Voices Of The Dramatic Personae And Self-writing

“Self” is always a focus of western philosophy but it was always marginalized in ancient Greek and Roman culture. The fate of Oedipus in Sophocles’ s play tells us that no matter how intelligent the individual is, he cannot escape from the trap of Apollo’s oracle; Aeschylus’ s Prometheus, who is wise and brave, rebels against the imperious and tyrannical Cronos and Zeus in succession, but what should be noted is that he fights for the interests of the community rather than for himself, and he even can sacrifice himself for the sake of the community; Socrates, who began to give expression to ideals of inner goodness and conscience,was forced to hemlock. All these literary facts and historical facts tell us that the struggle between the individual and fate can only end in tragedy; the individual can be ingnored and even sacrificed for the interests of the community, because self-concern was considered to be against the values of the group. Such values can be seen in Christianity as well. Christianity stamped down the pride and vanity of the Christian, exterminated the individuality, and required all the Christian to serve the Church and God selflessly. Generally speaking, for Christianity as well as the ancient Greek and Roman culture, the community is more important than the individual, and the whole is much greater than the part.However, people began to liberate themselves from the chains of customs, conformity and the church since the Renaissance, and they began to take a fearless leap forward into self-discovery and self-fulfillment. The heightened self-consciousness can be detected in every field: in religion, the Reformers’ doctrine that all believers were priests and the individual was responsible for his own salvation made all the Christian believe that salvation must be a personal thing, which consequently stimulated people to reconsider the relationship between the self and God; in literature, the literary works related to self-exploration appeared, including diary, memoirs, letters and travels; in drawing, portrait, especially self-portrait became extremely popular; in philosophy, Descartes put forward “I think, therefore I am”, showing that one’s own consciousness is the only thing he can be sure of; and the self is the root to get to know all the other things in the world.The concern with the self of the human beings was revealed in Humanism. The Humanists didn’t regard themselves as humble sinners before God any more; instead, they emphasized the value, the strength and the greatness of human beings; they took delight in man himself, the apex of creation, the master of nature and the wonder of the world. Many literary works in this period demonstrated Humanism, which advocated the liberation of the individual, affirmed human beings as creator, the people to enjoy as well as the author of their own fate, and required that the thoughts and feelings of human beings should be conveyed in art. Such self-consciousness can be found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Falstaff, in Marlowe’s Faustus and Tamburlaine and in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s De Flores and Beatrice Joanna. However, the tragedy of these characters teaches us that although people became concerned with the self, individualism still had a long way to go in Renaissance when collectivism was still dominant, and the self-concern was usually concealed to some extent as a result. George Herbert accomplished his self-concern in a hidden way by applying the anthology of meditative poems, The Temple, as a protective screen. One feature of the meditative poems is that the meditator projects himself on the spiritual stage and gets to know the self through the presence of God. Living in an age in which self-consciousness was awakened, but collectivism was still dominant, George Herbert managed to show his self-concern and accomplish self-writing through constructing different dramatic personae who utter different voices in The Temple. It is in this way that Herbert merged his self into religious feelings, conveying his modern religious emotions in the meantime.The introduction firstly expounds the reasons and the angle of the research in this dissertation, lists the present study and the comments on the present study and introduces some features and the definition of some core concepts. Then it provides the method applied in the dissertation, and discusses the difficulties. Lastly it introduces the main content and the structure of the dissertation as well as its innovation.Chapter one analyzes the dramatic persona of the Christian. In The Temple, the Christian complains about the physical illness of the body and the unaccomplished life, and threatens to rebel against God; then the Christian comes to confess and implores the Grace and salvation of God; in the end the voices of the Christian become laudatory voices which sing high praise of God. The different voices are interconnected and form the heteroglossia named by Bakhtin, and these voices also dramatize the Christian in The Temple. The most important and essential process of baroque religious meditative poems is the process in which the projected, dramatized part of the self communicates with the meditator. The Christian in The Temple can be called the projected and dramatized part of George Herbert. By referring to the personal experience of George Herbert, it can be concluded that George Herbert merged his own experience of the phenomenal world into the Christian who uttered different voices; Herbert scrutinized his personal experiences and finished the writing of self in the internal dimension through the Christian. Such process is the self-cognition of Herbert. He integrated the self-cognition into his religious feelings and conveyed his modern religious emotions which were different from traditional religious poems.There is the self of the external dimension apart from internal dimension of the self, and it demonstrates a social and conforming self. The perception of the self of the external dimension is closely related to the external surroundings, and it is connected with the social status and responsibilities of the self in specific social context. The second chapter analyzes the dramatic persona of priest constructed by Herbert in The Temple, which shows his concern with the self of external dimension. The priest utters didactic and cautionary voices in The Temple so as to instill the fundamental doctrines and virtues of Christianity into the implied listener; besides, the priest discusses the religious ritual and the Church as well, which conveys the priest’s concern with the British Church. The individual cannot be separated from the social context and the self is a rational individual embedded in the society and culture. It can be concluded that the priest with different voices shows George Herbert’s consciousness of social responsibilities as a country parson on the one hand; on the other hand, the priest reflects the religious standpoint of George Herbert as the spokesman of the British Church, and shows his national consciousness.Art is closely linked to aestheticism: it is through aesthetic creation and aesthetic experience that art can accomplish the pursuit of life value and the spiritual need. In the artistic work, The Temple, George Herbert has constructed a dramatic persona of an artist, who explores three different artistic forms, including poetry creation, music and the visual art of emblem. Just like metafiction, The Temple has become a kind of “meta-artistic” work. Through the exploration of poetry creation, music and the visual art of emblem shown through the artist’s narration, Chapter three will prove that the artistic views in The Temple are in accordance with those of George Herbert’s: God is the source of all forms of art, and God is related to all kinds of art. The religious aestheticism of George Herbert is thus conveyed through such artistic views.The men of letters in the Renaissance, especially in the Baroque age turned from the phenomenal world to the inner world, and became concerned with the inner experience, inner awareness and self-pursuit, among which George Herbert was one of the represenatives. Herbert has accomplished his self-writing through the different voices of the dramatic personae constructed in The Temple. The voices of the Christian, the priest and the artist form polyphony and heteroglossia called by Bakhtin, and their voices make the views conveyed by the three dramatic personae diagolized, which combines the consciousness of them into a higher unity. Such unity shows George Herbert’s concern with the self on the one hand; and on the other hand conveys the religious emotions of Herbert into which the self is merged. The religious emotions conveyed in The Temple is different from that in the literary works in the medieval ages: greater emphasis is laid upopn the self and and the forms of self-concern are diverse. The religious emotions conveyed in The Temple are closely related to the self-concern in the Renaissance and the germination of individualism; therefore, they can be called as the modern religious emotions of George Herbert.