was influenced by those he looked up to musically, such as his teacher, Dr. John Blow, Matthew Locke--who adapted Lully’s Psyche for the English stage in 1675--and Pelham Humphrey, who studied opera in France with Lully (Moore 191). Stylistically, it is evident that French music influenced Purcell’s composition in many ways. Bryan White also mentions that James II’s predecessor and brother Charles II had heard Lully’s Thésée, Atys, and Cadmus et Hermione—further evidence that French music had found its way into the English court, and went on to impact English music (White). It was therefore a great fortune that James II, like his brother before him, had an affinity for such entertainment, and could in turn sponsor music that audiences could have considered too foreign. Furthermore, the king was in some ways more supportive of artists than his brother. James II financially supported musicians and writers of the English court at this time. By comparison, Charles II, was known for paying his court musicians infrequently and inconsistently. Peter Holman cites that when James took the throne, he made sure to give musicians a regular salary of forty pounds a year (Holman 16). This was a statement on his role as patron of the arts, and would be a powerful way to gain favor from those who would likely write for or about him. Although Purcell and Tate did not agree with the religious leanings of their king—as they were both Protestants—they were otherwise in favor of the monarchy. After all, it was the king who supported their craft and was responsible for its publication. If not for having the ear of a king who was its patron both financially and in spirit, Dido and Aeneas would not have been introduced to an English stage. Despite its roots in French music, Dido and Aeneas also holds its own as a definitively English dramatic work. While the French tragédies lyriques featured dance scenes, subplots, and were usually five acts long, English drama was much shorter, and Purcell and Tate followed in this example when they introduced this new form of musical drama. The story of Dido and Aeneas is a “lyrical tragedy” of its own: the Trojan hero, Aeneas, falls in love with Dido, Queen of Carthage, only to abandon her to restore his kingdom. Act III ends in Dido’s renowned aria “When I am laid in earth”, where the queen dies of heartbreak and mournfully asks her confidante, Belinda, to “Remember me, but ah! forget my fate” (3.1.62). However, while the opera is largely faithful to the story as written in the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, certain elements or details from the story are peculiarly absent from the dramatized version. Tate cut scenes in order to keep the drama concise, including arguments between gods, any mention of Aeneas’ son, the scene where the titular couple consummates their relationship in a cave, or Dido’s pyre scene. In fact, the opera is just under an hour in its entirety. Marianne McDonald states that this would suit an English audience; after all, a contemporary of the composer-writer duo said in an English newspaper that anything longer would be straining on an English audience (McDonald 43). Purcell and Tate knew their audience’s capacity to listen to this “perpetual singing,” and responded with a work that would push their audience’s ability to listen, but only to an extent. Although Dido and Aeneas is a comparatively short opera, it stands out among its English predecessors in that it has recitative in the style of French or Italian opera; unlike masques, there are no points in which actors speak their dialogue and then stop and expound on their lines in a song. Purcell and Tate therefore undertook the unique task of creating music influenced by French works while also retaining an English identity. Purcell and Tate’s courtly audience was hesitant to listen to the lengthy and alien operas of Europe, but by choosing a dramatic and succinct script, Purcell made opera more accessible to the English public. 23
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Another way Purcell and Tate combatted the public’s fear of that which was foreign was by incorporating well-known English ideals into the opera. Though the music itself was influenced by French works, the text or “libretto” of the opera is undoubtedly English, both in the language in which it was written and in the elements of English drama enfolded into the story. The language of this work also gave the writing-composing pair a foothold with their audience. With English masques flourishing at the same time as foreign-language operas, Purcell was unique in that he would be the first to introduce opera to England in her own language. Although French works such as Cadmus et Hermione played in England, with an existing presence of masques and dramas already in English, Tate and Purcell made a statement with the language of their opera. Michael Tippet draws attention to the fact that the writer-composer team set themselves and their opera apart by setting it to an English libretto, instead of a text in French or Italian. English had not previously been in such an operatic context, and Purcell and Tate’s experiment in English would leave an impact, as the famous composer George Frideric Handel would come to set his oratorios to English texts, as well (Tippett 45). This work was England’s foray into the opera world, not just an attempt to copy what others had done successfully. Audiences would then have a work accessible to them not only because they could understand it, but also because they could know that this work was written and composed by Englishmen for Englishmen. Being among the first artists to bring opera to England, Purcell and Tate were wise in the story they chose to interpret on stage. As a writer, Tate is often criticized for the omissions or “corrections” he makes to the stories he adapts. However, in Dido and Aeneas, the omissions and edits that he made in his reworking of Virgil’s Aeneid are more purposeful than one might initially believe. Some of the changes to the Virgil’s work make Dido and Aeneas more accessible to contemporary theatergoers. For example, in place of gods and goddesses bringing trouble to the two lovers, the antagonists are a group of witches. While in France and in Italy, opera often featured Greco-Roman deities as characters, witches were more common for English theater at the time (Moore 53). Dido and Aeneas has many characteristics of the heroic drama, a popular genre in theater during the late seventeenth century, as seen in masques and in semioperas. Heroic dramas usually feature a hero in a setting of war, whose struggles often include a battle between duty and love, or overcoming an obstacle that keeps him from his lover (Moore 15). The story of the Trojan hero, Aeneas, choosing between his destiny and the woman he loved, Dido, would therefore be received well by audiences. Furthermore, this heroic drama tapped into many of the ideas and tropes found in the “baroque ideal” found in other countries, as well. The aim of opera in the baroque period was to delight the senses with a harmony of poetry, music, and stage production. Theatergoers expected a spectacle. It was for this reason that many operas centered around magical or fantastical characters or scenarios that would call for scenery and effects just as whimsical. English audiences were primed to love stories about great heroes and to seek out a show that would delight their senses. They wanted to be enchanted. Tate chose well when adapting Dido and Aeneas, which featured elements both heroic and fantastic--just what a British audience would have enjoyed at the time. Theatergoers were also used to seeing drama with political commentary or satire. Although on the surface this opera seems to be the classical story of two lovers destined to be torn apart, Tate uses the well-known story to parallel English politics of the day. Dido and Aeneas was written during the reign of James II, a Catholic ruler in a country that feared Catholicism. Many worried that this king would bring perverse or foreign influences into the country, and some attempts were made to depose the king, such as Monmouth’s Rebellion in 24
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1684 (Walkling 5). Walkling suggests that the Dido and Aeneas story can be used as a sort of allegory for the attitude of England towards their new king. The Trojan hero Aeneas would represent James II, who abandons the woman he claims to love, Dido, or England, in the name of his own agenda. An interpretation of James II as Aeneas would not be too far-fetched for a contemporary audience; in 1682 an anonymous poem in a Whig Pamphlet also drew comparisons between the king and the ancient hero (Walkling 11). Walkling also points out that in the story, Aeneas’ destiny lies in Rome, which also represents the seat of power for the Catholic Church. Other allusions to politics include the witches, who declare that “harm’s our delight and mischief all our skill” (2.1.8). For many audience members, these witches were contemporary symbols of the Catholic Church, advocates of trouble-making and disorder. In the context of the story of Dido and Aeneas, Tate could have been using this metaphor as a warning for James II--just as the witches caused nothing but trouble for Aeneas in the story, Catholicism was a way that would only lead to destruction for the new monarch. Tate was a Tory, which is to say, he was in favor of James II as king, but like many involved in the English court at the time, he trod the line between respecting the role of his king and being wary of his Catholicism. It is for this reason that Aeneas is portrayed both as pitiable, simply a victim of bad advice, and as a foolish man who leads to the demise of a nation. Using drama as a platform by which to criticize the monarchy was a staple of English dramatic works. Though it features music that is more French, the libretto itself ties directly to current events in England and harkens to political satire and other critical writings of the time. In this way, Dido and Aeneas is a blend of the old world of opera and the new, unyieldingly separatist realm of English drama. Though audiences and writers alike kept their distance from the undoubtedly foreign genre of opera, Purcell and Tate ventured into this new art, but skillfully so, mixing techniques and styles from their native England with the new drama and music from continental Europe. Dido and Aeneas acts as a link between these two worlds, bringing opera to England at the opportune time. Under the approval of a monarch with French roots, Purcell and Tate gave England the much-needed chance to give England a name for itself in the burgeoning world of opera. Works Cited Álvarez-Recio, Leticia. “Tate, Nahum.” The Encyclopedia of Literature 1660-1789. Day, Gary and Jack Lynch (eds). Blackwell Publishing, 2015. Blackwell Reference Online. 14 May 2015. Web. Benham, Evelyn. “A Musical Monopolist.” Music and Letters, Vol. 9, No. 3. (1928): 249-259. Oxford University Press. Web. 23 May 2015. “Dido and Aeneas.” Oxford University Press, 2015. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Web. 14 May 2015. “Dido and Aeneas.” Oxford University Press, 2015. The Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford Music Online. Web. 14 May 2015. Holman, Peter. Oxford Studies of Composers: Henry Purcell. Oxford University Press: 2003. Print. Magill, Frank N., ed. Critical Survey of Drama. Foreign Language Series. New Jersey: Salem Press, 1986. 1503-1509. Print. McDonald, Marianne. Sing Sorrow: Classics, History, and Heroines in Opera. Greenwood Press: 2001. 43-60. Print. 25
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“Monde – Angleterre.” Site Lully. Site Lully, 2010. Web. 18 May 2015. Moore, Robert Etheridge. Henry Purcell and the Restoration Theatre. Harvard University Press: 1961. Print. Noble, Jeremy. “Purcell and the Chapel Royal.” Henry Purcell, 1659-1695; Essays on his Music. Ed. Imogen Holst. Oxford University Press: 1959. 52-66. Print. Norman, Buford. Touched by the Graces: The Libretti of Philippe Quinault in the Context of French Classicism. Summa Publications, Inc.: 2001. Print. Orrey, Leslie. Opera: A Concise History. Ed. Rodney Milnes. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2005. Print. Price, C. A. Henry Purcell and the London Stage. Cambridge University Press, 2009: 264. Print. “Purcell, Henry.” Oxford University Press, 2015. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Web. 14 May 2015. Tate, Nahum. Dido and Aeneas: An Opera. Composed by Henry Purcell. Tippett, Michael. “Our Sense of Continuity in English drama and music.” Henry Purcell, 16591695; Essays on his Music. Ed. Imogen Holst. Oxford University Press: 1959. 42-51. Print. Walkling, Andrew R. “Political allegory in Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas.’.” Music & Letters 76.4 (1995): 540+. Academic OneFile. Web. 14 May 2015. White, Bryan. “‘Studying a little of the French Air’: Louis Grabu’s Albion and Albanius and the Dramatic Operas of Henry Purcell.” Art and Ideology in European Opera: Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton. Eds. Rachel Cowgill, David Cooper, Clive Brown. The Boydell Press: 2010. 15. eBook.
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A Puritan’s Petition for Peace Katelin Brownfield Katelin Brownfield, a junior business administration major, has always been interested in history, specifically England’s history. An assignment to write an analysis paper on an Early English piece A Dialogue between Old England and New was the perfect opportunity for her. For Brownfield, the most fulfilling part of her research was learning more about English history through unexpected sources while simultaneously being able to share this newfound knowledge with others. Working with her mentor, Dr. Laura Alexander, has helped Brownfield understand new ways to look at writing and research, and to take a more in-depth view on research. This experience has also helped improve her writing skills. After she graduates from High Point, Brownfield would like to work for a consulting firm and potentially pursue a master’s degree.
Abstract A Dialogue Between Old England and New by Anne Bradstreet expresses her Puritan stance on the seventeenth-century English Civil War. Throughout the poem Bradstreet delves into probable causes of the war. Ceremonial practices in the Church of England are an issue for Bradstreet and her Puritan faith, along with the possibility of Catholic sympathizers in authoritative positions, such as King Charles I and Archbishop Laud. Puritan's saw King Charles I and Archbishop Laud's efforts to conform the new Protestant and old Catholic Church of England as treasonous. People feared the Church of Rome ruling in England again. Furthermore, the ceremonial practices that King Charles I and Archbishop Laud worked to implement were seen as idolatrous in the eyes of the Puritans; Thus, the ceremonial practices could not be allowed in the Church. Ultimately, Bradstreet comes to the conclusion that complete separation from Catholicism and ceremonial practices is the only way to bring peace back to England and ease people's fears of the Church of Rome reigning once again.
D
uring the mid-seventeenth-century, civil war broke out in England. Economic and complex religious concerns fueled this civil war, especially between the Anglicans and Puritans. The Anglicans represented a religious group that had broken off from the Church of Rome but still shared some of the same religious practices. For Puritans, any connection to the Church of Rome and Catholic religion was seen as sinful. As Achsah Guibbory describes it, "Puritan ideology insisted on absolute separation from Roman Catholicism as it was supposedly the repository of Jewish and pagan idolatry" (Guibbory 36). The two religions fought for control over the Church of England to make sure that their own beliefs were practiced. Puritans' believed that the ceremonies, like baptism and communion, which Catholics performed, were human inventions that held no religious authorization (Guibbory 28). Since humans created these traditions and not God, they were inherently corrupt in the Puritan view. Yet, others saw
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the Puritan anti-ceremonialism as an effort to destroy the English culture (Guibbory 137). For these reasons, the two religious sects combatted one another. In the year of 1642, the year which Anne Bradstreet composed A Dialogue between Old England and New, many wrote bitter religious petitions that claimed to long for peace (Morrill 177). One could say that Anne Bradstreet, a seventeenth-century English-born poet who immigrated to America in 1630 at the young age of 18 years to spread the Puritan faith, took part in these appeals for religious peace (Rich ix). Bradstreet draws on biblical authority to authorize her writing throughout her appeal. In A Dialogue between Old England and New, Bradstreet expresses her belief that the key to resolving the seventeenth-century English Civil War involves separating Catholicism and ceremonial practices from the Church of England, while ousting any possible Catholic authority figures in order to ease the tensions and qualm peoples’ fears throughout the country. A Dialogue between Old England and New is a teleological poem that engages the language of judgment and revelation. Bradstreet begins the poem by listing past historical events as probable causes of England's current ailment. Yet, while Bradstreet acknowledges England's past sins as possible sources for its current sufferings when Old England states, "I must confess some of those sores you name, / My beauteous body at this present maim," she also acknowledges that these "sores" may be solved with repentance as Old England claims, "They're for my punishment ordained on high, / unless our tears prevent it speedily” (ll. 64-65, 101-102). She then moves forward from the past to present to show how England's existing predicament is centered around Catholicism and particular authority figures within the monarchy. Thereafter, to keep with the poem's teleology and bring it to a close, Bradstreet moves from the present to future where readers reach the "end state." For Bradstreet, the end state comprises of peace in England after the ousting of Catholic sympathizers from authoritative positions. Before I discuss Bradstreet's poem at length, I will first provide some relevant history on the English Civil War and Reformation. After the Reformation in the sixteenth-century, the Pope no longer had control over England; thus, Catholicism lost its dominance. This sudden switch in religious power caused strain throughout the country. As A.G. Dickens states in The English Reformation, Second Edition, " …the Reformation debate is apt to lead to both radical Protestants and militant Catholics into mutual incomprehension and unhealthy selective attitudes…" (317). This rift between the Protestants and Catholics only deepened during the reign of Queen Mary I. Queen Mary I had numerous Protestants burned at the stake or exiled during her reign (Dickens 293). Not until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I could the exiled Protestants return to England and establish a Protestant national church (George 77). Under Queen Elizabeth I's rule, Puritanism began to flourish. During this Elizabethan era, Puritan preachers dominated the pulpits (Dickens 369). Further on into the seventeenth-century, and by 1634, the Puritan religion had become a dominant religion in England and held quite a bit of power within Parliament (George 82). This tension amongst the various religious sects continued to rise from the sixteenth-century Reformation to the level of civil war in the seventeenth century. Bradstreet herself had acquired decent education growing up, and in particular, she enjoyed history. Also, she had a prominent Puritan father, Governor Thomas Dudley, who influenced her writing, as well as helped solidify her Puritan faith (Rich ix, Hensley xxiv). Bradstreet uses this knowledge of England's past to help support her anti-Catholicism argument and to help explain England's current state of civil war. To begin the poem, Bradstreet sets up a loving relationship between Old England and herself, represented by New England, to ensure that her censure throughout the poem will sound 28
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more like a worried loved one than an angry writer. Therefore, she opens the poem up with a tone of endearment as New England addresses Old England by saying, "Alas, dear Mother, fairest queen and best, / With honour [sic], wealth, and peace, happy and blest," but soon switches to a tone of feebleness, coming from Old England as she says, "My weak'ned [sic] fainting body not to reel? / This physic-purging position I have taken / Will bring consumption or ague quaking‌" (ll. 1-2, 20-21). The purging potion represents the religious strife in England that caused it to purge, or rid, itself of a portion of its population, leading it to a destabilized state. Thus, the beginning section of A Dialogue between Old England and New, which represents the past, illustrates that England's current state lacks stability and New England, who desires to see her mother healthy again, wants to offer her advice. From this point, Bradstreet moves the poem to the present and addresses the real problem in England: Catholicism. Anne Bradstreet exhibits contention against ceremonial practices, which come from Catholicism. In line 97 Old England declares, "Which are my sins, the breach of sacred laws / Idolatry, supplanter [sic] nation" (ll. 97-98). Here, Bradstreet blames Old England's punishments on ceremonial practices, which broke sacred laws and caused wrong doings to take over the nation. This follows the Puritan belief that difficult times in life equate to punishments for past sins. Moreover, a few lines down, Old England states, " Church Offices were sold and bought for gain, / That Pope had hope to find Rome here again" (ll. 102-103). Once again, Puritans wanted complete separation from the "corrupt" Church of Rome and feared the Pope would gain back power in England. In fact, in the poem when New England refers to the period after the Reformation, she says, "After dark Popery the day did clear, / But now the sun in's brightness shall appear," which expresses Bradstreet's negative opinion of the time period when Catholicism ruled (ll. 222-223). Bradstreet suggests that the complete destruction of Rome would be a wise decision to ensure that Catholicism never rules in England again. New England tells Old England: When thus in peace, thine armies brave send out To sack proud Rome and all her vassals rout; There let thy name, thy fame, and glory shine, As did thine ancestors' in Palestine; (ll. 270-273) Further Anti-Catholicism sentiments can be found in line 243 when New England claims she wants the world to know the English hate Rome's Whore, and in lines 288 to 289 when New England says, "Bring forth the beast that ruled the world with's beck, / And tear his flesh and set your feet on's neck‌" (ll. 243, 288-289). Rome's Whore was the Puritan's way of describing the Church of Rome, and the beast was their way of referring to the Pope, which they also used as another word for the devil (Guibbory 109, 151). Therefore, Anne Bradstreet's Puritan outlook and Anti-Catholicism attitude can be seen throughout A Dialogue between Old England and New. The struggle between the ceremonialist and anti-ceremonialist was a large contributor to the seventeenth-century Civil War in England. Throughout this time period, King Charles I ruled, and during his reign, he and Archbishop William Laud worked to redefine the Church of England. Archbishop Laud pushed for a religion based on conformity and ceremonialism: the Puritans despised this religion, called Laudianism. This aversion surfaces in A Dialogue between Old England and New. Through Old England's complaints, Bradstreet dedicates lines 179 to 185 to Archbishop Laud. She begins by saying, "And to their Laud be't [sic] spoke, they held I'th' [sic] tower / All England's metropolitan that hour" (ll. 179-180). In the first line, Bradstreet 29
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discusses the detainment of Archbishop Laud in the Tower of England as he waited to be charged with traitorously trying to bring back the Church of Rome, while the second line acknowledges Archbishop Laud's hierarchical power in this time. The Puritans' viewed any understanding with the Roman Church as treasonous (Guibbory 37). The following two lines go on to say, "This done, an act they would have passed fain, / No prelate should his bishopric retain" (ll. 181-182). These lines claim that Parliament had no qualms about placing Archbishop Laud in the Tower of England, where he could no longer hold back other bishops beneath his rank. As the book Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton: Literature, Religion and Cultural Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England puts it, similarities between the previous Catholic and post-Reformation church, along with the process of conversion, provided enough evidence for the Puritans to find Laud's church popish idolatry (Guibbory 35). Again, the Puritans saw the Catholic's ceremonial practices as idolatrous. Hence, Laud and the Puritans shared different views on how to unite England's Church. While Laud desired to bring uniformity back to England by conforming the Protestant and Catholic religions, the Puritans' wanted separation (Guibbory 39). Old England goes on to say, "Here tugged they hard, indeed, for all men saw / This must be done by Gospel, not by law" (ll. 183-184). Archbishop Laud believed in enforcing religious conformity through the use of fines and corporal punishment; thus, here, Anne Bradstreet claims that religion cannot spread by force or laws, but through the word of the Gospel only (Guibbory 4). Therefore, the Puritans resisted Laudianism and fought its takeover as much as possible. Due to this resistance, Archbishop Laud worked to portray the Puritans as enemies of the state. For instance, Laud changed the nation's prayer book so that, "‌the prayer now implied that the puritans, not Catholics, were the principal enemies of religion and the state" (Guibbory 37). One of the last digs Bradstreet makes at Laud comes in line 185 and states, "Next the Militia they urged sore" (l. 185). At this point, Bradstreet depicts how Laudianism caused animosity amongst the people instead of unity by urging an uprising against Archbishop Laud and his supporters. Which as Achsah Guibbory claims, "Many objectors to ceremonial worship were peace-loving and conservative; it was Laudian persecution that radicalized them" (Guibbory 39). Thus, Anne Bradstreet, with her Puritan view, identifies Laudianism as the basis of hostility in England during the time of the Civil War. In this time period, two of the biggest political contributors to the fight against Laudianism included the House of Commons and Parliament. The article, The Religious Context of the English Civil War by John Morrill, states that, "By the summer of 1641 the Commons were happily depriving ministers of their freehold, banning them from future preferment, imprisoning them in the Tower or elsewhere, or otherwise punishing them for ceremonialism or preaching up Laudianism" (Morrill 166). In A Dialogue between Old England and New, Bradstreet demonstrates favoritism towards Parliament with these lines of support: 'Tis said, my better part in Parliament To ease my groaning land, showed their intent, To crush the proud, and right to each man deal, To help the Church and stay the Commonweal. (ll. 169-172) Here, Old England claims Parliament is the one helping to ease the qualms in England, by letting it be known they do not sympathize with Catholicism and will keep ceremonialist views out of the Church of England. In the beginning, both King Charles I and Archbishop Laud created Laudianism to bring conformity to religion, and counteract the diversity the Reformation brought. Yet, King Charles' 30
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efforts to establish a cordial relationship with the Church of Rome, just gave Puritans new inspiration for anti-Catholic rhetoric (Guibbory 36). Therefore, when it began to generate backlash King Charles I abandoned Archbishop Laud (Morrill 172). Yet, the people had already associated King Charles I with Laudianism and its papist like tendencies. There came a wide spread belief that Charles was a brainwashed king who needed saving from the spread of popery and needed to be decontaminated of Catholicism himself (Morrill 171). In A Dialogue between Old England and New, one line sums up Bradstreet's opinion of King Charles I when New England, states, "That nursing Kings shall come and lick thy dust" (l. 261). Here, Bradstreet not only correlates the King to that of a child, but one who is only worthy of licking the dust off England's feet. The fight between Parliament and King Charles I came about during the Civil War. The possibility of the king being sympathetic towards Catholicism sparked fear in many, and people began to worry about the possibility of the Popish Plot succeeding due to King Charles I. The Popish Plot was the potential plot of the Pope to take back control of England. Therefore, partially due to the belief that King Charles I may be a Catholic sympathizer, Parliament, which at the time was majority Puritan, fought to oust King Charles I; while in return, King Charles worked to rid England of Parliament (Morrill 171, 156). Bradstreet acknowledges the separation between Parliament and King Charles I as Old England states, " 'Twixt king and peers a question of state, / Which is the chief, the law, or else the king. / One said, 'It's he,' the other no such thing," and Bradstreet does not leave the reader confused as to which she believes is the chief of state (ll. 166-168). To close the poem, Bradstreet presents England's potential "end state" with these final two lines, "Farewell, dear Mother, rightest cause prevail, / And in a while, you'll tell another tale," where the rightest cause represents Parliament (ll. 298-299). Hence, Anne Bradstreet does not hide her partiality to Parliament, but instead promotes it. A Dialogue between Old England and New depicts Anne Bradstreet's view of the seventeenth-century English Civil War. Puritans believed the Church of England needed complete separation from Catholicism and ceremonial practices. Hence, when Archbishop Laud and King Charles I worked to conform the pre- and post-Reformation Church, Puritans and others rebelled. For Bradstreet, ridding England's Church of catholic and ceremonial practices, while having Parliament prevail over King Charles I, would eliminate the people's fear of the Roman Church reigning again in England and resolve England's seventeenth-century Civil War. Works Cited Dickens, A.G. The English Reformation. Second ed. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UP, 1989. Print. George, Charles H. "Puritanism as History and Historiography." Past and Present (1968): 77-104. Web. Guibbory, Achsah. Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton: Literature, Religion and Cultural Conflict in Seventeenth-century England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print. Morrill, John. “The Religious Context of the English Civil War”. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 34 (1984): 155–178. Web. Rich, Adrienne, Jeannine Hensley, and Anne Bradstreet. The Works of Anne Bradstreet. Cambridge: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1967. Print. 31
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Gather the Family around the Fire: Relationship and the Rhetorical Strategies used in FDR’s First Fireside Chat Rebecca Irons Rebecca Irons, a senior English major, became interested in her research topic during her style and rhetoric class. When tasked with analyzing a text for its rhetorical qualities, Franklin Roosevelt and his Fireside Chats came to mind. Irons believes the most fulfilling part of her research was having the opportunity to delve deeper into a piece of history and being able to attempt to understand how FDR’s political speeches operated. She expressed that working with Dr. Scheidt was an irreplaceable opportunity. Dr. Scheidt was extraordinarily supportive, and was always willing to help when Irons struggled, especially in the beginning stages, when her research had just begun. After graduation, Irons is interested in pursuing a career in marketing and advertising.
Abstract This paper argues in favor of an intimate relationship between Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the orator of the Fireside Chats and his audience of American radio listeners. FDR’s intimate relationship with his listeners is studied through the lenses of footing and ease of readability of his speech. The response letters that listeners wrote to President Roosevelt and his staff also serve as further proof of the intimate relationship between FDR and his listeners. Joining the conversation surrounding FDR’s Fireside Chats, this research argues against some scholarly opinions that there is not an intimate relationship between FDR and his listeners, compiling compelling stylistic and rhetorical evidence to show there is indeed a relationship between the skilled orator and his audience of American radio listeners.
Introduction
T
o begin, we should recognize that the Fireside Chats delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who will also be referred to as FDR for the sake of brevity) were misnamed. When FDR broadcasted these speeches to the American radio listeners, he was actually in a room “in the basement of the White House” which did have a fireplace in it, “but it was never used” (Lim 437). The name was originally coined by a radio personality named Harry Butcher (Lim 438). Even though the name is inaccurate, it stuck to these particular addresses from the President, and they are still known today as the “Fireside Chats.” While many scholars are conflicted when it comes to the exact number of Fireside Chats that FDR delivered to the American radio listeners, they all can agree on the range of “between 25 and 31 chats” (Lim 441). For this essay, however, I will be focusing solely on the first: 32
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FDR’s First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis, which was delivered on March 12th, 1933 at 10pm in the evening (Kiewe 23). This essay focuses on FDR’s rhetorical strategies, with particular attention to his use of footing and readability in the speech and how these tools created a positive relationship between the President and his American radio audience. When studying FDR and the rhetoric used in his first Fireside Chat, one must be sure to be careful when analyzing the text. It is important that “when you comment upon a speech of the past, you must take care to evaluate the production in terms of the existing rhetorical standards and the political and social Zeitgeist of the period” (Stevens 234). This means that while it may be tempting to read Roosevelt’s words in light of how we use rhetoric today, I must refrain from doing so. To be fair to the text and “come as close to the truth as possible,” I “must become ‘then’ minded” and put myself into the position of the audience to which FDR was speaking at the time (Stevens 234). I must strive to be as fair and objective as possible when addressing the text, in order to produce a quality analysis of the speech and the relationship between FDR and his audience. Through the study of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of the rhetorical strategies of footing, and ease of comprehension from readability in his Fireside Chat radio addresses, it becomes evident that there was indeed an intimate relationship between the orator and his audience of American radio listeners. However, there are some who disagree with my stance on the relationship between Roosevelt and his audience. In his essay “The Lion and the Lamb: Demythologizing Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats,” Elvin T. Lim attempts to argue that the rhetorical tools and strategies that Roosevelt uses in his Fireside Chats do the opposite of creating an intimate relationship between the American radio listeners and the President. Lim is sure to point out the inaccuracies regarding the chats. He is particularly forceful in the beginning of his essay where he wants to be sure that his readers understand that the name “Fireside Chats” “conveys a misleading impression of what these chats really were”, not an intimate and friendly correspondence between the president and his people, but a series of planned and strategic speeches used to sell the American people on FDR’s plans (Lim 437). Throughout this essay, I will argue against Lim in saying that there is indeed an intimate relationship between FDR and his audience of American radio listeners which can be proven by letters written to the president by his listeners as well as through the use of different rhetorical techniques, such as footing and ease of comprehension due to readability. Footing To be able to prove the intimate relationship created by the Fireside Chats between FDR and his American radio audience, quality support via analysis must be provided. To begin the analysis for the First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis, we turn to the rhetorical tool of footing. In Fahnestock’s book Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion, footing is a concept used “to describe the relationship between conversational partners” (288). One of Fahnestock’s examples is exceptionally relevant to the footing we are attempting to analyze in FDR’s First Fireside Chat. She uses the example of Abraham Lincoln and how he “used a varied sequence of pronoun choices to attempt a changed relationship with part of his audience” (Fahnestock 288). We can see that in his First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis, Roosevelt uses some of the same techniques to create a relationship between himself and his audience of American radio listeners. Just as Lincoln uses different pronouns to create an effect on his audience, FDR uses variations of numerous pronouns in his Fireside Chat. For example, in his First Fireside Chat 33
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broadcast, Roosevelt uses “you” or some variation of the word 29 times in the speech. Through this he is attempting to speak directly to his audience and make connection with them. Lincoln (from Fahnestock’s example stated earlier) also used “you” to directly identify and address his audience, bringing them closer together (289). Additionally, variations of “I” are used 18 times, variations of “me” are used five times, and variations of “friend” are used four times throughout the speech. Variations of “we” are used once in the context of unity between the President and his audience, while it was used four additional times to refer to the President and his government as its own unit separate from the American people. Similar to “we,” “us” and its related forms are only used once to refer to the united “us” of the President and his audience. “Us” is used an additional two times in terms of a government that is separate from the American people (Roosevelt, “First Fireside Chat”). In Roosevelt’s speech, “we” and “us” are examples of what Fahnestock calls “inclusive pronouns” which bring in the audience, also helping create an oratoraudience relationship (290). The use of these pronouns is an important tool in establishing footing between the orator and his or her audience. In his First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis, FDR utilizes pronouns such as “you,” “me,” “we,” and “us” as tools to establish footing. Since footing is a term used “to describe the relationship between conversational partners,” these pronouns are attempting to contribute to that relationship (Fahnestock 288). Roosevelt is attempting to communicate with his audience of American radio listeners that he is one of them. He is on their level. He emphasizes this unity with the last line of his First Fireside Chat: “Together we cannot fail” (Roosevelt, “First Fireside Chat”). With this statement, FDR effectively creates a familiar footing and connects himself to his audience positioning himself in an intimate relationship of togetherness. Readability So far, we have looked at the use of footing in Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis and determined that his use of words such as “you,” “I,” “me,” “friend,” “we,” and “us” among others have helped create a level footing between the President and his audience of American radio listeners, which has contributed to a positive, intimate relationship between the two parties. In continuation of our study of the rhetorical tools that are employed in FDR’s First Fireside Chat to help establish a positive, intimate relationship between Roosevelt and his audience, we must now consider the ease of comprehension which comes from the readability of the text. Readability can be loosely defined as the ease or difficulty with which a reader can read and understand a passage. This ease or difficulty is primarily based on sentence length, as well as their “grammatical complexity,” and the number of words with higher syllable counts (Fahnestock 269). There are a number of different tests that one could use to analyze readability of a passage. These tests are usually a mathematical equation which provides the analyzer with a number which then can be translated into a difficulty level. There are many tests including “the Gunning Fog Index, the Flesch Reading Ease score, or the more popular Lexile reader measure” that would produce such a difficulty level (Fahnestock 269-70). For this example, I use the Gunning Fog Index to assess how complex the written transcription of Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat. The Gunning Fog Index formula uses an average of words per sentence added to the average of complex words compared to total words to determine difficulty. Using the “number of major punctuation marks,” “the number of words,” and “the number of 3+ syllable words,” the Gunning Fog Index calculates readability of a passage (Bond). Using approximately the first 34
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120 words of Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis, I determined that the readability score is about a 22 on this scale. To put this in perspective, a 12 on the Gunning Fog scale means the writing is at the comprehension level of a high school senior (Bond). This means that FDR’s speech used a more advanced level of composition than the average high school senior would be able to understand. This may seem like a high-scale number for a speech that I am claiming to be easy to understand; however, it is important to remember the mode in which this speech was delivered. It is key to note that the Gunning Fog Index measures text as if it were being read by a reader and then the test attempts to assign a scale number to show how educated someone would need to be to understand what is being said in the analyzed reading. This index does not take into consideration that Roosevelt’s speech was originally delivered to the American radio listeners as an orated radio broadcast for the people to listen to. It is important to understand that the people listening may have found it easier to understand the ideas being communicated because they were listening to a president speak them. Also, there may have been issues with the transcription used to calculate the Gunning Fog Index. Perhaps FDR used more periods or commas in his written version, breaking up some of the longer sentences into shorter ones. These shorter sentences would change the score because it would alter the average number of words per sentence, thus lowering the Gunning Fog Index readability score assigned to the Fireside Chat. Why is it important to have a reasonable readability score for FDR’s speech? Readability is a sign of ease of comprehension and understanding. A text with a score of 12 would be easily comprehended by a high school senior (Bond). It is useful to know how easy to understand a text is because people are more likely to connect with someone who speaks to them on their level. If the American radio listeners understood what Roosevelt was saying, and it was easy for them to grasp, they are more likely to foster a bond with the president. A readability score helps communicate ease of comprehension, which definitely contributes to the intimate relationship between FDR and his audience. Response The last piece of evidence supporting the argument that an intimate relationship did exist between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his audience of American radio listeners may be the most important piece of evidence I have discovered. To be able to fully support the idea of an intimate relationship, it would be helpful to have the reactions of both parties in the relationship. We have Roosevelt’s side of the conversation through his speech; however, how are we to know how the audience felt about the President and his address to the American people? Letters. During FDR’s 12-year presidency and throughout his numerous radio addresses, he and his administration received millions of letters from the American people. A portion of these letters, “approximately 10,000,” are kept in the FDR Presidential Library (Ryfe 768). Among these millions of letters, a large portion contain the American people’s reactions to FDR’s Fireside Chats. For my purpose, I intend to study those that concern the First Fireside Chat only, which number about 2,000 (Kiewe 101). While many of the other scholars studying the letters written to Roosevelt structure their analyses thematically, I intend to continue my rhetorical study, specifically studying the words used by the audience in their letters, thus adding new perspectives to the already existing conversation about the reactions of the American radio listeners to FDR’s First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis. 35
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When these letters written by FDR’s audience are studied by other scholars, even they agree that the “assessments of Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat are overwhelmingly positive” (Kiewe 99). We understand the responses to be positive because of the word choice that the correspondents use when addressing the President on the topic of his First Fireside Chat. Analyzing word choice will make it very clear whether the writer of the letter felt a positive and intimate relationship with the President and help support the argument that there is indeed a positive and intimate relationship fostered between FDR as the orator and the American radio listeners as his audience. When addressing the president, one would expect a stiff and formal address which would continue throughout the letter as the writer expresses his or her satisfaction or dissatisfaction with an action done or speech given by the President. On the contrary, many of the letters use “inclusive pronouns,” which were described in the footing section of this project (Fahnestock 290). Some of the writers of these response letters used many instances of “you,” “our,” “us,” etc. Myra King Whitson even felt that the president was brought into her living room in person. She also felt a “deep happiness – a feeling that we have a real share in our government, and that our government is making our welfare its chief concern” (Kiewe 102). FDR’s words and speech made Mrs. Whitson feel like the President was like a good friend, sitting in her living room with her and her family, just having a chat. Not only that, but he provided her with confidence and reassurance. She felt that she was one with him and his government and that the American people would be and are safe in Roosevelt’s hands. Another letter writer, Thomas A. Raines, also wrote to the president using the word “you” in a personal capacity. He was very forceful in his assurance that the American people feel the President’s desire to “protect the honest people” and “that everybody will sacrifice many things in their life to go along with you and help you” (Kiewe 103). These two letter examples are both representative of a large majority of the population who wrote correspondence to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, I must admit, not all the letters were so positive. Yet, even those who did not enjoy Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat still used “I” and “your” in familiar terms (Ryfe 778). This use of familiar terms still supports an intimate relationship between Roosevelt and his audience – even if not all of the relationships and reactions were positive. The written letters and responses from FDR’s audience are extraordinarily helpful to prove that the relationship between FDR and his audience was an intimate relationship. The footing and the readability of the speech also support the intimate relationship between the two parties. However, some scholars still disagree with the intimacy of this relationship. Conclusion The First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis, delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fostered an intimate relationship between the President and his audience of American radio listeners. Agreeing with this statement, scholars attribute the speech’s effectiveness to “its simplicity and in Roosevelt’s calm, earnest delivery” (Kiewe 99). As is to be expected, there are some scholars participating in the conversation about Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat that disagree about the intimate relationship between FDR and his audience of American radio listeners. One example of such dissent is Elvin T. Lim in his article titled “The Lion and the Lamb: De-mythologizing Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats.” In this article, Lim claims that the way this speech is remembered “is inaccurate in a number of ways” (437). This author takes aim at the use of the word “intimate” to describe FDR’s First Fireside Chat. During his analysis he conducts a keyword analysis, focusing on the 36
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“aboutness” or the topics of FDR’s numerous chats (Lim 444-45). Doing so, he does indeed identify the topics of FDR’s chats, but does not look at the pronouns used by the President to speak to the American people. Then he additionally claims that these chats are all about topics concerning the nation and are not FDR’s “inmost thoughts” and are not “directed at subject matter that was conducive to establishing an emotional or social rapport between speaker and audience” (Lim 445). I disagree. A banking crisis would indeed concern an entire nation and would also draw out emotion and allow for a connection between FDR and his audience. Also, Roosevelt clearly states in his First Fireside Chat that the banking crisis “is your problem, my friends, your problem no less than it is mine” (Roosevelt, “First Fireside Chat”). This tells the American radio listeners that make up FDR’s audience that this banking trouble affects him too and is as much on his mind as it is on theirs, making another connection with his audience. From this project we can see that through the rhetorical tools of footing and readability we can understand Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat to have helped foster an intimate relationship between Roosevelt and his audience of American radio listeners. To help support this argument, letters written by the American people to FDR and his administration were also studied, mostly for word content, to attempt to see how the American people really felt about their president. It can be concluded from all this evidence that there was indeed an intimate relationship between FDR and his audience of American radio listeners, even if some authors already involved in conversation disagree. I think FDR said it best at the end of his First Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis: “Together, we cannot fail.”
Works Cited Bond, Simon. "Gunning Fog Index Calculator." Gunning Fog Index. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015. Fahnestock, Jeanne. Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print. Kiewe, Amos. FDR's First Fireside Chat: Public Confidence and the Banking Crisis. 1. ed. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Library of Presidential Rhetoric Web. Lim, Elvin T. "The Lion and the Lamb: De-Mythologizing Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6.3 (2003): 437-64. CrossRef. Web. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. "Franklin Roosevelt - Fireside Chat #1, On the Banking Crisis (1933)." YouTube. Ed. Jcm. YouTube, 3 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. "Franklin Delano Roosevelt: First Fireside Chat." American Rhetoric. 1933.Web. <http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstfiresidechat.html>. Ryfe, David. "From Media Audience to Media Public: A Study of Letters Written in Reaction to FDR's Fireside Chats." Media, Culture & Society 23.6 (2001): 767-81. Communication Abstracts. Web. Stevens, Walter W. "Speech Criticism." Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 41.4 (1964): 229-34. Web.
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Mary Wroth’s Pamphila to Amphilanthus and the Limits of the Self Mollie McKinley Mollie McKinley is a junior English literature major with a minor in communications at High Point University. She has always been passionate about women’s advocacy and gender equality. Reading Wroth’s poetry and biography, was particularly resonant for McKinley. McKinley credits Wroth as being ahead of her time for understanding the power of being a woman and never relinquishing her talents to the patriarchy. Undergraduate research has not only broadened McKinley’s horizons, exposing her to new literature to love, but has also introduced her to a community interested in research just as much as she is. Working with Dr. Alexander has been a supportive experience. McKinley credits her mentor with helping her become a more professional writer, as well as helping her become more confident in her research skills. Dr. Alexander’s support and positivity have contributed to an even greater determination to succeed in McKinley. After graduation, McKinley is planning on attending graduate school for either writing or literature.
Abstract There are many posing mysteries of Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, most of which researchers have tried to solve by studying Folger Library’s kept written manuscripts of Wroth’s Pamphilia and personal entries, and the revisions of the 1621 version. Utilizing Petrarchan values in her sonnets, Wroth became the first woman-sonneteer of her era to do so, and to do so in a way that caught the eyes of her society, enough to let her continue with her talents of authorship. Deeply influenced by her family’s talents for writing, Wroth easily seized the title as one of the most educated women of her time, in that her poetry expresses the syntax, vocabulary and ideas of a privileged woman. Most importantly, her heavily erotic phrases, and whole sonnets for that matter, caused a turning point for women writers, making it an almost acceptable type of literature, for it exuded feminine beliefs and values, that Wroth self-identified as her own person: a woman, unafraid of public opinion. Silenced by a male-dominated society in the early 1600s, Wroth stayed controlled by her own firsthand experiences with betrayal and unattainable love, so she created her own ideals of womanhood, and her own voice. The affairs and failed marriages that Wroth endured create a sense of hiding for her, and in turn, set her voice aside from others as she was able to articulate her emotions as she felt them, no matter the ridicule. Either way, one thing remains: Wroth’s journey to find an authorial voice, one that established a gender-ambiguous “self” and fleshed out an identity, invented her specific writing style, which included her Petrarchan style and ability to live through her female characters, such as Pamphilia. This creates an uncensored atmosphere for herself and her gender, where Wroth’s previous experiences with love and rejection shape her works and word for word, this woman
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healed her own wounds and changed form to establish her voice through the new process of sonnet writing, and using her gender indeterminacy to give her agency to write as a woman.
T
here are many mysteries posed by Lady Mary Wroth’s sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Researchers have deciphered this work, as well as others, by studying her written manuscripts, personal entries, and the revisions of the 1621 version, all kept in the Folger Library. Writing during an era when the Italian sonneteer, Petrarch, influenced English poetry, Mary Wroth adapted Petrarchan values and fourteen-line octave and sestet structures in her sequence. Influenced by her family’s talents for writing, Wroth seized the title as one of the most educated women of her time, in that her poetry expresses the syntax, vocabulary, and ideas of a privileged woman. Most importantly, her erotic phrases, and whole sonnets for that matter, caused a turning point for women writers. Silenced by a male-dominated society in the early 1600s, Wroth stayed controlled by her own firsthand experiences with betrayal and unattainable love, so she created her own ideals of womanhood, and her own voice. Wroth’s journey to find an authorial voice, one that established a gender-ambiguous “self”, aided in finding her specific writing style. This creates an uncensored atmosphere for herself and her gender, where Wroth’s previous experiences with love and rejection shape her works. By entering a masculine tradition of sonnet writing, Wroth occupied an ambiguous position for her gender, which gave her agency to write as a woman. Wroth executed her talents both poetically and politically. She self-identified in a rare class as an educated woman. Likewise, she was the first woman to publish a set of Petrarchan sonnets, which became amended to her larger work of romance, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. This work centers around two heroines, Pamphilia and Urania, as well as other characters, set in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Since Wroth self-identified as a Sidney, the surname of her cousins, such as Philip Sidney, others categorized her as a lover. Society classified these women as “social outcasts who dwell both literally and figuratively in peripheral spaces from which they threaten and defy patriarchy in its many forms” (Wagner 580). Wroth’s male counterparts inspired her alignment with Petrarca and his style of sonnet, because both sonneteers focused on the female character and her actions. From these influences came her most famous sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, written in 1613. How Pamphilia evolved is perhaps one of the most important aspects to understand before analyzing her agency of voice and body. The two differently-published versions of Pamphilia differentiate themselves from one another, and both contrast ideals from each other. In the earliest sequence, Wroth’s main female character, Pamphilia, deliberately seduces the main male character, Amphilanthus. His presence in the story causes either a domino effect, or an epic stand-still. The 1621 manuscript “turns Pamphilia’s intimate lyric dialogue with Amphilanthus into a plaint of solitary, unrequited Petrarchan love” (Bell 233-34). The very different interactions of Pamphilia towards Amphilanthus are significant, in that either type of manuscript could have been interpreted differently than the version that we analyze today. The revised poem veils Pamphilia’s seduction, disembodies Amphilanthus, shows no evidence of consummation, and conceals the internal turmoil which emerges when the affair is discovered (Bell 234). It is possible that the body of the poem has a focus on Amphilanthus’ body. Wroth uses this meditation on the male form to appreciate what she cannot embody physically. Thus, those revisions cause the reader to form broken opinions of Wroth. She could either be a woman
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writing for her own love of erotica, or she could be a gender indeterminate being writing for her own sake of finding a voice. Petrarchism stemmed from an Italian lyric poet named Francesco Petrarca, a scholar who influenced the Renaissance and created the Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet. A ‘sonnet’ contains 14 lines with a certain rhyme scheme. The Petrarchan sonnet uses a somewhat flexible rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter, a rhythm containing ten syllables per line. The first octave, or first eight lines, of a Petrarchan sonnet contains the “abbaabba” rhyme scheme, whereas the sestet, or last six lines, varies. The easiest way to identify a Petrarchan sonnet is to focus on the octave, and whether it follows the “abbaabba” rhyme scheme, which Wroth’s sonnets often do. A work that utilizes the values of Petrarchism includes complicated grammar structures, elaborate conceits, and orthodox diction. The Petrarchan sonnet can also contain virtuous love, comparing love to idolatry, and other sensual undertones. The malleable quality of the Petrarchan sonnet allowed it to be complicated or modified without losing the focus on the poet-lover relationship. In turn, this type of sonnet allowed poets, such as Wroth, to use it as a vehicle for their own analyses of thought. The sonnet uses the blason, or an extended praise or scorn for the subject. In most cases, it is praise, to explain a feeling detail for detail. Whereas some authors might describe a woman as beautiful, a Petrarchan sonneteer might describe a beautiful woman in great detail, highlighting the woman’s eyes, skin, body shape or hair. Petrarchan sonnets, as well as Wroth’s, elaborate the speaker’s feelings line after line, such as a smile lighting up a room, or comparing a woman’s soul to a “light.” They also contain a ‘turn’ of attitude, usually occurring in the sestet. Petrarca’s collection of poems, Canzoniere, accentuated his infatuation with a woman, Laura. This type of work deals with a lover trying to ‘woo’ an unattainable mistress or woman. In Wroth’s case, her use of Petrarch is evident, such as her metaphor of the labyrinth, which correlates with classical sources and Petrarch himself, making a connection to her exploration of passion within a complex maze. In the first sonnet of Wroth’s A Crowne of Sonnets dedicated to LOVE within Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Wroth illustrates most of Petrarch’s key sonnet features: In this strange Labyrinth how shall I turne, (a) Wayes are on all sides while the way I misse: (b) In these first two lines, Wroth enters herself into the sonnet as she gives the reader her dilemma: what direction shall she choose? She uses this image of a labyrinth, it seems, “to express problems of female self-representation” (Hannay 186). In a way, this aligns with Petrarca’s infatuation with women, in that women make up his focal points. However, she does not use any gendered articles such as “his” or “hers”. If to the right hand, there in love I burne, (a) Let mee goe forward, therein danger is. (b) If to the left, suspicion hinders blisse; (b) Let mee turne back, shame cryes I ought returne: (a) Wroth hints to her female agency as she begins to speak about love and shame, two aspects identified with women of her time. Fire, death, and personal frustration categorized Petrarchan sonnets, so it is no question that Wroth follows the Petrarchan theme by adding an image of burning in love in line 3. The entire sonnet is focused around her frustration with the “labyrinth,” so this places the sonnet with the Petrarchan category. Her skepticism of a possible love interest drives this sonnet forward, while still maintaining the Petrarchan form. Perhaps her use of feminine topics while keeping Petrarch’s style, a male-dominated form, intact is what intrigues her audience.
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Nor faint, though crosses with my fortunes kiss, (b) Stand still is harder, allthough sure to mourne. (a) Thus let mee take the right, or left hand way, (c) Wroth writes as if her confidence cannot be bothered here, almost as if her consequences, no matter her decision, would not alter how she feels. The line “…let mee take the right, or left hand way” indicates that either way would bring her to the same outcome of unhappiness. Her mention of mourning pulls attention to Petrarchan themes, as does “fortunes kiss.” She fleshes out her character more precisely in these lines, as she mentions that standing still is difficult, nodding to her impatient nature. Goe forward, or stand still, or back retire: (d) I must these doubts indure without allay (c) Or helpe, but travell finde for my best hire. (d) Here, Wroth admits that no matter what, she must endure alone her three choices that will not back down. The fact that Wroth is using such deductive reasoning to make a decision is of a male persona, where intelligence plays an important part of being a man during her era. This parallels with her usage of Petrarch. Yet that which most my troubled sense doth move, (e) Is to leave all, and take the thread of Love. (e) Ending the sonnet, Wroth decides that no matter the consequences, she wants to take love’s path. Wroth’s determination to be in love aligns with the relentless nature of men, doing anything in their power to provide and be successful, no matter the danger or risk. Wroth closes her sonnet in a traditional Petrarchan couplet, and leaves it for interpretation. Overall, Wroth writes a sonnet of 14 lines, telling the audience that it is a sonnet. After investigating further, the reader finds that Wroth follows the Petrarchan rhyme scheme for the sestet, making it a Petrarchan sonnet. However, she ignores the scheme for the octave. Along with the rhyme scheme, Wroth follows iambic pentameter, excluding the first line, where she falls short a syllable, and the second line, which proves to be a feminine ending—one too many syllables. The volta is also true for this sonnet, where she spends the octave debating on which way is correct in this “love labyrinth,” and uses the sestet to announce her decision to follow the path to love. Like an original Petrarchan lover or mistress, Wroth aims her admiration onto her cherished love, admitting she will burn for it. What differentiates Wroth’s narrator from her Petrarchan predecessors “is not only her female sex and open acknowledgment of erotic pleasure but also her confidence that Amphilanthus reciprocates her love” (Bell 238). Likewise, there is a sense of confidence throughout this sonnet, and it might give credit to Amphilanthus’ reciprocation of Pamphilia’s love. Her desire to stay faithful is not shaken, despite the frustrated tone, because Wroth decides that she wants unconditional love, which she feels she is receiving. While Wroth became involved in her authorship, the enforcement of herself in a male’s activity defined her work. In fact, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus was the “first sequence of love sonnets and the first substantial collection of original, secular lyrics written and published by an English woman” (Bell 231). Aside from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, her works include an 800page romance, Urania, and a play titled Love’s Victory, all of which make evident her efforts to break down the gender barrier. Wroth’s works have their own way of exploring a woman’s experiences that a man could not feel. Her works also take the reader into a world where the lyrics of poetry far surpass those of Wroth’s muses, such as her father, Sir Robert Sidney, or her uncle, Philip Sidney. This is why people who critique her writing admire it. However, not everyone agrees with the style of speaker that Wroth chooses to let speak in her collection of
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sonnets. The voice of those sonnets exists in “a state of claustrophobic constancy that lacks narrative development, dramatic tension, and persuasive purpose” (Bell 231-32). This is because readers have been exploring the uncensored versions of her work, but leave out key parts that could seem ‘unsuitable’ or objective for some audiences. Reading these cut versions of Wroth’s work is unacceptable. The omission of the erotic sections undermines the sonnet’s intention and take away how readers view Wroth as a unique writer. The original manuscript, as mentioned earlier, focused on Pamphilia seducing Amphilanthus, as if she only focused on sexual pleasure. This very idea, set into reality, is what caused a woman to develop a reputation of being a harlot. This sonnet focusing on a juxtaposition between what can be done in writing but not in reality set a landmark for female authors. If the actions produced by her female heroines were a reality, Wroth would be shamed and unable to write. Josephine Roberts, author of The Poems of Mary Wroth, used the Folger manuscript version of Pamphilia “because the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization reflect Wroth’s choices” (Bell 234). Roberts believed that there were distinct differences between the Folger manuscripts and the 1621 revised version. She decided that her own conception of Wroth’s work involving Amphilanthus indistinctly captured his essence and that “Wroth’s poetry adheres to the well-defined Petrarchan mode” (Bell 234). Wroth highlights the Petrarchan discourse so well because she gave an answer to the already asked question: did these Petrarchan values permit the access, not imitation, of a female voice? (Kuin 148). It is possible that Wroth had no intention of crossing the boundary into an indeterminate gender in terms of voice. However, this agency gave her something to cling to; it gave her a void to hide in while she found her identity. In this case, Wroth not only moved beyond just copying the Petrarchan discourse, but she adopted it so that it would be her independent work while it kept the conventions upon which it was formed. First, Wroth accentuated this discourse with her interest in love, and “loving in truth,” as her uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, had held dear to his own poetry. The vulnerability of lovelorn characters presented in a Petrarchan sonnet should be significant. Perhaps her female voice caused that vulnerable state, aiding in a slight variation of those Petrarchan values. This did not hold true for Wroth, however, because in forty sonnets and six songs, there is no evidence that suggests the poet is a woman, or that the text is written to, for or about a man. This gender indeterminacy characterizes Wroth’s sonnet-sequence because if someone were to read any sonnet in the seventeenth century, they would not question what gender had written it because women were discounted. Still, this indeterminacy causes trouble for her access of the Petrarchan discourse. One of the most significant aspects of this sonnet-style is the “investment in the definition of roles [where] Poet/Lover is speaker; love is speech [and] Beloved is Other, whose role is to be (beloved)” (Kuin 154). When Wroth removes these roles by her ambiguity, she is confusing her audience, but also creating new outlooks into the world of Petrarchan style. In Sonnet 40 of Pamphilia, Wroth uses no gender pronouns for herself or her characters, and just addresses love as a genderambiguous entity: (1) It is not Love which you poore fooles do deeme (2) That doth appeare by fond and outward showes (3) Of kissing, toying, or by swearings gloze: The physicality of sex categorizes Wroth’s illustration of Love’s fooles, but gives no jabs to either males or females. Instead, she gives a generalization of “fooles” and their blind nature. Perhaps Wroth is aware of her ambiguous nature, and refrains from pointing fingers in an attempt to highlight her own Petrarchan style. The audience can already infer that this is a
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Petrarchan sonnet because of its subject matter, love, and it utilizes the “abbaabba” rhyme scheme. (4) O no, these are farre off from loves esteeme. (5) Alas, they are not such that can redeeme (6) Love lost, or wining keepe those chosen blowes: (7) Though oft with face, and lookes love overthrowes; (8) Yet so slight conquest doth not him beseeme. The octave upholds Petrarch’s required rhyme scheme until the end. These five lines contain the only gender-specific pronoun, “him,” in line eight. This part seems to be the only indication to Wroth’s gender as a poet, nodding to the “face, and lookes” that overthrows love being female, and the male being the character who has the “conquest.” This is a common gender stereotype; whereas, the woman is considered the gender having beauty in her face and looks. (9) ’Tis not a shew of sighes or teares can prove (10) Who loves indeed, which blasts of failed love, (11) Increase or dye, as favors from them slide. This is an interesting portion to examine, as Wroth suggests that “sighes or teares” cannot prove true love, no matter the gender. Although “teares” could propose a feminine quality, Wroth does not state it explicitly. (12) But in the soule true love in safety lies (13) Guarded by faith, which to desert still hies: (14) And yet kinde lookes doe many blessings hide. Last, Wroth identifies love as incorporeal as she experiments with the idea of a soul. In this context, a person’s soul is separate from their heart, and is eroticized. If the body is unable to receive pleasure from love, then her soul would. This suggests that true love only matters within the soul, again dismissing any gender specifics. Her mention of faith also proves this to be true, because all people self-identified as Christian, no matter the gender. Her audience believed faith came from the soul, so this example she uses could be her way of relating to her audience. Thus, Wroth kept her sonnets gender-ambiguous on purpose for her Petrarchan discourse’s sake, but also for the sake of emphasizing the importance of the separate body and soul. There were many stages of writing in Pamphilia, most of which appear in print in the Folger Library manuscript (Bell 232), and show the composition of this work, and her revisions, which is groundbreaking, because researchers were able to patch together her thought processes that built this distinguished compilation of sonnets. Not only did these manuscripts give rise to researchers who study them, but it also gave “radically different conceptions of poetry…both [were] worthy of serious consideration” (Bell 232). The very first printed sequence is impressive in that it highlights its own merits; it was more enthralling, with aspects that show the intricate thoughts and experiences that matured over time. They were interpreted as the renovating and secreting of a love affair, represented by Wroth. In light of one another, Pamphilia “shows Wroth to be a more boldly original, multifaceted, and sophisticated poet than modern scholars have realized” (Bell 233). Wroth used her independent female characters as a means to challenge and subvert the values of masculinity, and to repress the gender politics that were prevalent in this era. She used gender to “explore the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior, which was particularly attractive for a woman writer because, for her, the simple acts of writing and publishing created social anxiety” (Leslie 117). Wroth used the female body to illustrate that females were, indeed, females, by sexualizing the body, and yet, carry an intelligence as a way to mock the
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misogynistic ideals of society. This factor “considers how the convergence of romance conventions and patriarchal ideologies limits female selfhood through the subjection of women’s bodies” and the way this lust rips the social bond, thus exposing the nature of the feminist body under those beliefs (Wagner 580). These tendencies to write in such styles could always root back to her incestuous relationship with her cousin, The Earl of Pembroke. More ammunition for her and the works she wrote seemed even more promiscuous to the public. Nevertheless, Wroth’s analysis of her own emotions within those works were what characterized Pamphilia as an empowered woman, who still struggled with the hurt and betrayal of impossible love, and imminent loss. In Pamphilia, no matter the version, the sequence begins with a sonnet that illustrates Pamphilia seeing “bright Venus Queene of Loue,” who is sitting on “a Chariot drawne by wing’d Desire”: But one heart flaming more then all the rest, The Goddesse held, and put it to my breast, Deare Sonne now shoot, said she: thus must we wine; He her obey’d and martyr’d my poor heart (lines 9-12). This vision of a dream suggests that “Pamphilia’s burning passions will be anything but traditional poetic fare” (Bell 236). This way of beginning the sequence is significant because it already illustrates Wroth’s erotic, and very apparent, attitude towards her lovers. Since some poems were omitted from the Folger manuscript in the 1621 version, her audiences were not able to align themselves with the side of Wroth’s authorship that tended to be more erotic than her other works. Wroth’s love plot reveals that Pamphilia’s physical actions lead the readers to believe Pamphilia’s love is true, and that she is not using her body as a vehicle to be manipulated. Wagner mentioned that through her protagonists’ bodies, their “physical encounters, which conflict with…the romantic ideology that drives the major love plots…these…women come to reconceive their bodies in ways that reveal various possibilities for individual female agency” (578). Instead of thinking of these female writers as “exceptions” to sonneteers, it is very possible how the “patriarchal silencing of Women’s speech was challenged by some women writers of this period in ways which led to the [emancipation] of a feminine identity for writers” (Brennan 532). This is when Wroth’s decision of voice became a very important topic while reading into her works. Not only educated, she had a strong bond with her family, emotionally and financially. This is another determining factor to consider when trying to interpret Wroth’s works. Her close ties with court and literary connections with her aunt and uncle, who happened to be esteemed authors Sir Philip and Mary Sidney, helped raise her social status on the hierarchy, which at that time, ranked God, monarch, husband, wife, and child. However, those connections could not give her immunity from social or financial defamation because the power women possessed considered and practiced as lesser than that held by men (Leslie 118). That factor alone called significance to the society gender gap, which ruled what the future held for women. Mary Wroth and her Pamphilia to Amphilanthus constructs an ideal that seventeenthcentury women were able to have individual ideas and opinions, and then proceed to put them on paper for centuries to come. Her use of the Petrarchan discourse, along with her own variations, helped form a reputation for women that would not soon diminish. Instead, she inspired female writers for years to come, sonneteers or not. Other successful writers such as Aphra Behn and Virginia Woolf would forever be thankful for Wroth’s ambition to write, an ambition that proved women to be powerful forces of nature. Her uncensored works published and circulated today
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have opened numerous possibilities into the false gender constraints that were fastened to Wroth as a young woman. Furthermore, Wroth’s determination shaped sonnet writing, and her own identity, as a woman with a mind, a woman with bravery.
Works Cited Bell, Ilona. “‘Joy’s Sports’: The Unexpurgated Text of Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.” Modern Philology: Critical and Historical Studies in Literature, Medieval Through Contemporary (2013): 231-52. Web. 27 November 2014. Brennan, Michael G. “Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England.” The Review of English Studies 48.192 (1997): 532. Web. 29 October 2014. Hannay, Margaret P. Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. 2013. Web. Kuin, Roger. “More I Still Undoe: Louise Labe, Mary Wroth, and the Petrarchan Discourse.” Comparative Literature Studies 36.2 (1999): 146-61. Web. 3 August 2015. Leslie, Andrea. “Melancholy and Identity in Early Modern England: Lady Mary Wroth and the Literary Tradition.” ProQuest. 2008. Web. Miller, Naomi J. “‘Not much to be marked’: Narrative of the Woman’s Part in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania.” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 29.1 (1989): 121-37. Web. 29 October 2014. Moore, Mary. “The Labyrinth as Style in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38.1 (1998): 109-25. Web. 29 October 2014. Towers, Heide. “Politics and Female Agency in Lady Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victorie.” Women’s Writing 13.3 (2006): 432-47. Web. 29 October 2014. Wagner, Geraldine. “Contesting Love’s Tyranny: Socially Outcast Women and the Marginalized Female Body in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania.” English Studies 87.5 (2006): 577-601. Web. 29 October 2014. Wroth, Mary. Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Oxford: Benediction Classics, 2007. Print.
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Bioassay and Nutrient Limitation Experiment on the Piedmont Environmental Center Pond in High Point, North Carolina Skylar Nerone Skylar Nerone, a senior biology major, was initially introduced to her research topic in limnology class when she learned about the importance of healthy inland waters systems and how they can affect the ecosystem surrounding them. She eventually went on to choose a location close to High Point University that directly affects the community as the focus of her research. The most fulfilling part of her research is learning how important it is to keep the water systems clean and conversely how easy it is to tamper with them. Working with her mentor, Dr. Cooke, as well as with some of her classmates has helped Nerone learn about all of the different tests and experiments that can be conducted to analyze a lake and other freshwater systems. This knowledge has been instrumental in her research for this project. After graduation, Nerone is interested in pursuing a career in medical or pharmaceutical sales.
Abstract Nutrient limitation studies are being conducted worldwide in large water bodies in order to understand fragile water ecosystems. These studies have proven to be important in fighting against pollution and unexpected algal blooms. However, there have not been many studies that focus on nutrient limitation in smaller bodies of waters, such as ponds. Additionally, there have been few experiments conducted during the winter in this region. In this experiment I tested for the limiting nutrient in the Piedmont Environmental Center pond in High Point, North Carolina. I hypothesized that the pond would be Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) or Nitrogen + Phosphorus (N+P) limited. A simple bioassay was done with the algal pigment chlorophyll a as the response variable and treatments that included additions of nitrogen only, phosphorus only, and nitrogen and phosphorus together. Our results indicated that the algae in this pond was not nutrient limited and furthermore the decline of chlorophyll in all of the bioassay treatments indicates that the algae may have been suppressed by photo-inhibition and/or potential bacteria competition that may have occurred. Photo-inhibition caused a decrease in the concentration of chlorophyll a from our initial samples in the N and P samples. Potential bacterial competition in our N+P samples may have caused no chlorophyll a production at all. My results do not support the hypothesis of nutrient limitation in this pond. These findings are important because they show the nutrient conditions in this pond during the winter, and that further work may explore nutrient limitation during different seasons or under different light conditions.
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Introduction
P
hytoplankton are unicellular algae that are found in aquatic ecosystems and their biomass is controlled by specific nutrients that are necessary for the organisms’ survival. According to Tilman’s Resource Competition Theory, species that have the lowest requirement for the limited resources or the highest ability to utilize it will succeed in competition (Tilman et al. 1982). Studies have shown that with excess amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, there could be an excess of phytoplankton. In this study, bioassay experiments were run during the winter to determine the limiting nutrient or nutrients in the pond at the Piedmont Environmental Center located in High Point, North Carolina. Research has shown that freshwater anthropogenically eutrophic lake, which is a body of water that has an excess amount of nutrients from runoff, can shift from nitrogen limited to phosphorus limited during different seasons (Wetzel 1983). Nutrient limitation is not often examined in the winter, but it may still occur, especially given the relatively warm, wet climate of the southeastern U.S. By determining the limiting nutrient in this body of water we can then further our knowledge of how to potentially stop or prevent any type of algal bloom in this specific pond that may potentially destroy the habitat. Although nitrogen can be a limiting nutrient in some bodies of water, it is usually phosphorus that is the main limiting nutrient in freshwaters. Phosphorus often has the most control over the phytoplankton’s biomass and thus has a large influence on the entire ecosystem (Schindler 1978). Kniffin et al. (2009) studied nutrient limitation of phytoplankton as well as periphyton, a small organism that attaches to freshwater plants, in multiple small ponds in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. A bioassay was performed and Kniffen et al. concluded that the phytoplankton in the pond were co-limited by nitrogren+phosphorus rather than just being limited by phosphorus itself. From these results, they also concluded that because of the rise in pond nutrients, there was a significant effect on phytoplankton response. I ran bioassay experiments on a small pond following Kniffin et al. (2009). I tested the hypothesis of the pond being Nitrogen (N) limited, Phosphorus (P) limited or co-limited (N+P). Methods The Piedmont Environmental Center is located in High Point, North Carolina (36° 0’ 4.3194”, -79° 57’ 17.28) and is a 376-acre reserve. The pond itself has a maximum depth of approximately 3m and the water is turbid (Secchi depth < 0.5 m). There is a forested area that immediately surrounds the pond but the majority of its watershed is suburban development. The pond is located in the City Lake watershed, which mostly consists of forest and urban land cover (Touchette et al. 2007). To determine nutrient limitation of the phytoplankton I set up a bioassay that had the following treatments; initial samples, controls, N, P and N+P each with two replications. 350 mL of the sample water from the Piedmont Environmental Center pond was added into a 500 mL flask and then the sample flasks. A piece of Nitex brand mesh size 36m was used to filter out all of the zooplankton. Then, 543 L of NaH2PO4+2H2O was added to all P and N+P flasks. Subsequently 544 L of NH4NO3 was added to all N and N+P flasks. The flasks were placed in random position under the growth light for 48 hours so that all flasks would receive approximately the same amount of light. Twenty-four hours after the flasks were placed under
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the growth light, each flask was swirled and randomly placed in a different spot under the growth light in order to re-suspend phytoplankton particles that may have settled. The chlorophyll a analysis was based on EPA (1987) and APHA (1998). The filters were put into 15 mL tubes. All tubes were covered with aluminum foil and put into the freezer. After 48 hours, the rest of the flasks were taken out from under the growth light and were filtered through GF/F (Whatmann). Chlorophyll a was extracted from the filters by being immersed in 100% acetone for 48 hours at 8°C. A Spectronics 20D spectrophotometer was used to measure out the concentrations of chlorophyll a in the samples. To quantify chlorophyll a in the acetone extract of each sample, the 750 nm wavelength was measured first. After the 750 nm wavelength data was determined, we recalibrated the spectrophotometer for 664 nm wavelength. This process was done for every sample. Results and Discussion Chlorophyll a concentrations declined in the control samples, N, P and especially in N+P (Figure 1). With the exception of the initial treatment, one replicate was lost in each of the other samples due to a processing error with the spectrophotometer. In the N+P sample, there was no chlorophyll a growth at all, which could indicate that there was competition between the phytoplankton and bacteria that was in the water samples. My data suggest that the algae in the pond were not nutrient limited. The data that lead to this conclusion were found when calculating the concentrations of chlorophyll a obtained during the experiment. There was no direct significant growth in any of our samples other than in the initial samples.
Figure 1: Results shown above are mean chlorophyll a growth in each of the samples. All samples except N+P showed detectable levels of chlorophyll a. N+P sample decreased in production even with the addition of nutrients. Error bars indicate standard error.
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It was noteworthy in our experiment that we observed a decline from the initial samples. This most likely indicates that photo-inhibition occurred. It is hard to tell at what irradiance measurement this occurred at because irradiance measurements of our growth lamps were not taken. When photo-inhibition occurs there is no chlorophyll a being produced which would affect the results of the experiment altogether. In large bodies of water photo-inhibition is a very serious problem. When this occurs in the environment, it will prevent algal growth. This can result in a trophic cascade, which can disrupt other organisms that are higher up in the food chain and throw off an entire community. Solar ultraviolet radiation is known to be responsible for a variety of deleterious effects on aquatic autotrophic organisms. These include inhibition of photosynthesis by phytoplankton as well as benthic microalgae (VillafaĂąe et al. 1999). Even in the small pond that this experiment was based on, photo-inhibition could completely destroy all of the trophic levels started at the autotrophs. The N+P sample results came out to be 0, meaning there was no chlorophyll a at all in the sample. This could be because there was naturally occurring bacteria in the water samples that were collected. A hypothesis that was not tested during this experiment but may be tested in the future is that these bacteria would have grown and used up the N+ and P+ that was added to the sample for the experiment, thus outcompeting the phytoplankton. In Grognard et al. (2015), researchers found that normally when there are bacteria and phytoplankton in competition the best free bacteria or phytoplankton competitor excludes all other species. In my experiment, I speculate that bacteria may have competitively excluded phytoplankton, although bacterial abundance and productivity were not measured. Savchuk et al. (2009) observed nutrient loading analyses that were run on a river basin in Finland. They found that there is a higher risk of eutrophication in still standing water bodies than in moving water systems. Although this particular pond has not experienced serious algal issues before, knowing which, if any, nutrients are limiting at various times of the year could be valuable for preventing an algal bloom that could potentially destroy the very small ecosystem that is there. It is important to take these findings into consideration when we are looking at the small body of water that was studied here. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eutrophication is a common issue affecting water bodies of the North Carolina piedmontâ&#x20AC;? (Touchette et al. 2007). Although we found no evidence of nutrient limitation during this specific time period, it still may occur during other times of the year. A drawback of the experiment is that it was only conducted during the winter. There is a possibility that the results would vary because the algae may experience photo-inhibition during this specific time of year because they are adapted to the low-light environment. It would be very important to run this experiment on this pond during other seasons as well. It is known that seasons are capable of changing the limiting nutrient (Wetzel 1983). Weather plays a large role in nutrients that can be added into any water system. Above average rainfall can occur during any time of the year and may increase nutrient input via overflow into the pond. This then may coincide with additional nutrients and this could cause phytoplankton biomass to fluctuate (Bukaveckas 2002). Although bioassays are used in most experiments to find limiting nutrients in water systems, there are criticisms of the bioassay methods that include over-emphasizing nutrient limitation while minimizing the importance of other potential limiting factors. Other limiting factors for example could be light and temperature (Elser et al. 1990). While doing this experiment in a lab, it is very important to remember that no lab can recreate exactly what nature does. Although the data did not give me the results I was looking for, they did however shed some light on the phytoplankton community that exists in this small pond during the winter.
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Acknowledgements Thank you Ryan Gibson for being a wonderful partner and Dr. Sandra Cooke for helping us with our research and our experiments. Thank you to the Biology Department at High Point University for providing the tools and modes of transportation needed for this experiment. Also thank you to the Piedmont Environmental Center in High Point, North Carolina for allowing us to sample their pond.
References American Public Health Association. (1998). Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Sewage. Second Edition. Elser, J.J., T. Andersen, J.S. Baron, A.-K. Bergström, M. Jansson, M. Kyle, K.R. Nydick, L. Steger, and D.O. Hessen. 2009. Shifts in lake N:P stoichiometry and nutrient limitation driven by atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Science. 326: 835 - 837. Grognard, F., Masci, P., Benoît, E., & Bernard, O. (2015). Competition between phytoplankton and bacteria: Exclusion and coexistence. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 70(5), 9591006. Kniffin, M., Neill, C., McHorney, R., & Gregory, G. (2009). Nutrient limitation of periphyton and phytoplankton in cape cod coastal plain ponds. Northeastern Naturalist, 16(3), 395408. Savchuk, O. P., Eremina, T. R., Isaev, A. V., & Neelov, I. A. (2009). Response of eutrophication in the eastern gulf of Finland to nutrient load reduction scenarios. Hydrobiologia, 629(1), 225-237. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10750-0099776-y Schindler DW (1978) Factors regulating phytoplankton production and standing crop in the world’s freshwaters. Limnol Oceanogr 23:478–486 Sellers, T. Bukaveckas, P.A. (2003). Phytoplankton production in a large, regulated river: A modeling mass balance assessment. American Society of Oceanography and Limnology., 48(4), 1476-1487. Tilman D, Kilham SS, Kilham P (1982) Phytoplankton community ecology: the role of limiting nutrients. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 13:349–372 United States Environmental Protection Agency. (1983). Ambient Monitoring Guidelines For Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD). EPA-450/4-87-007. Villafañe, V.E., Andrade, M., Lairana, V., Zaratti, F., Helbling, E.W. (1999). Inhibition of phytoplankton photosynthesis by solar ultraviolet radiation: studies in Lake Titicaca, Boliva. Freshwater Biology, 42, 215-224. Wetzel, R. G. (1983). Limnology, 2nd ed. CBS College Publ. And Likens, G.E. (1979). Limnological analyses. Saunders.
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Who is Blamed the Most? And Investigation into the Factors that Affect the Amount of Blame attributed to the Victims of Crime Lauren Rubenstein Lauren Rubenstein, a senior psychology and criminal justice double major, became interested in investigating factors that affect victim blaming after a discussion in her victimology class. So far, the most rewarding part of her research experience has been the ability to present her work at the National Convention for the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Her mentor, Dr. Danzis has been a great support to Rubenstein, not only in regard to her research, but also in helping her prepare for the future. Their relationship has helped to prime Rubenstein for graduate school mentorship and has contributed greatly to her success at High Point University. After graduation, Rubenstein plans on attending graduate school and earning a Ph.D. in Forensic Psychology.
Abstract A Mixed Factorial Design was used to examine the effect of type of crime on victim blame, as well as the gender of the perpetrator and the victim. One hundred and four undergraduate students were given scenarios of different crimes with varied gender of victim and perpetrator and rated the responsibility of the victim and the perpetrator on the Victim Perpetrator Blame Scale. Results showed that there was a significant effect of type of crime on victim blaming, F(3, 294) = 18.650, p =.000. A simple effects test revealed murder victims were blamed significantly more than rape victims, robbery victims were blamed significantly more than rape victims, and robbery victims were blamed significantly more than assault victims. There was a main effect for gender on victim blaming, F(3,98) = 2.090, p = .107. Post hoc analyses showed male victims were blamed significantly more when the perpetrator was female than male.
T
he concept of victim blaming can be traced back to the earliest theories of Victimology, which tried to group victims by their level of responsibility. It is a natural response for people to want to try to blame a victim of crime for what happened to them, because it is unsettling not being able to understand the cause of crime. They want to believe that the world is ultimately a good place, and this would never happen to them and it only happened because the victim deserved it in some way (Lerner, 1980). Blaming victims for a crime often causes a sense of re-victimization for the victims and can deter victims from reporting crimes that have been committed against them. Unfortunately, some victims receive more blame than others depending on their characteristics and the type of crime that occurred. The purpose of this research was to
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examine if type of crime committed has an effect on victim blaming and to what extent gender plays a role in victim blaming. Type of Crime Many different types of crime have been studied in relation to victim blaming. For example, Gracia and Tomás (2014) studied the perception of intimate partner violence among the Spanish population. This study found victim blaming attitudes were more common among participants who were older, less educated, placed themselves at the bottom of the social scale, and when they thought partner violence against women was more common. Unfortunately, this study did not compare these findings to any other types of crime and it also did not focus on victim characteristics at all. Other types of offenses, both criminal and non-criminal, such as child abuse and cyberbullying, have also been studied. Muller, Caldwell and Hunter (1994) found predictors of victim blaming for child abuse to be low empathy, internal locus of control, prior physical abuse, and personal similarity. Weber, Ziegele, and Schnauber (2013) examined a case of cyberbullying and found victim’s extraversion and attractiveness affected the amount of blame participants attributed to the victim. These two studies are interesting because these two types of victimizations are rarely studied in regards to victim blaming. These studies are limited, however, due to the fact that they are not compared with any other types of crimes. Further research needs to be done to see if these factors are specific to types of victimizations, or can be applied to other types of crimes. Research has shown that some crimes seem to be associated with more victim blame than other types of crimes. Types of crimes are categorized based on their severity with murder being most severe and non-violent crimes, such as larceny, perceived to be least severe. A study conducted by Adams-Price, Dalton, and Sumrall (2004) examined the effects of severity on victim blaming among three different age groups of participants. It found that the oldest age group of participants (60-84) blamed the more “irresponsible” victims more when the crime committed against them was mild than severe. This supports the belief that victims of less severe crimes are blamed more than victims of more severe crimes. However, it seems cases of rape include a unique dynamic related to victim blaming that other types of crimes do not. Bieneck and Krahé (2011) conducted an experiment that tested the theory of a special leniency bias in rape cases compared to cases of robbery. The sample consisted of 288 educational science students. The participants read three robbery scenarios and three rape scenarios. After each scenario, participants rated to what extent they blamed the perpetrator, as well as to what extent they blamed the victim. The results of this study showed that more blame was attributed to the victim of rape and less blame was attributed to the perpetrator of rape than for robbery. Also, within the rape scenarios, there was a relationship between victim’s relationship to the offender (acquaintance, stranger, or ex-partner) and amount of blame attributed to the victim, with more blame being attributed to the victim if the perpetrator was an acquaintance or ex-partner than a stranger. These findings were not found in the robbery scenarios. In terms of victim blaming, rape has often been looked at in comparison with other non-sex crimes. Similarly to Bieneck and Krahé, Alexander (1980) also studied victim blaming in cases of rape compared to cases of assault. This study examined the perceptions of nurses regarding different rape scenarios. This study was administered to 312 hospital nurses. In addition to type of crime, this study looked at characteristics of victims that would make them seem respectable 52
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(married, wore a floral dress, stranger attack) or not respectable (single, wore a halter top and skirt, knew the attacker). The results of this study found that victim blaming for rape was not significantly higher than victim blaming for assault; however, there was a significant difference in victim blaming between respectable and not respectable rape victims, which was not seen in the cases of assault. Because this was an educated sample that deals with victims of crime on a daily basis, it would be reasonable to assume they would not be as susceptible to victim blaming as the outside world. However, they did blame women more for rape based on characteristics such as their marital status, relationship to offender, severity of their wounds, and what they were wearing. These types of characteristics only affect victim blaming for rape, not crimes such as robbery and assault. As this study was conducted in 1980, it should be examined whether any of these beliefs still hold true today. Unfortunately, many victims of rape are blamed for things they wear, things they do, things they say, even things they cannot control, such as if the perpetrator is a stranger or not. Why is this specific to rape, and not any other crime? One hypothesis is that because of the consensual nature of most sexual acts, it may be assumed that there is usually some degree of consent or shared responsibility of the victim in cases of rape. According to Grubb and Harrower (2008, as cited in Van der Bruggen & Grubb, 2014), this is especially evident if the victims are familiar with the perpetrator or if they carry themselves in a way in which someone may perceive them as wanting sexual attention. Contrary to the findings of Bieneck and KrahĂŠ (2011) and Alexander (1980), Howard (1984) found no significant difference in victim blaming for rape victims compared to other types of assault victims. Within this study, undergraduates were given two scenarios (rape or robbery), and their findings showed similar victim blaming patterns between rape victims and other types of assault victims. This may be attributed to the fact that their sample was not representative of the population, consisting of 87 females and only 48 males. It seems that the type of crime alone is not significant in all cases; however, when other victim characteristics are involved, these are seen as more significant in cases of rape compared to other types of crime. Comparing multiple types of crimes of differing severity (robbery, assault, rape, murder) will allow for a better understanding of the concept of victim blaming and when it is most prevalent. Based on previous research and the sexual nature of the crime, it would seem the rape cases would receive the most victim blaming. When it comes to severity, it is hypothesized less severe rapes (little or no injuries) would be blamed the most. When discussing non-sex crimes, following the same logic, more mild crimes such as robbery victims would be blamed more than victims of severe crimes with severe injuries. Although there has not been any research conducted focused on victim blame for murder victims, based on these findings it would seem these victims would receive the least amount of blame. Gender Another important factor in victim blaming is gender. Howard (1984) found that women overall receive more blame for crimes committed against them than men. Additionally, Howard concluded that more blame is attributed to the character of female victims, while more blame is attributed to the behavior of men more than women. Male rape victims were found to be the least believable of all victims. This may come from the stigma of males being masculine and strong, that they would be able to defend themselves if they were attacked. Although Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s findings are a little outdated, many people may still hold these beliefs today, especially when discussing male victimization. 53
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Because of the acceptance of rape myth beliefs that men should be able to defend themselves, men are not physically able to be raped against their will, or that men should always want to have sex, it would seem males might actually receive more blame for cases of rape than for female rape victims (Sleath & Bull, 2010). In a study by Davies, Rogers, and Whitelegg (2009) participants read a scenario describing the rape of a 15-year-old. The gender, sexuality, and amount of resistance by the victim was manipulated and the results found the group of victims that received the most blame were the homosexual male victims who failed to resist the perpetrator. The researchers also found that male participants were more likely than female participants to blame the victims. In support of Davies, Rogers, and Whitelegg’s (2009) research, a study conducted by Sleath and Bull (2010), examined rape myth acceptance. It found that male rape myth acceptance was a significant predictor of victim blame for male rape victims. This suggests that rape myth acceptance may play a large role in victim blaming. The sexuality of the man seems to be taken into consideration more in the case of male rape, with rape of heterosexual men being judged as worse than rape of homosexual men or women. This belief was supported by research conducted by Doherty and Anderson (2004), which had participants paired together; one male and one female, to discuss a vignette of a male rape. During their discussion, the participants created a “hierarchy of suffering” in which rape is worse for a heterosexual male than for a homosexual male or female. In the cases of homosexual males and females, injuries were downplayed leading to less perpetrator blame. This research also discussed the belief that heterosexual male rape victims receive the most ridicule and least amount of support. It seems the participants of this study were sympathetic for heterosexual male rape victims, but believed not many others would be. Unfortunately, this same sympathy was not shown for homosexual male rape victims and female rape victims, because of the belief that homosexual males and heterosexual females may be used to penetration, while heterosexual males are usually not. Perceptions of sexuality seem to also influence amount of blame attributed to crime victims. Male participants with strong homophobic beliefs perceived male rape victims more negatively than female participants and male participants without strong homophobic tendencies (Anderson, 2004). It would seem that female victims would receive more social support than male victims, due to the strong societal belief that men should be able to defend themselves in situations of victimization. Social support obviously plays a significant role in a victim’s recovery process. According to Anderson and Lyons (2005), social support plays a role in victim blaming as well. Victims who received more social support were blamed less than victims who did not receive the same support. With females receiving more social support generally, these results would support the idea that women would be blamed less than male victims. Unfortunately, the research on victim blaming focused on gender is very limited. Most studies focus on male perpetrators with female victims. Rarely have studies been conducted with male perpetrators and male victims. It is extremely rare to find any research where the perpetrator is female. Almost all research conducted with male victims, similarly to female victims, focuses solely on rape and sexual assault. The present study will explore all possible gender roles, including male perpetrator and a male victim, male perpetrator and a female victim, female perpetrator and a female victim, as well as female perpetrator and male victim. It seems even though female victims generally receive more blame, males also receive blame in certain situations. In the situation of a female
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perpetrator and male victim, it would seem male victims would receive more blame than a female victim. Based on the previous research, rape victims have historically received more blame for the crimes committed against them in comparison to other victims, with the issue of how respectable the victim was being taken into consideration solely for rape crimes and not with other crimes. In addition to this dynamic, the severity of the crimes. including the extent of injuries, is taken into account as well. Victims of more severe crimes are blamed less than crime victims of less severe crimes. In the past, female victims were also generally blamed more than male victims. While further examining the issue of gender, especially in cases of rape, the acceptance of male rape myths in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s society lead to more blame being attributed to male rape victims than female rape victims, more so if the male is homosexual. In this experiment, two hypotheses were tested based on previous research. The first hypothesis was that more victim blaming would be associated with sex crimes (rape) than nonsex crimes (robbery, assault, murder). In regard to non-sex crimes, we believe that the severity of the crime would have an effect on victim blaming, with more victim blaming for crime with little to no injuries (robbery) and less victim blaming for crimes with severe or fatal injuries (murder). The second hypothesis was that female victims would generally be blamed more than male victims. However, the condition of female perpetrator and male victim within the rape scenario was thought to possibly receive the most victim blame due to popular acceptance of the male rape myth that it is not possible for a woman to rape a man. Method Participants The sample consisted of 104 undergraduate students ages 18-22 years (M =19.29 years, SD = .976 years). Eighty-one (77.9%) were women, and 23 (22.1%) were men. Of the participants, seven were African American (6.7%), three were Asian (2.9%), 89 were Caucasian (85.6%), two were Hispanic (1.9%) and three were multi-racial (2.9%). Seventeen of the participants (16.3%) said they had been a victim of a crime, while seven of the participants (6.7%) said they had been convicted of a crime themselves. Materials Crime Vignettes. Participants read four vignettes describing four separate types of crimes (murder, rape, robbery, assault). Each participant received one of four gender conditions (male perpetrator and male victim, male perpetrator and female victim, female perpetrator and female victim, female perpetrator and male victim). The gender condition remained constant for all four types of crimes. The vignettes were presented to the participants in one of two orders; murder, rape, assault, robbery, or robbery, assault, rape, murder. The vignettes are based on the vignettes used by Alexander (1980) and an example of the vignette for murder (male perpetrator and female victim) is as follows: Julia departed from a department store at 9:00 pm on a Thursday evening and proceeded toward her car, which was parked on a side street. Kevin, who was walking in the same direction, began to follow her and less than one block from her car, stopped her. Julia was severely beaten. Kevin fled on foot taking with him the contents of her purse. A bystander called the police and an ambulance took 55
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Julia to the hospital. Medical examination disclosed Julia had suffered from severe contusions to the abdomen and she died 16 hours after the attack while in the hospital. Each vignette was altered slightly by changing the gender of the perpetrator and victim for each gender condition. Victim Perpetrator Blame Scale. The Victim/Perpetrator Blame Scale is a seven-point scale created by Bieneck and KrahĂŠ (2011) to measure the amount of blame participants attribute to the perpetrator as well as to the victim for a specific crime. The participants in the present study were asked to complete the Victim Perpetrator Blame Scale for each of the four scenarios they read. This scale consisted of eight questions, the first four questions measured the amount of blame attributed to the perpetrator of the crime, while the last four questions measured the amount of blame attributed to the victim of the crime. The Cronbachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alpha values of .49 to .97 for each item indicate the reliability of the scale, which suggests the scale has good reliability. There is limited construct validity evidence, however a negative correlation between perpetrator blame and victim blame is shown. Sample items from this scale include the following questions: How likely do you think [the victim] is to blame for the incident? How much do you think [the perpetrator] is responsible for the incident? The possible responses ranged from one (not at all) to seven (very much) and participants circled the number that best corresponds to their belief. Demographic Measure. The demographic questionnaire asked for the age, race, and gender of the participant. It also asked the participant if he or she had ever been a victim of crime and if so what type of crime. Similarly, the questionnaire asked if he or she had ever been convicted of a crime, and if so what type of crime. These questions were asked to make sure the participant was not biased in any way towards victim or perpetrator blaming. Design An experimental 4 x 4 mixed factorial design was used for this study. Gender of the perpetrator and victim, the between-subjects factor, was measured on four levels (male perpetrator and male victim, male perpetrator and female victim, female perpetrator and female victim, female perpetrator and male victim) and the type of crime, the with-in subjects factor, was measured on four levels (murder, rape, assault, robbery). The dependent variable that was measured was the amount of blame attributed to the victim. Procedure The participants read and signed an informed consent form prior to participating in the study. Once the informed consent form was completed and all questions were answered, each participant was given a packet containing the four vignettes of different crime scenarios: one murder scenario, one rape scenario, one assault scenario, and one robbery scenario. The order the participants received the scenarios was counterbalanced and each participant randomly received a constant gender situation for all four scenarios. After reading each scenario, the participants completed the Victim Perpetrator Blame Scale for each scenario, as well as the demographic questionnaire. After the participants completed these packets, they were debriefed.
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Results An ANOVA was conducted for the type of crime with an alpha level of .05 There was a significant effect of type of crime on victim blaming, F(3, 294) = 18.650, p =.000. A simple effects test showed murder victims were blamed significantly more than rape victims, robbery victims were blamed significantly more than rape victims, and robbery victims were blamed significantly more than assault victims (see Table 1). Results showed that the type of crime accounted for 16% of the variability in victim blame with an observed power of 1.000. The order in which the types of crimes were presented to the participants was not significant on victim blame. Table 1 Types of Crime Related to the Amount of Victim Blame __________________________________________________ Mean
S.D.
Murder Victims
14.65
6.27
Rape Victims
11.85
4.04
Assault Victims
13.09
5.39
Robbery Victims
15.71
5.33
ANOVA results showed that female victims were not blamed significantly more than male victims overall. However, there was a main effect for gender on victim blaming, F(3,98) = 2.09, p = .107. A Tukey HSD Post Hoc Test showed male victims were blamed significantly more when the perpetrator was female than when the perpetrator was male (see Table 2). Results showed that gender accounted for 6% of the variability in victim blame with an observed power of .52. Table 2 Amount of Blame Attributed to Victims Male Victims
Mean
S.D.
Female Victims
Mean
S.D.
Female Perpetrator
15.38
4.95
Female Perpetrator
13.91
5.05
Male Perpetrator
12.67
6.12
Male Perpetrator
13.37
4.38
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Discussion The results did not support the hypothesis that victims of sex crimes were blamed more than victims of non-sex crimes. Also, the hypothesis that female victims were generally blamed more than male victims was unsupported. The results did support the hypothesis that male victims were blamed more when the perpetrator was female. The results somewhat supported the idea that victims of less violent crimes are blamed more than victims of more violent crimes, since robbery victims were blamed significantly more than assault and rape victims, however the finding that murder victims were blamed significantly more than rape victims does not support this belief. Although some of the findings were not exactly what we expected, the results showed that some victims are definitely blamed more than other victims. Since some of the previous research was outdated, these findings may suggest that due to a change in times, women and rape victims are treated with more respect and sympathy and blamed less for the crimes committed against them than they were in the past. This may also be attributed to the fact that today, there is much more social opposition by feminists to outwardly blaming victims, especially in cases of rape or if the victim is female. Unfortunately, male victims are not advocated for as much as female victims and the results support this. Due to the belief in male rape myths and societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s belief that men are strong and should be able to defend themselves, especially against women, men still receive a lot of blame when crimes are committed against them by women. Men may be embarrassed and ashamed when they are victimized by women, and for this reason it is not spoken about as much. Just as women and rape victims are no longer blamed as much for crimes committed against them, in the future, men will hopefully not be blamed as much for crimes committed against them by women. As more light is shed on the facts about crimes committed against men, more advocacy will be devoted to the cause and with time there will be more acceptance and understanding for these victims. The murder scenario produced interesting findings. The mean for victim blaming for murder victims was very high, just under the mean victim blaming for robbery victims. It would seem logical that out of respect for the deceased, they wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be blamed nearly as much as a victim that was still alive. The murder scenario used may have played a role in such high amounts of blame being attributed to murder victims. In the murder scenario, the victim died at the hospital hours after the crime occurred. Because the victim did not die at the scene, some participants did not see this as an intentional murder, and did not believe the offender intended to murder the victim. If this study were to be replicated, it would be beneficial to use another murder vignette in which the victim dies at the scene and it is more clearly a case of murder. Now that it is clear which crimes were blamed more from college students, how people perceive these victims can be changed. Communities can allocate more resources and advocacy groups to the types of victims that are receiving more blame, seeing as there are not many victim advocacy groups for male victims as well as robbery victims. If people are not outwardly advocating for these groups of victims, then society will not realize it is unacceptable to blame them for their own victimization. Instilling sensitivity training for victims of crime at universities and even high schools would also be beneficial. Other research has shown actually imitating the behaviors of others can reduce the amount of blame attributed to victims (Stel, Bos, & Bal, 2012). Using the idea of mimicry and having the students put themselves in the place of the victim, this can be
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incorporated into the sensitivity trainings to make it even more effective. Unfortunately, the effects of mimicry on victim blaming have not been found to be long term, so these types of trainings must be repeated on a regular basis in order to be successful. Sensitivity training sessions are especially important to have in fields of work that deal with victims of crime, such as medical fields, law enforcement, and fields of victim assistance especially. All people should have this training, but it should be continued and be more intense in fields of work that have the most contact with crime victims. If this study was to be replicated, there are a few improvements that should be made. More male participants would be needed to get a more representative sample of victim blame, especially in regard to the variable of gender. In addition to the murder scenario being not as clear as it should have been, the rape scenario was also a bit problematic. The rape scenario provided was clearly a case of violent rape committed by a stranger. This type of rape is sometimes referred to as “real rape” and receives the least amount of blame compared to other types of rape, such as date rape, acquaintance rape, and marital rape. In the future, further research will be conducted exploring the differences in blame attributed to victims for the different types of rape that are committed. In addition to the issue of rape, further research should be conducted to determine if the age of participants has an effect on the amount of blame they attribute to victims as well as the participants’ history of crime being committed against them, or them having committed a crime themselves. This question of criminal history was asked along with other demographic questions; however, it was not explored whether this had any effect on the amount of blame they attributed to victims. Looking into these variables may give a better understanding of who usually does the most blaming, instead of who is usually blamed the most.
References Adams-Price, C. E., Dalton, W. T., & Sumrall, R. (2004). Victim blaming in young, middleaged, and older adults: Variations on the severity effect. Journal of Adult Development, 11, 289-295. doi: 1068-0667/04/0700-0289/0 Alexander, C. S. (1980). The responsible victim: Nurses’ perception of victims of rape. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 21, 22-33. Anderson, I. (2004). Explaining negative rape victim perception: Homophobia and the male rape victim. Current Research in Social Psychology, 10, 43-57. Anderson, I., & Lyons, A. (2005). The effect of victims’ social support on attributions of blame in female and male rape. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 1400-1417. Bieneck, S., & Krahé, B. (2011). Blaming the victim and exonerating the perpetrator in cases of rape and robbery: Is there a double standard? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26, 1785-1797. doi: 10.1177/0886260510372945 Dalbert, C., Montada, L., &Schmitt, M. (1987). Glaube an eine gerechte Welt als Motiv: Validierungskorrelate zweier Skalen (Belief in a just world as motive: Validity correlates of two scales). Psychologische Beiträge, 29, 596-615. Davies, M., Rogers, P., & Whitelegg, L. (2009). Effects of victim gender, victim sexual orientation, victim response, and respondent gender on judgements of blame in a hypothetical adolescent rape. Legal and Criminal Psychology, 14, 331-338. doi: 10.1348/978185408X386030
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Doherty, K., & Anderson, I. (2004). Making sense of male rape: Constructions of gender, sexuality and experience of rape victims. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 14, 85-103. doi: 10.1002/casp.765 Gracia, E., & Tomรกs, J. M. (2014). Correlates of victim-blaming attitudes regarding partner violence against women among the Spanish general population. Violence Against Women, 20, 26-41. doi: 10.1177/1077801213520577 Howard, J. A. (1984). Societal influences on attribution: Blaming some victims more than others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 494-505. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world. New York: Plenum Press. Muller, R. T., Caldwell, R. A., & Hunter, J. E. (1994). Factors predicting the blaming of victims of physical child abuse or rape. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 26, 259-279. Sleath, E., & Bull, R. (2010). Male rape victim and perpetrator blaming. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25, 969-988. doi: 10.1177/0886260509340534 Stel, M., Van den Bos, K., & Bal, M. (2012). On mimicry and the psychology of the belief in a just world: Imitating the behaviors of others reduces the blaming of innocent victims. Social Justice Research, 25, 14-24. doi: 10.1007/s11211-012-0150-2 Van der Bruggen, M., & Grubb, A. (2014). A review of the literature relating to rape victim blaming: An analysis of the impact of observer and victim characteristics on attribution of blame in rape cases. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 19, 523-531. Weber, M., Ziegele, M., & Schnauber, A. (2013). Blaming the victim: The effects of extraversion and information disclosure on guilt attributions in cyberbullying. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16, 254-259. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2012.0328
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Beautiful Terror: John Keats and the Burkean Sublime Jose San Miguel Jose San Miguel is a junior studying English literature and graphic design at High Point University. His interest in sublimity arose during an English course he took in Spring 2015, 19th Century British Literature, taught by Dr. Matthew Carlson. San Miguel’s interest in sublimity, aestheticism, and beauty carried through to British Literature II, also with Dr. Carlson, where he became particularly engaged with the poet John Keats and his concept of Negative Capability. In an effort to combine these two interests, San Miguel sought to explore the relationship between sublimity and John Keats’ work. For San Miguel, the most fulfilling part of his undergraduate research was learning that he was accepted for publication. Knowing that the hard work that he and his mentor put into his project was fruitful is extremely rewarding. Working with Dr. Carlson has been one of the most formative experiences of San Miguel’s college career. Dr. Carlson’s mentorship and friendship has guided San Miguel to his English major, as well as helped him become a published researcher. San Miguel is so grateful for the opportunity to work and form a relationship with his mentor. After graduation, San Miguel plans on applying to both English literature and design programs to pursue a Master’s degree.
Abstract The sublime is a malleable and mobile concept; it allows writers to engage in questions of uncertainty, to find a means of representation that does not define what it depicts. In his Enquiry of 1757, Edmund Burke challenges human understand of the beautiful as something beyond the realm of full comprehension, claiming that the suspended motion of the soul at the hands of terror is the primary symptom of the sublime. In exploring the boundaries of language’s ability to illustrate, Edmund Burke uncovers the roots of sublime engagement, Ignorance and Astonishment. The unknown marks the limits of empirical understanding, allowing for explorations of the intangible to exert profound influences on our understanding of the world we inhabit. Through what John Keats calls “negative capability,” “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” we are able to synthesize a postulate about human engagement with the sublime: When experiencing equal levels of pleasure and terror at the hands of the ineffable, sensory elevation overpowers the yearning for truth. Keats’ body of work is not solely a product of his philosophy, however; his poetry is a breathing process of the sublime, a working rumination on the relationship between subject and concept. Situating Keats’ idea of Negative Capability alongside Burke’s theory of sublimity affords a fuller understanding of Keats’ aesthetic project as one grounded in the sublime.
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Introduction
T
he sublime is a complex concept that has been explored by countless theorists. The eighteenth-century discussion of sublimity centered around the body’s reaction to the sublime rather than the qualities of the sublime object itself. Edmund Burke distinguished himself from contemporary theorists by exploring the physiological response to sublimity, a novel concept that silenced the mind’s rational functions and championed pure sensory elevation. His philosophy identified both the terrible in Nature and the compounding power of language as the origins of the sublime. His Philosophical Enquiry set a precedent for aesthetic exploration and influenced the work of future theorists, poets, and authors. John Keats, a British poet whose meteoric rise to fame was due to his chameleonic poetic identity, created the concept of Negative Capability to challenge the great poets of his time to suppress their rationalist tendencies. One can align Keats’ Negative Capability with Burke’s understanding of the sublime through exploration of Burke’s physiological sublime, qualification of the sublimity of language, and examination of the subjects in Keats’ poems. The Physiological Sublime The discussion of the sublime in eighteenth-century Europe experienced a shift away from the qualities of the sublime object towards an understanding of the body’s response to sublimity. Artists and theorists alike sought to explore the ways in which we rationalize and respond to the aesthetic experience. Although at times markedly different than his contemporaries, Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry has come to be the face of British aesthetic thought, and as such is constantly juxtaposed with the German philosophy of Immanuel Kant. His philosophy often posits elements of the affecting object as the effect itself, as is the case when Burke claims that fear is the body’s physiological response to contemplating the boundaries of Fear. Burke begins his treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origins of the Sublime and Beautiful, by declaring the emotional response incited by the sublime in Nature is Astonishment. He qualifies this statement by declaring the inability to reason when encountering the sublime as a central tenant to his philosophy. He writes: The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. (53) The opening statements from Part Two of Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry seek to establish that the sublime’s fundamental effect is the paralysis of reason. Engaging with the sublime is inimical to the formation of thought, suggests Burke, as fear “robs the mind” of its power to reason (54). Burke’s sublime experience is ultimately one separated from judgment and reason altogether, and is therefore grounded in sensory response. Throughout his Enquiry, Burke constantly affirms that the sublime is an entity larger than the human subject. In many instances, Burke characterizes the sublime as an entity outside the realm of human control, a natural force that demonstrates dominion over the soul. Burke juxtaposes a farm horse and the book of Job’s depiction of a horse to reinforce that impending death and destruction engenders the sublime: as a “useful beast, fit for the plough, the road, the 62
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draft,” the farm horse bears no relation to the sublime; the horse in the book of Job, which “swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage,” is both terrible and sublime (Burke 60). Thus, sublimity bears a strict alignment with destruction; the object of sublimity is resistant to any human attempt to conquer, conceive, or control (Ryan 274). The sublime is marked by a sensation of equal terror and delight, however. To address the seeming absence of enjoyment in the sublime’s reception, Burke explains the relationship between pain and pleasure. He defines delight as the pleasure that arises from the remission of pain. Burke further distinguishes the two affections by claiming that pain is “imposed” upon a subject, while pleasure arises from the removal of pain. “Pain is always inflicted by a power in some way superior,” concludes Burke, “because we never submit to pain willingly” (60). Therefore, the sublime experience, distinguished as the sensation of delight at the hands of the ineffable, is grounded in pain’s dominating power. Expanding on this dominating power, Burke attempts, once again, to postulate the origins of the sublime. In tandem with many of his contemporaries, Burke proposes that terror is a ubiquitous component of the sublime’s reception. “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible … is a source of the sublime,” writes Burke (36). He later qualifies that statement, explaining that though terror is present during moments of sublimity, the sublime is not simply terror: rather, it is either “terrible, associated with something terrible, or acts upon us like the terrible” (Ryan 275). Distance from that terror, however, is necessary for the elevation of fear to sublime enjoyment. Diminishing the reflective powers of the mind, Burke differentiates himself from his contemporaries, stating that the pleasure of terror comes not from rational reflection of the sensation, but instead immunity from the terrible altogether. The delight that stems from engagement with the terrible is conditional on that terror “not press[ing] too close” to the perceiving subject (Burke 42). “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful,” concludes Burke (36-37). To illustrate this stipulation through modern conceptions, consider the act of bungee jumping. The experience of bungee jumping is a simulation of a suicidal descent. An encounter with death is as aligned with terror as could be, yet the experience of bungee jumping is made pleasurable because of the perceiving subject’s reasonable certainty that the bungee will not snap (Shaw 54). The bungee prevents unmitigated terror from “press[ing] too close,” affording the subject with a conception of what a dive into Death feels like while also elevating his or her sensory plane (Burke 42). Creation of adrenaline, elevation of the heart rate, and the quickening of pulmonary patterns are but a few examples of what exposure to sublimity can do to the perceiving subject. The delight the subject acquires from simulating the terrible without experiencing it fully is a clear example of the Burkean sublime. Sublimity as an Effect of Language As an empiricist, Edmund Burke’s understanding of the world is grounded in that which can be readily experienced. The school of philosophy he aligns himself with champions the senses as the ultimate informers, holding a priori knowledge at the heart of their beliefs. For Burke, the sublime originates in “whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror” (Burke 36). Analysis of the first part of his definition locates Burke as an advocate of the physical, tangible terrors found in Nature, positioning him safely within the bounds of his school of thought. The empiricism of his 63
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philosophy, however, fades pending examination of the final piece of what he ascribes to the sublime. The idea that sublimity is a characteristic intrinsic only to certain objects is jeopardized by the “rhetoric of conversance and analogy” which shifts the origins of sublimity towards abstract conceptions (Shaw 49). The radical possibility that sublimity is an effect of language is never conceded in Burke’s work, but his claim that sensory affections are “the great originals of all our ideas” challenges his trust in the Natural sublime (Burke 22). He maintains that our understanding of the world is grounded in sensory evidence: that which we can smell, touch, see, taste, and hear. Despite this, he concedes the empiricism of his treatise in the section, “Of the Difference Between Clearness and Obscurity with Regard to the Passions”: It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but then … my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively and spirited verbal description I can give, raises a very obscure and imperfect idea of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by the best painting. (Burke 55) Physical renderings of one’s reality – drawings and paintings – correspond to Burke’s empirical tendencies and his reliance on sensory evidence: a “clear idea” of the object is presented through the detailed execution of a drawing or painting. Verbal descriptions, however, fall short of creating such a clear idea, yet it is this shortcoming that informs the disintegration of Burke’s empirical understanding of the sublime. Although language fails at creating a clear image of the world, it succeeds in “conveying the affections of the mind from one to another” (Burke 56). Words, therefore, evoke the communion of the objective and the emotional by forcing the perceiving subject to engage outside the limits of the senses. Entangling the emotional with the empirical is challenging, however. If the authority of verbal descriptions is stripped of its ability to prove, and is therefore purely affective, one can question the veracity of such descriptions (Shaw 50). Burke preempts this discussion, clarifying that the sublime is not at all concerned with the truth of reality’s presentation. Rather, beauty is concerned with the understanding of an object and the sublime with the object’s emotional response. This distinction suggests that language’s affective power marks the limits of empirical understanding, solidifying the limitation of the mind as the sublime’s origin (Shaw 50). “To make any thing very terrible,” writes Burke, “obscurity in general seems to be necessary” (54). Consequently, it is only logical to claim that all that is obscure – Infinity, Eternity, Death – is sublime because it’s terrifying nature comes from its inability to be presented and rationalized in the form of a clear idea. Burke supports the idea that sublimity can exist in language near the end of his Enquiry, where he writes, “there are many things of very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in the reality, but the words which represent them often do” (158). “War, death, famine, … God, angels, devils, heaven and hell,” continues Burke, are each sublime because they exist beyond the bounds of empirical thinking (158). It is impossible to experience Infinity or Eternity, for example, yet the ideas ascribed to such states profoundly influence our engagement with and our understanding of those concepts. Because we are unable to fully conceive these notions, Ignorance, or a predisposed comfort in lacking complete comprehension, becomes a central tenant of the sublime. Rumination and examination of that which exists beyond the realm of the senses causes the self to succumb to the affective power of
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language. In this way, the sublime is as much grounded in the affective realm of language as it is in the empirically observed objects of Nature. Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry radically altered the conversation surrounding the beautiful and the sublime. His treatise eschewed the metaphysical, instead championing a patient appraisal of the emotional states as they were affected by any particular experience of the sublime. Burke’s Enquiry culminates in an examination of the relationship between the “affectations of the mind” and the elevation of the subject’s emotional state, emphasizing the physiological aspects of the sublime experience. His analysis in A Philosophical Enquiry refigures the sublime as an entity that demonstrates our own limitedness by halting our mental and reflective capabilities. Keats’ Negative Capability Edmund Burke’s legacy has impacted the course of many poets, theorists, and thinkers that came after him. The confidence his treatise exerts in positing a physiological response to the sublime altered the framework upon which future writers structured their work. The mind’s ability to reason, or the suppression of that capability, proved to be especially inspiring for nineteenth-century authors. Poet John Keats, a contemporary of Byron and Shelley in the 19th Century, was one of those whose creative aesthetic was aligned with the thinking of Edmund Burke. While simultaneously putting into action the concept of Negative Capability, Keats’ body of work strives to illuminate the nuances of rational paralysis as it pertains to the unity of Truth and Beauty. In a letter to his brothers, John Keats opens up discussion about sublimity and the poet. Claiming that “with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration,” Keats proposes that the ability to rationalize is rendered useless at the hands of the Beautiful, and that an openness of mind is the only way to fully engage with the sublime. In this letter, Keats presents a concept that would reframe the foundation for creative development. Identifying the quality upon which William Shakespeare’s genius was built, John Keats coins the term “Negative Capability,” which he describes as entailing “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (“Letter to George” 519). The curtailing of reason in favor of unmitigated experience places the subject outside the bounds of empirical understanding, thus situating it within the realm of the sublime. Through Negative Capability, John Keats demands poets to abandon the search for absolute knowledge and truth, instead suggesting that reception to the understanding and inspiration experience elicits will incite the creation of elevated work. For Keats, Negative Capability was the paramount characteristic of the creative genius. An aesthetic distance from the creative work allows for the writer to ascertain certain levels of imaginative sophistication, creating subjects and characters entirely detached from the biases and experiences of their Creator. William Shakespeare best exemplifies the erasure of self in the development of creative work, a tenant that lies at the heart of Negative Capability. William Hazlitt, a contemporary critic of Keats whose lecture “Literatures on the English Poets” Keats attended, wrote that “Shakespeare’s mind had the power of communication with all other minds – so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias … the least of an egoist that they could become” (Hazlitt 11). The creation of Iago and Imogen is a clear example of Shakespeare’s creative genius, for it would be impossible to create subjects so diametrically opposed without first removing oneself completely from each. It is in this context that John Keats writes, “A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence, because 65
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he has no identity – he is continually in for and filling some other body,” whether that be a Nightingale or a Grecian urn (“Letter to Richard” 523). Shakespeare’s ability to disengage his Ego ultimately informs John Keats’ own poetic aesthetic. Keats’ poetry is essentially dramatic, a removed presentation of inspiration and experience; even analysis of his lyrics, which by convention demand the author’s direct expression of sentiment, fail to show Keats in the foreground. Referencing Immanuel Kant’s idea of “disinterestedness,” a panoptic selflessness that allows an objective surveying of people and things, John Keats situates self-erasure at the heart of his ideal. Keats is quick to distance himself from any alignment with Kant’s rationalistic worldview, however, instead proposing that the dismissal of a priori knowledge is what allows the Poet’s imagination to enter into the identities of others. Without conceptions and biases, one could create vehicles for the sublime free from the discriminatory lenses of reason and utility. In a world of uncertainties, where no set of empirical laws can explain everything, an imaginative openness of the mind and an elevated receptivity to reality are the cruxes upon which the fullest Life sits. This, however, involves negating one’s own ego. Thus, Keats and Shakespeare demonstrate an acceptance of uncertainty, a pleasurable self-oblivion; Negative Capability allows for the complete surrender of perception as a means of fully embodying the speculated. The Sublime in Keats’ Poetry Moving away from the calculated, rationalistic practices of some of his contemporaries, John Keats seeks to demonstrate how empathetic entry into another identity inspires sublime engagement. Keats writes, “We hate poetry that has a palpable a design upon us … Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself, but with its subject” (“Letter to John” 519). Referencing the affective power of language that Burke’s treatise of the sublime illustrated, John Keats makes two claims about poetry. Firstly, poetry should be spontaneous and inspired, a product of the “openness of mind” that characterized his concept of Negative Capability. Poets should seek to create work free from the design of rationalization, instead allowing for inspiration to flow from a place free from the Self. Secondly, poetry, and more broadly language, has the potential to startle and amaze in ways that align with the sublime. While the work itself may not lend itself to sublimity, the means by which it informs response does. In the same way that constructs such as Eternity, Infinity and Death embody the sublime through their inability to be empirically rationalized, poetic works can challenge and stimulate the reader in similar ways. John Keats is not simply a poetic theorist, however; he applies the tenants of Negative Capability to his canon, creating a portfolio of poems that underpin his understanding. Keats’ entire body of work is a testament to the openness to experience he champions. One could argue that his rapid development as a poet was due to his refusal to fully adopt a fixed style or poetic practice; his experimentation with genre and verse form suggests a commitment to growth despite any periods of uncertainty or impatience. These experiments parallel his exploration of perspective change within a single work, as in the poem “Endymion,” where the main character shifts away from actively pursuing the moon goddess and instead falls in love with an Indian maid (Lau 93). His lyric poems, specifically “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” demonstrate the tenants of Negative Capability that make for a successful poetic project. “Grecian Urn” begins with the speaker celebrating a funerary urn whose decorative figures have escaped the human privilege of
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Death. As the speaker interacts with these characters, his perceptions and previously held truths are shattered, affording him the opportunity to engage openly with the subject. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the frozen figures of young lovers on the urn are initially held as preferable to the transitory qualities of the human experience. The speaker notes that the “flowery tale” the urn tells is more beautiful than those he participates in when not in “slow time” (“Grecian” 2-4). The speaker quickly discovers the truth of a life substantiated in the Beautiful, however: The piper “canst not leave / [His] song”; the trees “cannot shed / [Their] leaves”; and the lover can “never, never … kiss” the woman he pursues so ardently (“Grecian” 15-16, 21-22). As the speaker is disenchanted by the urn’s stasis, he begins to separate himself from his Self, distancing himself from his preconceived notions of the urn’s sublimity. By the time the speaker ultimately dismisses his initial praise for the urn as idyllic and unwarranted, the erasure of his Ego is complete. The speaker releases his sense of wonder and awe and consequently comes down from the elevated sensory plane on which he contemplated the Urn; excitement and pleasure have turned into calm and stoicism. His change of perspective demonstrates openness to the understanding one can garner from experience, and he is able to pose “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” as his final rumination on his experience (“Grecian” 49). The speaker’s willingness in “Grecian Urn” to propose conceptions contradictory to what he or she had originally held true allows for the development of a fuller understanding of Truth and Beauty. The absence of a finite, assured understanding of the Beautiful suggests an openness to experience that situates itself nicely with conversation of the sublime; the exposure to the terrible, that which elevates the subject to a higher sensory plane, or ineffable, that which is beyond comprehension, in each poem informs the development of “half knowledge.” Through imagination, inspiration, and disinterestedness, John Keats permeates the barrier between self and object, transforming his aesthetic enterprise into one that negates the Self and eliminates the Ego. Keats designates in sublimity a feeling provoked by the failure of the imagination when confronted by something exceptionally great. The empirical failure to represent the sublime prompts the very physiological response that signals sublimity; the subject is exposed to an idea of reason that exceeds its own limits of understanding. Ungraspable, the feeling of sublimity is prompted by something that remains out of reach, like the eponymous marbles in “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” from which Keats can only discern the vaguest “shadow of a magnitude” (14). Keats’ sonnet begins as a reflection on mortality, conceding that the only victory of humanity is the ability to feel sorrow. This is prompted by the subject’s alignment alongside the Elgin Marbles, marble pieces of artifice that are exempt from the uniquely human privilege of death. The subject laments “mortality weighs heavily on me,” that the Elgin Marbles have arrested his mind unwillingly, against his own compulsion. The “godlike” qualities through which the subject describes the Elgin Marbles trap him within his own mentality; in attempting to deconstruct the marbles and comprehend their qualities through the human lens, the subject becomes privy to “a most dizzy pain,” a result of the “undescribable feud” between the brain’s “dim-conceived” attempts to rationalize the Marbles and the Marbles themselves. In situating oneself alongside them, the body rejects rational capacity and is seized by pain and internal strife. “A shadow of a magnitude” is all that can be interpreted of this fantastic entity, invoking physiological responses that align themselves with Burke’s theoretical underpinnings. At the hands of something so grandiose, the subject is incapable of rationalizing and is therefore subjected to pain, sickness, and disillusionment.
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Pain, sickness, and disillusionment find themselves as the product of sublime engagement in other works of John Keats. In his letter to J.H. Reynolds, Keats explores the development of mental maturity, the path to which one entertains concepts such as Fear and Pain and Eternity. Keats illustrates this pathway by positioning the subject as a figure entering one of two apartments within a complex. The Infant Chamber, as Keats dubs it, is the realm the subject remains in when not engaging with elements of sublimity. When one attempts to rationalize something beyond the bounds of empirical understanding, however, the subject enters the Chamber of Maiden-Thought. Here, the subject becomes overwhelmed with a longing to stay within the warmth of enlightened thought and experience. Engaging with the sublime convinces one’s nerves “that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness, and Oppression” (522). The linguistic fashions of the sublime – Sadness, Pain, Fear – are not indoctrinated and fully experienced until the subject is paralyzed in them via exposure to sublimity. Though engagement in the realm of the sublime denounces reason and champions physiological stimulation, it also unlocks understanding of the very sublime elements that entrap the subject. As Keats wrote earlier in his letter, “For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses” (522); thus, through interacting with sublime constructs and experiencing the mental paralysis Burke has described, the subject who has been exposed to such abstractions has in fact expanded their mental capacity for sublimity. In the same way that a bungee jumper who has jumped multiple times has a fuller understanding of what the descent into Death feels like than someone who has never jumped, someone who has been exposed to elements of the sublime is more readily able to respond and comprehend them. Once an episode with sublimity has passed, once the philosophic axioms have been proved upon the pulses of the subject, the subject is able to contemplate those abstractions more readily. Aligning Keats’ concept of Negative Capability alongside Burke’s understanding of sublimity informs Keats’ aesthetic project as grounded in the sublime. According to Keats, the acquisition of Knowledge and the unity with Truth are only possible should the perceiving subject endure periods of uncertainty or “half knowledge.” Resisting the urge to draw firm conclusions “let[s] the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts,” free from the discriminatory lens of reason and empiricism (Lau 93). Existing without a full understanding is crucial to actualizing Negative Capability, “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (“Letter to George” 2). If we place Keats’ subject in Burke’s realm of sublimity, its acceptance of “half knowledge” would come from the physiological sublime’s paralysis of the rational faculties of the mind. Free from the shackles of empirical reasoning, Keats’ subject would be forced to succumb to both the pain and pleasure of sublime exposure, the experience of the ineffable being fully absorbed by the subject due to its inability to clarify the encounter. At the hands of the terrible, unadulterated engagement with sublimity affords Keats’ subject access to both Knowledge and Truth. John Keats’ theory of Negative Capability is rooted in an understanding of the physical and psychological reception to the sublime. His ability to understand the value of subdued rational cognition suggests an alignment with Burke’s theories, while the empathetic, Chameleon Poet he esteems allows for heightened physical responses from the audience. The curtailing of reason is at the heart of both Keats’ understanding of Negative Capability and the implications of Burke’s physiological sublime. While Keats does attempt to situate the sublime solely within the confines of empirical understanding, the “openness” with which his subjects engage the world, even the mysteries of Death and Eternity, suggests a broader horizon upon which to entertain the
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sublime. Just as Burke’s Enquiry posits the sublime as an effect of language, Keats constructs his aesthetic attempts around the interaction between subject and concept (Ende 57). Conclusion The sublime is not something that can be proven or clearly demonstrated; thus, the discussion surrounding it is layered, faceted, and complex. The radical proposition of Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry shook the understanding of what embodied sublimity. Burke’s physiological understanding of the sublime informs his theory that the sublime is a force so powerful that it limits human ability to reason. His treatise continues and implies that language itself carries with it the power to invoke the sublime, effectively introducing abstract concepts and the ineffable into the discussion of terror and pleasure. The painful and pleasurable aspects of interacting with the sublime are at the heart of John Keats’ theory of Negative Capability, which suggests that a fuller understanding of Truth and Beauty will come so long as the tendency to reason through experience is quelled. Through analysis, inquiry, and comparison, it is clear that John Keats’ body of work is a processing of the central tenants of Burke’s theory of the sublime. Works Cited Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Ed. J. T. Boulton. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Print. Ende, Stuart A. Keats and the Sublime. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Print. Hazlitt, William. “Lectures on the English Poets.” Bibliobazaar, 2007. Web. Hebron, Stephen. “John Keats and ‘Negative Capability.’” British Library. Web. Nov 14, 2015. Keats, John. “Letter to George and Thomas Keats [“Negative Capability”].” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 518-19. Print ---. “Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds [Milton, Wordsworth, and the Chambers of Human Life].” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 519-20. Print. ---. “Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds [Wordsworth’s Poetry].” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 519-20. Print. ---. “Letter to Richard Woodhouse [“A Poet Has No Identity”].” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 523-25. Print. ---. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 494-96. Print. ---. “Ode to a Nightingale.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 492-94. Print. ---. “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 471-72. Print. Lau, Beth. “Jane Austen and John Keats: Negative Capability, Romance and Reality.” KeatsShelley Journal 55 (2006): 81-110. Web.
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Ryan, Vanessa L. “The Physiological Sublime: Burke's Critique of Reason.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001): 265–79. Web. Shaw, Philip. The Sublime. London: Routledge, 2006. Web.
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One Vision: A Guide Dog Documentary Macaulley Quirk Macaully Quirk, a senior electronic media communication and theatre performance double major, has always loved to tell stories and learn from other people. Here she tells the untold stories of the guide dogs and their volunteer raisers, who put in countless hours training these dogs. For Quirk, the most fulfilling part of participating in undergraduate research was being able to extend herself and share this story. According to Quirk, “Dr. Trammell exceeds the definition of a mentor.” Throughout the process, he pushed her to her limits, believing in her abilities. After graduation, Quirk is moving out to Los Angeles to pursue film and TV production.
Abstract This project is a 28-minute documentary film. The film spans across four months when I worked with Guide Dog puppies and their raisers. I decided to capture their story through a lens. My documentary is titled One Vision: A Guide Dog Documentary. I worked under the guidance of Dr. James Trammell in the High Point University Department of Communication. Being a storyteller, my only wish is to tell people’s stories and for others to hear these stories. I got to tell this story about how volunteers raise these puppies to provide someone else the freedom to live. I invite you to watch their story. Dedicated to all the puppies, in particular, to the special four.
A
lot is untold about the story of four-legged creatures, destined to be heroes – they are the embodiment of freedom. I had the privilege and pleasure of spending four months with a very special group of people: Guide Dog puppy raisers.
When the general public sees a Guide Dog, it bears witness to the end product. What is normally presented is a competent, confident companion. We are often blind to the dedication, late nights and long hours, the many poop and treat bags, all of which have assisted in guiding that dog to its destiny. Before a Guide Dog is categorized as such, the little six-week old puppy spends a year with a raiser, a volunteer who teaches basic commands, manners, behaviors, and more importantly, provides that essential sense of love. I saw the effect of this love and decided to capture it through a lens. My documentary film is a short snippet of the process that four dogs and their raisers experienced, illustrating what it means to be a puppy raiser, the challenges, and the love. There is one vision these raisers have. One vision these dogs have. One freedom they provide. Here is the link to the YouTube link of the Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMs3HlN5rSU&index=10&list=PLYTnleBboezcp47W3Qb RaP8ZqVtiA049O 71
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Footing and Language in One Tree Hill Meg Thomson Meg Thomson, a junior English writing major, has always been interested in television scripts and the creative process behind them. When asked to choose a text to analyze for one of her courses, she gravitated toward scripts, eventually choosing a pivotal episode from One Tree Hill. For Thomson, the most fulfilling part of participating in undergraduate research was being able to explore her abilities in writing outside of the classroom, enabling her to go above and beyond to create something new. This opportunity provided her with the platform to work on something that she was passionate about and combine it with the type of analytical work that she uses so often in the classroom. Working with Dr. Donna Scheidt and receiving feedback was a tremendous confidence boost for Thomson, and she greatly appreciated all the input and advice that Dr. Scheidt provided during the process. After she graduates, Thomson would love to work in publishing, writing, or editing. Language, in all its forms, is her true passion and she could not be more excited to see where it takes her after she leaves High Point University.
Abstract In a controversial and tragic episode of the CW television series One Tree Hill, a haunted student brings a handgun to school. This student, having been taunted and bullied, reacts significantly and predictably to different types of language. This paper analyzes the footing, or orientations among participants resulting from their speech interactions, and the effects that these orientations and various characters have on the shooter’s actions throughout the episode. This makes an important contribution to the ways in which we understand footing and the methods used to create relationships between characters and audiences. Introduction
I
n March of 2006, the hit CW television drama One Tree Hill aired a school shooting episode that pushed the boundaries of television. Set in a small-town high school, One Tree Hill addresses the dramatic and powerful topic of gun violence in a school system in the sixteenth episode of its third season: “With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Wept.” Jimmy Edwards, a troubled, bullied student brings a handgun to school in an attempt to regain control of his life and the people around him. Regardless of his violent actions – many of which are toward beloved and fan-favorite characters – audiences are meant to feel empathy and grief
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toward the character of Jimmy Edwards. Throughout the episode, there are various types of footing between Jimmy Edwards are the characters around him. Jeanne Fahnestock, author of Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion, defines footing as “the alignment we take up to ourselves and the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utterance” (288). In other words, footing is the relationship created by the way in which we speak to one another. It is the nuances in language that help the speakers define various elements of a conversational relationship, such as who is in control, who has authority, mood, emotion, intent, and more. The footing of Jimmy himself provides us with an in-depth look at his emotional shift from being the victim of bullying to being the bully. His switch in footing from passive and defensive to aggressive and offensive provides viewers with the knowledge that his personality and actions are shaped by the language that he and the people around him use. This footing between Jimmy and the characters around him is significant. The footing of the characters, including Jimmy, has an impact on the resulting actions that Jimmy executes. When Jimmy is confronted with kinder and softer language, he responds in a less violent manner than when he is confronted with angry and hateful language. Characters such as Haley James Scott and Keith Scott are able to have a positive impact on the situation through their use of kind and altruistic language while characters with lesser amounts of warmth within their footing elicit far more violent and dangerous behavior from Jimmy. While this is a fictional story depicted in a television series, it is meant to replicate real-life situations, especially in our modern world, and the potential outcomes of the multiple methods for handling them. Jimmy Edwards Throughout the episode, the audience is meant to feel sympathetic toward the character of Jimmy Edwards, despite the fact that he is putting the audience’s favorite characters in immediate danger. The footing and conversations between Jimmy and the other characters play a significant role in the audience’s perception of Jimmy; multiple characters interact with Jimmy in different ways and elicit different responses from him. Jimmy suffered severe emotional abuse through means of bullying throughout his high school career. This abusive language caused Jimmy to fall apart, making him feel as though bringing a gun to school was his only way of making them leave him alone. The footing of the conversations between Jimmy and other characters during the shooting is critical. His responses are either violent and aggressive or submissive and emotional, paralleling the other character’s approach. He responds in a more positive way to positive language. When characters respond to Jimmy’s aggression with more aggression, it provokes Jimmy, reminding him of the bullies he hates, causing him to push forward with even more violence. This reverses Jimmy’s role; Jimmy wanted to be in control, so he brought a gun to school in order to become the bully rather than the bullied. Time Capsule As the opening scene of this episode, a time capsule video from the previous episode featuring Jimmy Edwards was replayed. In the video, not meant to be seen by anyone for another 50 years, Jimmy unloads his emotions into the camera. “There’s not a single person in this place worth remembering,” he sneers. “Everyone here is a loser. And the truth is, every day I have to come to this school is one less day I have to come back.” While Jimmy begins his rant 73
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addressing the student body as a whole, using terms such as “everyone” and “not a single person in this place,” he later addresses individual cliques, critiquing their appearances and actions: “The people here are fake, so they stick to their cliques to hide it. I mean, the stoners are medicated, the honor students are afraid, and the jocks, well, they’re jocks, man. They’ll peak at 17 and their cheerleader girlfriends will be fat and lonely by 21.” Jimmy uses aggressive and dominant footing behind closed doors to make himself feel superior; outside of those closed doors, those students make Jimmy feel inferior. The Time Capsule release is a significant catalyst resulting in the violent actions of Jimmy Edwards. The footing and language within the video is raging and threatening. In his article “Freedom of Speech vs. Student Safety: A Case Study on Teaching Communication in the Post-Virginia-Tech-World,” Fred Fitch argues that professors and teachers can predict violent behavior based on aggressive patterns and subjects within a student’s speech and writing. The Time Capsule was a video that was meant to be sealed, unopened until 50 years in the future. It is possible that if staff and faculty had watched Jimmy’s video prior to its burial, they may have been able to sense the danger and anger in his use of language and prevent the violent encounter. However, if Jimmy had known people were going to watch the video before the 50 years were up, he may not have said what he said. In order to provide potential for prevention, staff and faculty would have to watch the video without the knowledge of the students, violating their privacy and trust. There is no doubt that the footing of Jimmy’s language in the Time Capsule video is angry and aggressive. He is clearly unhappy, not only with his situation, but also with every other person in the school. He uses exclusive language, refusing to include himself in the group. He repeatedly terms such as “everyone,” “the people,” and “not a single person in this place,” referring to the rest of the people in the school. He speaks as though he is not part of that “everyone,” once again raising himself up to feel better than and superior to the other students. Bullying At the beginning of the episode, provoking Jimmy to pull the trigger for the first time, the bullies that Jimmy has faced throughout his high school career are trashing his locker in the hallway. They kick one of his books down the hallway and taunt him, “Nice locker, loser,” before walking away. Jimmy replicates this language by referring to the rest of the student body as losers; “Losers! Everyone here is a loser,” Jimmy says. Jimmy has reversed roles; he has become fed up with being treated poorly and bullied that he has become the bully, physically and verbally attacking his fellow classmates. The majority of the emotion propelling Jimmy’s actions throughout the episode comes from the fact that he has been severely bullied prior to the start of the episode. Stephanie Hughes’ article “Bullying: What Speech-Language Pathologists Should Know” defines bullying as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance” that requires three different components: the behavior has intent to cause fear or harm, is repetitious, and is perpetuated by a person who holds some form of power over the person at whom the behavior is directed” (3-4). All of these criteria were met by the students harassing Jimmy prior to the school shooting. However, upon a closer look, it can be seen that Jimmy Edwards meets these requirements during the school shooting; the role of Jimmy has flipped from the bullied to the bully. Bullying can occur “in a variety of ways. Bullying can occur in overt or direct ways, such as hitting, kicking, or shoving (physical bullying) or name-calling or threatening (verbal 74
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bullying)” (Hughes 4). The language of bullying creates a positioning, or footing, between the bully and the victim, placing the bully on a higher level than the victim and therefore giving the bully more power through his or her language. Prior to the school shooting, Jimmy was bullied in all of these ways; he was shoved into lockers and punched in the face as well as called derogatory and insulting names. Once the tables have turned and Jimmy is the bully, the shooter, he bullies the rest of the student body in both physical and verbal ways; Jimmy uses the gun as a form of physical bullying, threatening their lives with a violent object in order to control their actions and words. He also uses his words to control them by using threats and aggressive language. In this episode of One Tree Hill, Jimmy Edwards has become the bully rather than the victim. Bullying functions as a catalyst for violence, as displayed by Jimmy in this episode. Bullying can be seen as its own form of footing and communication rather than simply an action taking place. In the article titled “Bullying and Labelling as Communication Tools of Control and Domination,” Mahboub Hashem argues that bullying is a form of communication; namecalling, labels, gossip, and other verbal elements of bullying can be seen as forms of footing in and of themselves, creating an environment and mood that is a catalyst for direct violent responses. Jimmy Edwards is not only a victim of bullying, sparking the event of him bringing a gun to school, but he could also be seen as the bully, holding students against their will and speaking to them in derogatory and hateful manners. In his article, Hashem also claims that, “bullying and labelling are not about isolated events but rather about aggressive behaviors that are repeatedly directed toward others by one or more offenders with an intention to intimidate, offend, criticize, denigrate, threaten, or humiliate” (118). This potentially argues against the idea that Jimmy functions as the bully during the school shooting, simply due to the fact that it is an isolated incident rather than repetitive behavior. However, one could argue that the school shooting, while not exactly a repeated event, results from repeated aggressive behavior and words, as displayed in the Time Capsule video. His “bullying” and angry words were not directly impacting the lives of the students around him until this moment, but those feelings, actions, and signs were all there, repetitively, prior to the shooting itself. The language of bullying and the footing between the bully and the victim is unique and causes significant reactions and actions. Aggressive language versus compassionate and comforting language can make a significant difference when it comes to the elicited response. As we see throughout the episode, as various characters speak to Jimmy in varying manners, Jimmy responds far more positively to empathy and sensitivity than he does to hostility and force. Ironically, he himself uses hostility and force in order to try to evoke the response he desires from the students in the Tutor Center. Characters Characters throughout the episode address Jimmy in a variety of ways, ranging from aggressive, both physically and verbally, to nurturing and caring, trying to relate to Jimmy on a deep and intimate level. “One Tree Hill – 3×16 – Making Of” is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the school-shooting episode that was featured in the Season 3 DVD. The writers and production members are able to explain the way that they intended Jimmy to feel and what his intentions were behind both his actions and his words. “I don’t think he was bringing the gun to school to shoot somebody,” says executive producer and director Greg Prange. “I don’t think so. He’s not 75
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that kind of boy” (Making Of). Jimmy’s aggression and violent actions stem from built up emotions brought on by the demeaning and hurtful language of his bullies. This clip also provides a perspective from the actors, allowing them to explain how they were feeling when delivering the lines and what they felt their characters intended with his or her language; each actor is able to explain his or her characters’ approach when faced with Jimmy Edwards and how his or her different words created different outcomes. “There was a certain line I was supposed to say,” says Danneel Harris Ackles, the actress that plays Rachel Gatina, “that we ended up changing because when the gun was pointed at me, everything changed” (Making Of). Actors were affected by the language throughout the episode, unable to deliver the more aggressive lines due to their fear of a fabricated situation. Danneel had to change the footing of her character from aggressive to more passive in order to feel comfortable and for the dialogue to seem realistic. As actors, their job is to analyze their language and figure out what effect the footing has on the situation and to make that come across on screen. “[Jimmy] doesn’t feel accepted by anyone,” says actor Chad Michael Murray. “He hates everybody with such a passion that he feels that this is his only choice.” Actress Moira Kelly points out the impact of the characters as a unit on Jimmy’s behavior: “I think the understanding in this episode is for everyone to look at where they are responsible for what takes place because this person’s character, Jimmy Edwards, didn’t come to that by himself” (Making Of). As an actress, she realizes that the footing of the characters and their verbal interactions directly impacted the actions and emotions of Jimmy Edwards. Marcus Johnson Marcus Johnson is a new character, introduced to the show specifically for this episode. Marcus is one of the students taken hostage by Jimmy Edwards in the Tutor Center. Before he learns that Jimmy is the shooter in question, he functions as a bully to Jimmy, calling him a “fatass” and speaking down to him as if Jimmy is lesser than Marcus. He uses aggressive language in an attempt to place himself in a dominant footing in order to feel superior to Jimmy. Marcus challenges Jimmy’s authority while being held hostage; this is an important character exchange because Marcus is one of the only characters that seems to fight back against Jimmy with his words and actions. Marcus does not buy into Jimmy’s superiority act and he displays that directly in the footing of his language. Once Jimmy’s identity as the shooter is revealed, Marcus instantly retracts his previous insults: “Look, man, just let us go. I’m sorry I called you fat-ass,” Marcus says. However, the tone of his voice is not pleading; he is almost angry with Jimmy, frustrated with his own lack of control in the situation. The bully has become the bullied, losing his control to the gun. The gun is being used by Jimmy as a tool in order to establish a higher footing in the conversation in relation to Marcus. The footing shifts dramatically; Marcus suddenly changes his footing to more passive, submitting to Jimmy’s attempt at dominance and superiority via the gun. While Jimmy is distracted, Marcus physically challenges Jimmy’s authority; Marcus charges Jimmy after the gun is no longer being held and has been placed on a desk. He does this silently, letting his actions speak for themselves. Marcus is using this opportunity in an attempt to physically regain control of the situation. In response, Jimmy grabs the gun and points it between Marcus’ eyes. With a gun to his head, Marcus screams at Jimmy, switching his rebellion to that of a verbal nature; the physical form of rebellion put him in a dangerous situation, so he decides to use his words instead. Once again, this is a shift in footing as Marcus 76
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attempts to regain control of the dialogue and conversation. The challenges continue as Marcus implies that Jimmy is too weak and cowardly to pull the trigger; “You’re not gonna do it,” Marcus taunts. “He’s not gonna do it!” By speaking in third person, Marcus is excluding Jimmy from the conversation, demeaning him and making him feel as though he is not worth being acknowledged. Marcus and Jimmy quarrel verbally throughout the episode. Jimmy is constantly speaking down to the students being held hostage, but Marcus will not let up. At one point during the episode, the group is beginning to talk some sense into Jimmy; one hostage suggests that he just turn himself in since he has yet to hurt anybody. Other hostages chime in, reminding him that he does not have a prior record to the incident and it is possible that things are not as bad as they may seem. Marcus takes this opportunity to scoff and throw his two cents in: “You’re kidding, right? The guy shot up a school! […] I’m not lying for him. He pointed a gun at my head and threatened to kill me. I hope they fry his ass.” Marcus is using his word choice, using vulgar and aggressive terms, as well as his tone of voice to attempt to regain control over Jimmy’s emotions and, by extension, regain control of Jimmy’s actions. In addition, Marcus is excluding Jimmy from the conversation, attempting to strip him of control. He uses words such as “the guy” and “him” while looking directly at Jimmy in order to make him feel as though he is left out and lacking the authority that he so desperately wants. Haley James Scott Haley James Scott is a tutor at Tree Hill High. In the past, Jimmy Edwards and Haley have been in the same circles, socializing with similar friend groups. As Haley, and the rest of her friends, gained popularity, Jimmy drifted out of the group. Haley uses much more delicate language than Marcus in an attempt to get down onto Jimmy’s level, to establish a more equal footing. Even when Jimmy is at his most violent claiming that no one even knows who he is, Haley emotionally steps in: “Jimmy Edwards. You’re Jimmy Edwards. And you’re a good guy, and you are better than this.” She tries to raise him up, making him feel good about himself rather than solely superior. Even though she uses words like “better than this,” implying that he is the superior, the real implication is that he is superior to the situation rather than the people around him. After things have calmed down in the Tutor Center, and one student suggests that Jimmy turn himself in, Haley attempts to talk some sense into Jimmy. “You don’t have a record, Jim,” Haley says. “You’re a good student, and you’re a minor.” Once again, she is using positive footing and language to make him feel good about himself, attempting to undo and repair the damage that the bullies have done. She even resorts to nicknames for him such as “Jim” in order to make him feel included and part of her life in a meaningful way. “Haley is just trying to connect with [Jimmy] Edwards on a heart level and on an emotional level,” says actress Bethany Joy Lenz, “you know, just trying to affirm to him who he really is and that he’s above the choices that he’s making and his actions” (Making Of). Haley’s language is compassionate and empathetic, not just attempting to stop Jimmy from harming people, but to help mend the pain that he is feeling by establishing equal ground, making Jimmy feel worthy and equal rather than inferior, as the bullies have made him feel in the past. Haley and Marcus use language in opposite ways in the attempt to establish different footing with respect to Jimmy. While Marcus takes an aggressive approach, attempting to gain the upper hand in the conversation, Haley tries a more down-to-Earth approach, bringing herself down to Jimmy’s level and making him feel understood and accepted. 77
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Keith Scott Keith Scott, seen as a makeshift father-figure to many of the teenagers in the town, enters the school at the end of the episode, hoping to reason with Jimmy Edwards and end the dispute on an amicable level. Similar to the footing patterns that Haley James Scott uses, Keith speaks in softer tones, trying to relate to Jimmy. He attempts to nurture Jimmy, speaking almost as a father figure: “I’m not gonna leave you here, son. I’m not gonna do that and I’ll tell you why,” Keith says. “Because I’ve been there. I’ve bought the gun, and I planned on using it, okay? I’ve been there. And I wanna tell you something: it gets better.” Keith attempts to relate to him, claiming that he has been in Jimmy’s situation and he knows what it is like to come out on the other side. “That- that pain in your stomach, that pain in your heart, it goes away. That voice in your head that’s- that’s saying there’s no way out, it’s wrong, Jimmy! Would you please, please just believe me. It gets better.” Keith is trying to place himself on the same level as Jimmy, evening their footing. Keith uses inclusive language in addition to his compassion. Rather than using words such as “I”, “me”, and “you”, Keith uses words like “us” and “we” in order to be inclusive of Jimmy, making him feel part of something larger. Jimmy expresses to Keith that all he wanted was for the bullies, and the rest of the students, to like him. “I understand, son,” replies Keith, using the term ‘son’ to comfort Jimmy and function as not only an authority figure, but a family figure. “It’s what we all want. It’s all any of us wants.” Bullying has a tendency to make characters feel isolated and excluded. The use of “we” and “us” while speaking to Jimmy allows some of those damages to be reversed. By using kinder language and softer tones, Keith is able to speak to Jimmy in a more civilized and potentially successful manner, using his footing to make Jimmy feel as though he and Keith are on the same level. While Jimmy still ends his life at the end of the episode, Keith was able to calm Jimmy down enough to save the lives of Lucas Scott and Peyton Sawyer, two students that Jimmy had at gunpoint. Through Keith and Haley’s uses of footing, in contrast to Marcus’, it becomes obvious that warmer and compassionate footing creates a more positive response in times of desperation and violence. Aggression and anger do not elicit positive responses; Jimmy fights back against violent language, feeling attacked and trapped. Conclusion Language and word choice play key roles in developing the footing between two characters. This is seen outright with Jimmy Edwards in this episode of One Tree Hill, as the language used by the surrounding characters dictates and molds the relationships and footing created. In an attempt to become the bully rather than the bullied, Jimmy takes to a form of aggression and violence, bringing a gun to school, in order to build himself a more dominant footing in comparison to his peers and fellow characters. In doing so, we see when Jimmy’s aggressive language is met with more aggressive language from other characters, it amplifies the problems and fuels Jimmy’s desire to create a more dominant footing. However, when Jimmy is confronted with kinder and a submissive language, he softens and it creates footing of a more equal ground. While One Tree Hill portrays a fictional set of characters, it is important to remember that this portrayal represents real-life situations and possibilities. The footing represented within the show can be translated into our everyday lives. The ways that the characters speak to Jimmy 78
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Edwards and the ways he responds allow us to view these difficult situations from the outside, a more neutral perspective. It allows audiences to see these situations from a different point of view and, if confronted with a similar situation, attempt to create equal footing. References Fahnestock, Jeanne. Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print. Fitch, Fred E. “Freedom of Speech Vs. Student Safety: A Case Study on Teaching Communication in the Post-Virginia-Tech-World.” Kentucky Journal of Communication 27.1 (2008): 67-74. Print. Hashem, Mahboub. “Bullying and Labelling as Communication Tools of Control and Domination.” Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 8.2 (2015): 117-46. Print. Hughes, Stephanie, C. Melanie Schuele, and Ellen Kelly. “Bullying: What Speech-Language Pathologists should Know.” Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools 45.1 (2014): 3-13. Print. "Making Of ‘With Tired Eyes’" One Tree Hill: Season 3. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD. “With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept.” One Tree Hill. CW. 1 Mar. 2006. Television.
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To See Too Much Kayla Twomey For Kayla Twomey, a senior exercise science major, science and art have always played a major role in life. Finding a way to connect the two has been a topic of interest for her throughout her time her at High Point University. She found that link in a drawing class, where the class helped her connect her experiences in both fields. For Twomey, the most fulfilling part of doing creative work is knowing there is always more to discover and create. Her mentor, Mr. John Linn, has helped her think outside of the box and utilize her knowledge of both science and art to explore new ideas. He helped Twomey unveil a deeper reflection on her work that led to new cognitive terrain. She is grateful for his faith, guidance, and support that he bestowed upon her. After graduation, Twomey plans on attending graduate school to study medical illustration.
Abstract Possessing backgrounds in science and art resulted in charting unknown territories for me while participating in a studio drawing class at HPU. The class required high levels of observation and ability to make sense of our surroundings as artists while integrating various mediums. My previous experiences in both fields of science and art helped to train my mind to pay attention visually, along with observing and analyzing my surroundings. During the semester, I realized that there was a separation between my artwork and the work of others, noticing initially that my work exhibited more detail. I came to the conclusion that I saw more; I understood my surroundings in a way that was different. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not that my reality was different than theirs, but it was that I could focus on the subject as a whole as well as focus on details that create the whole and accurately record these observations. The ability to see what is in front of you is part of observation and the human mental processes, but to see too much and have the ability to override visual misperceptions and record these findings in a meaningful and successful manner is a challenge and creative work in itself.
T
he influences of science and art have always been prevalent throughout my life. All through high school I took advantage of the opportunities given to me and enrolled in every art class available. It was in these classes that I found my passion and true talents in drawing and painting, and was soon inducted into the National Art Honors Society. I became recognized for my talents there and won a handful of art awards my junior and senior years. These opportunities encouraged and led me to develop an understanding of my artwork, and I began to find my strengths and utilized them to produce artwork that represented my perception
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of reality. My attention to detail became a prevalent theme throughout my pieces, because I always drew and recorded what I saw. My approach towards art was consistently on the realistic scope opposed to the abstract because I drew my inspiration from real life. On the other spectrum, I continually showed an interest for the health and wellbeing of those around me, and held a constant need to help others. I took this interest and became a student athletic trainer for the varsity basketball teams at my school, ensuring the health and wellbeing of those athletes to be of utmost priority. I realized soon that I wanted to learn more and gain the knowledge to secure the health of others, which ultimately guided me onto the path of medicine and majoring in Exercise Science at High Point University. My background in science provided opportunities for internships in the medical field, and I promptly became a summer intern for Greenville Health System in the Department of Surgery. I completed scientific observational research with an endovascular surgeon while watching countless surgeries ranging from endovascular stent grafts to amputations. My research included obtaining the knowledge to read CT scans from abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patients who were treated with endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR). My task was to locate the third lumbar vertebral body (L3) on the axial slice from 200 patientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; relevant CT images. From there, I determined muscle area by manually segmenting the muscle groups (abdominal wall, paraspinal, psoas) with a freeform markup tool on an AGFA PACS workstation. With the guidance of the surgeon I was researching with, I obtained many observational skills that helped strengthen my critical thinking and understanding of systems within the human body. I began to concentrate on what I saw, especially during surgeries, and came to a better understanding of how functions of the body correlate with each other and produce a particular outcome. I utilized my experiences as a surgical intern and employed them as a foundation for my observations in everyday life. Upon returning to High Point, I enrolled in Drawing 1060 during the fall semester of my senior year as a creative outlet for myself, not knowing at the time the influence my past experiences would have on the work I created throughout the semester. The class required high levels of observation and ability to make sense of our surroundings as well as integrating various mediums including chalk, graphite, and charcoal. The Elements and Principles of Art were taught and incorporated into every finished drawing with the intention to produce a composition that showcased the understanding of these elements and principles. From the beginning there was an emphasis on real life and training the mind to pay attention visually. I utilized these tools and began taking the most realistic approach, focusing mainly on details and my perception of reality. I realized shortly that there was a separation between my work and the work of others even though we would be drawing the same subject. I noticed initially that my work exhibited more details, and I came to the conclusion that I saw more. I saw every reflection of light, every shadow, every gradation of values, every possible detail there was I included; because I saw it. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not that my reality was different than theirs, but it was that I could focus on the subject as a whole as well as focus on details that create the whole and accurately record these observations. My past experiences in art and science had unconsciously been training my mind to focus visually on real life and document my perceptions accurately. My main focus in the final drawings was to create a successful composition, meaning it was readable from a viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective and had a fluidity throughout that was attributed to the Elements of Art which include: line, shape, form, value, texture, color and space. I learned and critically analyzed how objects were oriented with each other, and began to create realistic pieces that displayed my understanding of the composition. My methodology for drawing was almost like solving a
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problem in a scientific sense. The problem I needed to solve was how to make what I visually perceived in real life transcend accurately onto a piece of paper. The hypothesis made would correlate to my mechanism of execution, including the composition, and I would need to prove if my methods of drawing would create a realistic representation of my perspective. One of the first final drawings I completed was the word drawing, “Drive”, where the objective was to draw these letters how you see them, and replicate their values and shadows based upon the light shining on the cut out letters. One of the main lessons I learned while drawing this piece was seeing that there aren't really lines around objects, like we tend to draw them, but rather a “line” is created by the boundary between light and dark. I took this piece of information and really began to focus on the light oriented around objects and critically analyzed what I saw, and how to reproduce this effect in my drawings. By concentrating on light, I found an interest in replicating these values and integrating them into the composition of the artwork. I drew each of the shadows that were created by different lights on each letter. It became intriguing that these shadows were different versions of the same thing, just like human bodies. This became a focal point and theme that I carried throughout the semester in my final drawings. Another drawing focused on perspective, where I drew a space in Hayworth Fine Arts from life. I chose to draw a doorway because the light shining into the small stairway was an interesting subject that would increase the complexity of the composition. Correlating how objects relate to each other in such a large space was challenging. But even though the subject I drew was larger, I still carried my attention to detail with me. What helped me draw these was to think of the objects as real things, and not just something you are trying to replicate. In science you are taught to question everything, why and how do things work the way that they do? Drawing actually uses similar principles to science. I would ask questions to myself like “why is there a shadow there?”, or “what causes this object to be lighter than another?” Was it because of the actual value of the object or was it caused by a source of light that faded or enhanced values? I saw and questioned everything while drawing from life, and used this to help me understand the composition and help map out what I saw in three dimensions on to paper. By finding a common theme and voice in my work, it became easier to focus on what I saw, as I knew what to look for in values, space, shape and form. I integrated my interest in light and darks throughout my other pieces and began to find a signature style with the focus on light and how to vary these values throughout a drawing to create a fluidity within that was readable to the viewer. For my final drawing, our instructor gave us the freedom to choose our our medium and subject. I chose white chalk on black paper because I wanted to challenge my skills and promote a larger contrast between light and dark. I also chose to draw my hand, because it was an integration of what we had learned throughout the semester about shape, perspective, drapery and values, while also correlating to my science background. My ability to record what I saw while also creating a successful composition is visible in this piece. The ability to see what is in front of you is part of observation and the human mental processes, but to record these findings in a meaningful and successful manner is a challenge and creative work in itself. On the following pages, please find four of Kayla’s original works.
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Kayla Twomey“Drive” Graphite
Kayla Twomey“Hand” Chalk 83
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Kayla Twomey “Perspective” Graphite
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Kayla Twomey “Drapery” Graphite
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