comment about pastoral imagery
Answers
Answer:
he pastoral imagery is used to enhance the feeling that an ideal has been lost. However, pastoral imagery is also used as a means to criticize in a safe and subtle manner.
Explanation:
Answer:
Milton`s Lycidas is a pastoral elegy, written in the face of the death of Edward King. The pastoral imagery is prevalent from the very beginning of the poem, as it opens with flower imagery. In line 1 and 2, three flowers are mentioned: The laurel, the myrtle and the ivy. All of these evergreens are symbols of poetic fame and the laurel is also associated with triumph while the myrtle can be associated with mourning and lament (see Thomas, 23). The image of flowers is closely connected to nature and is mentioned time and again during the poem, for example in line 148 to 151, when all flowers are said to wear “sad embroidery” (Milton, line 148) as an expression of their mourning. “The flower passage stands for the lament of nature for the dead shepherd, decking his bier with offerings of flowers.” (Thomas, 31)
The poem also celebrates the homosocial bond of Lycidas and the speaker. This closeness and friendship between the speaker and his friend who passed away is described in pictures relating to nature and especially in metaphors connected to a shepherd and his sheep. Line 22 to 31 describe the relationship emphatically as a close one by stating that the two men grew up on the same hill (cf. Milton, line 23) and “[f]ed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill” (Milton, line 24). The cited quote puts the speaker and his friend in an active position: they were not the ones to be fed, but the ones feeding others. This leads to the conclusion that both are considered to be shepherd in this poem, which is confirmed in several other lines, for example when the speaker mentions the “[b]att'ning [of] our flocks” (line 29). However, reading the pastoral imagery solely as a description of the life aspects the two shepherds shared would be insufficient. The use of this imagery also “links their function as poets to the whole of Western literature” (Thomas, 25). Therefore, the pastoral imagery is not only used for purposes of description, but also has the specific function of positioning Lycidas and the speaker in relation to other poets and other poetry (cf. Thomas, 25).
As James Holly Hanford states in his essay The Pastoral Elegy and Milton's Lycidas, the image of Edward King as a shepherd leads to "the fiction that he is the particular darling of all the creatures of the vale, and that they all lament his death" (Hanford 415). This can be seen especially in lines 39 to 41: “Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves, / With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown, / And all their echoes mourn.” Like the other examples given above, this quotation is a further illustration of how the use of pastoral imagery “tend[s] to idealize and dignify the expression of [the speaker's] sorrow, and to exalt this tribute to the memory of his friend [...]” (Hanford 403/404). Therefore, the pastoral imagery is used to enhance the feeling that an ideal has been lost.
However, pastoral imagery is also used as a means to criticize in a safe and subtle manner. Line 119 to 132 demonstrate criticism of the church using the very fitting metaphor in which the church is a shepherd who is unable to take care of his flock (“The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed”, Milton, line 125). Here, there is a “direct combination of the classical pastoral imagery with the Christian figure of the pastor and his flock" (Hanford 427). The speaker goes on to describe that this flock – the religious community – is more than just spiritually unfulfilled. The speaker's allegations are much stronger than that: The religious community receives nothing but empty words (it is “swoln with wind”, Milton, line 126) and, in consequence, “rot[s] inwardly” (Milton, line 127). The accusation is therefore not only one of unsatisfactory spiritual fulfilment, but one of spiritual decay caused by the church. This fairly angry speech is directed at “the false Anglican clergy […] The unfaithful shepherds are those who bring discredit on the profession through their greed and ambition” (Thomas, 30). Furthermore, the negligence of the Protestant pastors leaves the religious community unprotected against the Roman Catholic Church, which is described as “ the grim Woolf with privy paw [that] [d]aily devours apace” (Milton, line 128 / 129).