Juvenal Scourging Woman
Artist: Aubrey Beardsley
Style: Art Nouveau
Choose a section of Juvenal for close analysis. Use your knowledge of satire, your historical knowledge of Juvenal's period, the legal and other cultural details that you know about Roman women, and the concept of gender to aid you in your analysis.
Paper length: 3 pages plus a 1-page commentary.
Draft due: Tuesday,
We will work with the draft in class.
Paper due: Tuesday
Commentary
Write about the process of your own writing. Questions you might address: How did things go? What sort of problems did you have? How did you "solve" them? What did you learn from having your paper read by peer and instructor? What pleases you about the paper? How did your thinking change as you wrote and revised the paper? The commentary is informal and, though required, is not graded.
See The Savoy, a site on Beardsley.
For wiki site, click here.
Annotated bibliography(15%)
Annotated Bibliography of items concerned with your paper topic: 5 articles. To be posed on the Message Board and turned in in hard copy to AJVS
Due Date: May 15
Bathyllus Luring
Artist: Aubrey Beardsley
Style: Art Nouveau
Lo ! while Bathyllus, with his flexile limbs, (90)
Acts Leda, and through every posture swims,
Tuccia delights to realize the play,
And in lascivious trances melts away.
PLEASE NOTE and TAKE SERIOUSLY: No delay is possible for due dates of drafts and revisions of papers.
NB: All topics depend on close analysis of texts.
Paper length: 10-12 pages plus a 1-to-2-page commentary.
DRAFT due: Thursday, May 24.
Bring 3 copies of your draft on Thursday, May 24, 2 for peer readers, 1 for AJVS.
By Sunday (May 27), e-mail your comments to the writers of the papers you read. Bring copies of these e-mails to peer conferences on May 29.
Peer conferences: There will be a sign-up sheet on my office door.
PAPER due: Thursday, June 7 (last day of class)
COMMENTARY:
Write about the process of your own writing.
Questions you might address: How did things go? What sort of problems did you have? How did you "solve" them? What did you learn from having your paper read by peer and instructor? What pleases you about the paper? How did your thinking change as you wrote and revised the paper? The commentary is informal and, though required, is not graded.
1. Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Christine de Pizan both have a quarrel with books. Carefully explain the quarrel each has, making clear the ways these quarrels are similar to and different from one another. Then say "So what?" and develop the rest of your essay answering that question.
Look forward to one other reading for the course and draw on it for comparison. You may draw on the 3rd text in either the explanatory or the "So what?" section of your paper.
Please also read further material available on the web and on reserve and call on those materials for your discussion.
2. Explain carefully why, on the one hand, the ascetic writings of the Church Fathers necessarily produce a satiric view of women. Then explain why these writings can also produce a feminist image of women. Then say "So what?"
Read the introduction and some parts of The Desert Fathers (ed. Helen Waddell, on reserve in the library) in order to make your case. (Note that at the end of the collection, there are 2 stories of women: St. Pelagia the Harlot and St. Mary the Harlot.) You should also draw on Wykked Wyves in the course of your discussion.
3. Review in detail the satires by Richard Ames and Robert Gould. Explain carefully the satiric charges made against women by each poetic speaker. Then imagine these speakers going to see the Vagina Monologues. Would their case against women be confirmed or disconfirmed? Why? Some articles will be on reserve to consider for this topic.
4. What is the status of the family in three of the works we are reading for this course. Explain carefully; then ask "So What?" Some of our readings will help you and I'll put further readings on reserve. Please consult with me about your choice of works (it should have a significant chronological range in order to reflect the range of the course).
5. We are reading some "answers" to male satirists against women: work by Christine de Pizan and Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Put The Vagina Monologues in this list and compare these "defenses" of women. Begin by explaining how each is a defense of women, compare the 3, and then ask "So what?"
6. Ladies' dressing and undressing rooms: Describe carefully the "Lady's dressing room scenes" in poems by Juvenal and Ames, and explain how they function in those poems. Then examine Swift's and Lady Mary's poems, given over entirely to these scenes. Explain how those poems work to your reader. Then say "So what?" In the course of your paper, refer to other works we have read (e.g., church fathers, Christine de Pizan, Wife of Bath) or to critical articles. There will be some articles on Swift's poems in the bin beside my office door.
7. Creation scenes: Read carefully and explain woman's position in the creation stories of Genesis and the account of woman's creation in Semonides. Then examine and describe references to women's deficiencies since creation or birth in the material we have read (e.g., Tertullian, Oldham). Then explain the creation story in Ames's poem. Then say "So what?"
8. Women's sexualized being is an issue in a number of works we have read. Explain how women's sexualized being is described and used in 3 works we have read. Then say, "So what?" You should draw on Scott's article on gender, as well as Wykked Wyves. You may want to draw on the Swift articles in the bin on my door.
The Men's Tribune
Explores and strongly advocates men's rights
How do you read this site?
Image from Men's Tribune site
Google "anti-feminist jokes" and see what you find. What do you learn from these jokes?
What is wit?
Example from John Dryden's translation of Juvenal:
"Women's tears are but the sweat of eyes."
PARAGRAPH AND SENTENCE POINTERS
Say what you mean: Put the most important meaning words in the most important grammatical positions. This move is one of your most important revision strategies. It will help you get rid of wordiness, initial delaying constructions, and clunky clauses; and it will encourage you to subordinate properly.*
Hook-ups: Sentences in a paragraph must "hook" on to preceding sentences. In hooking on to a previous sentence, each sentence establishes some kind of relationship (to that previous sentence). You need to be able to say what the relation of each sentence to the one before it is. If your sentences have not met each other yet, they (almost certainly) don't belong in the same paragraph.
Look for the stated or implied connector in each of your ¶s.
Develop your paragraphs: Most paragraphs in English start out in a certain direction and keep on going that way. Many start in one direction and then turn (with such words as
"however" and "nevertheless"). There are two "rules" about turning: a) you can only turn once per paragraph; b) all sentences following the turn support that turn OR the original direction of the paragraph.* (One apparent exception is only apparent; I'll explain it in class.)
Test your paragraphs with the "paragraph test": cut the paragraph into sentences and see if another intelligent, attentive person can put the paragraph together again.
*These two ideas are from Frederick Crews's The Random House Handbook.
1. Read the paper until you find the thesis. Circle the key terms of the thesis, and put an asterisk next to it in the margin of the paper. Based on the thesis statement, how do you expect the essay to unfold? Can you imagine objections that the writer should take into account? Do you remember any material from our reading that might be helpful to the writer? (That is, can you offer the writer specific quotations that might be useful in the development of his or her paper?)
2. Read the paper through for a first impression. What strikes you about it? Whatare its best sections?
3. Were you right about the thesis? If not, what now appears to be the thesis to you? Does the paper follow through on it? If the paper seems to have more than one thesis, do you see any relation between them?
4. Locate and underline transitions between paragraphs. Do the transitions follow the "plot" or "argument" of the material being analyzed? Or do they follow the development of the writer's thinking?
5. Comment in detail on a paragraph that "works" and a paragraph that doesn't. What hooks sentences together in the paragraph that works? What kind of help does the non-working paragraph need?
6. What did you learn from the paper? What do you think the writer will learn from you?
7. Please type responses to these questions on a separate page. Make two copies give one to the writer of the paper, and turn another in with your final draft so you can get credit for your peer reading. Please also turn in with your final draft the peer-reading sheet given to you by your peer reader.
8. For writer-peer-instructor conferences, sign up on the sheet on my office door.
Key to AJVS comments and questions
Check = nice, good, etc.
Check, check = very nice, good, etc.
_______ ________= Something is wrong with the connection
between circled or underlined elements.
¶ = Paragraph.
¶ development, coherence, and unity. "Paragraph & Sentence Pointers" may help you with this.
Sp = spelling.
SS = sentence structure.
SVA = subject-verb agreement.
// ism = parallelism.
ref = reference not clear (for pronouns, etc.).
frag = sentence fragment.
P = punctuation problem.
ROS = run-on sentence.
CS = comma splice.
NI = not idiomatic.
Pass = passive voice used inappropriately.
Pred = predication. Something is wrong with the way you are putting
together a subject and a verb.
wd ch = problem with word choice.
T = problem with shift in verb tense or with sequence of tense.
# = spacing. You need to add a space or spaces.
POV = point of view. You may want me to explain this problem while
looking at your paper.
Rep = repetition.
Redundant = redundant.
Transition = Something amiss with transition between sentences or
paragraphs.
Subordination = problem with subordination.
Logic = Problem with logic, e.g., your evidence doesn't match your
claim; you have made an unacknowledged assumption or you have
assumed agreement that doesn't exist; you have drawn an inference
that doesn't follow from your observation or from your evidence.
Leap = Same as above.
Meaning ? = Even with effort, I find this sentence or phrase
hard to understand.
Hm . . . = I'm not persuaded. Sounds doubtful to me.
This = Try not to usethe word "this" without a noun following it. Say
"this point," "this idea," "this problem," etc., rather than "this,"
"this,","this."
GSS = Getting-started sentences; omit.
TOTS = Too obvious to state.
TSINWVH = This sentence is not working very hard.
TSDNATKEO = These sentences do not appear to know each other.
Please introduce them. And please see paragraph and sentence
pointer on "hook-ups."
AMAT = Ask me about this [point].
CA = Clarify assertion. One frequent possibility: Put the most
important meaning words in the most important grammatical positions.
See advice on sentences and paragraphs: "Say what you mean."
Condense = Clarify assertions, subordinate appropriately, and aim for
economy in expression. You often need to condense in order to see
what needs to be
Let’s talk about sentences J.
As for words: Could you lose “serves to”; “references”; “states that”; “is evident/apparent” “within”?
“It should be noted that the entire nature of Juvenal’s Satire VI is irrational” (Allison Thomas).
“It is not entirely clear how much of Juvenal’s version of women is true, but it is probably safe to say that wealthy women were no strangers to strategy” (Jessica Aliberti).
But upon closer analysis, Juvenal nullifies the concession by rendering women to be no more than her superficial qualities in that she lacks depth because she has nothing more to offer other than money or beauty.” (Doris Kwan)
“It is suggested to wait “until the testicles drop and ripen, let them fill out till they hang like two-pound weights,” sounding as if they are fruit waiting to be devoured” (Jamie Seibert).
“Her bloodthirsty nature is apparent when she continues to say, ‘If there’d been seven I’d have polished them off, too’” (632; Aubrey Bayoneta).
Juvenal’s implication is that women can never be wise because they are women and not men” (Tiffany Duong).
It is clear that these gender roles are what keep society in its ‘natural’ order, according to Juvenal” (Skyler Rosso).
Sexual Excess, Cultural Loss (Words: 597 without notes; 693 with notes)
Lines 314-345 of Juvenal’s Satire VI feature a secret, annual rite in honor of the Good Goddess (Bona Dea), a fertility ritual restricted to women and requiring that they abstain from sexual intercourse for a certain number of days. Even male animals were supposed to be excluded and male statues veiled. In the rite described here, however, the flutes activate the loins when Priapus’s maenads sweep through, taken over entirely by inebriated sexual desire. Women from ancient families challenge prostitutes to a sexual contest. Their actions—bumping and grinding—are not make-believe but real enough to awaken sexual yearning even in the genitals of old men. The women’s sexual cavorting makes them impatient for penetration. “Let the men in,” they cry. They are so obsessed with desire that if their lovers aren’t available, they go for the younger brothers. If that doesn’t work out, they opt for slaves. If there aren’t enough slaves, they move to water carriers, and finally to donkeys. The satirist then reflects, lamenting the perversion of ancient rituals and wishing that past values could be restored. But it’s hopeless now. In the past, no one would have shown contempt for the gods or for the disciplined moderation of an ancient king. But now no altar escapes degradation. The present is typified by a famous politician crashing the women’s ceremony in drag.
The satirist characterizes this scene not as a fertility ritual, performed for the sake of the culture, but as an extravagantly sexual display, wholly out of control. Women become nothing other than a concentrated and enlarged form of sexual desire, a desire that compromises, even overturns, the fundamental order of the society. Forgetting entirely all distinctions of social rank, Saufeia and Medullina, whose names signal an ancient pedigree, flaut the values of their families as they level themselves in a contest of skill with women of no pedigree at all. In Juvenal’s view, such skill is contemptible, while the pedigree they dishonor is essential to the order of culture. The women’s transgressions intensify as they make no discrimination even between human and animal, moving down the ladder from lovers to donkeys. In saying they “cock their dish for a donkey,” Juvenal both enlarges them and reduces them, that is, he enlarges their transgressions and reduces their sexuality to a dish, awaiting any instrument of fulfillment.
Here, as elsewhere, Juvenal imports the taint of Greek culture. Maenads, known for their transformation by the wine god Bacchus, have brought their frenzy into the Roman scene. And the excesses of the women of Rome are now so great that they could stir to desire even the revered old (and dead) men of Homer’s epic, Nestor, the elderly Greek hero and advice giver, and Priam, the father of the Trojan hero Hector. What should be a ritual to honor tradition becomes a destruction of tradition. Juvenal intensifies his charge against women by contrasting their excesses with the ancient values of Rome. King Numa, whose desires were so moderate that he contented himself with “earthenware bowls, black pots, and brittle platters of Vatican clay” represents Rome’s past, which measures and exposes the cultural losses of the present. Juvenal’s ending the section with “Clodius in drag” (an actual event, for which Clodius was legally charged) makes the criticism of women even greater. As unnaturally sexualized as the women are, Clodius, a man who sneaks in to the ceremonies disguised as a woman, furthers the degradation of female sexuality. Nothing, in Juvenal’s view, no cultural sign, is worse than the confusion of male and female.
I didn’t refer to But every Moor and Hindu knows well which ‘lady’-harpist it was/brought a tool as long as both those anti-Catonian/ pamphlets of Caesar into the sanctuary . . . . because I don’t understand it. I understand the reference to “anti-Catonian pamphlets” (and the note tells us), but I don’t understand “the lady harpist” or the reference to Moor and Hindu.
Mary Elizabeth Pence, “Satire in St. Jerome,” The Classical Journal, Vol. 36, No. 6 (Mar., 1941), pp. 332-336.
Mary Pence argues that Jerome, though he did not write in verse, was a satirist. He was “fearless in denouncing the moral evils and in his Letters especially, he appears as another Juvenal” (323). Pence makes her claim plausible not only in quoting Jerome’s sometimes lacerating criticisms but also by showing that Jerome was steeped in the writings of Roman moralists and satirists.
Pence opens her article by making vivid the corruption, danger, and instability of Roman civilization at the close of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century. Although much had changed in the 300 years that divide Jerome and Juvenal, Juvenal’s moral indignation provided patterns to the Christian Jerome.
Jerome “rails,” Pence says, “against all classes of society—patricians, plebeians, and even slaves” (323). But he repeatedly, “pointed a finger of shame” at women, women who paint their faces for the sake of deception and women who disfigure their faces to announce their fasting (324, 326). His strongest criticisms are for Christians. Christianity had become by his time a powerful institution, and in its power, he saw its corruption, often marking that corruption by criticizing the relation of ecclesiastics to women.
Although Pence emphasizes Jerome’s satiric writings, she also situates him by showing other elements of his personality e.g., his grief at the sack of Rome.
The article is most useful in its detail of Jerome’s satiric sensibility, his closeness to classical satirists, and the shared political corruption and instability of the worlds of Jerome and Juvenal.
To consider:
#1: When you use an article as old as this one, you need to have a rationale for using it instead of a more modern article.
Some early articles are really important or really useful to your thinking.
For our purposes, we can say that as early as the 40s--70 years ago--critics were discussing the satiric force of Jerome's work. We can take for granted that the topic is important.
You don't want to use an early article as if no one as written about it since. But from Pence's essay, we can see that Jerome's standing as a satirist is of long standing (a standing that may well precede Pence's article).
You can do a little checking. Google results reveal: http://www.mendeley.com/research/satire-st-jerome/.
#2. Pence does not develop the gender related issues that her material brings up. WE might ask, 'Why when the society is under particular pressure, when its institutions seem to be decaying, when the stability of the society is at risk, why then are women a particular object of satire?
Although we may not be able to answer this question fully, we can keep in mind that his question remains to be answered.
-----------------------------------
Notes that preceded this annotation:
Notes on Pence article in preparation for an annotation.
Pence shows how important the Latin satirists were to Jerome. He quoted them frequently (1 out of citations). Even though during his acetic period he had turned away from all “pagan” writers, asking, rhetorically, “What has Virgil to do with the gospels?” (331) (similar to Tertullian’s “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”) Jerome returned to the writers of his earlier training and turned their moral criticisms and insights to his own purposes. And generally speaking, Jerome is much more hostile to Christian heretics than to pagans. (335).
Pence basically claims that Jerome writes satires—except that he doesn’t write in verse, he is in all other ways a satirist. He was “fearless in denouncing the moral evils which existed in the world of his day and in his Letters especially, he appears as another Juvenal” (323).
Pence opens her article by making vivid the corruption, danger, and instability of Roman civilization at the close of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century. Although much had changed in the 300 years that divide Jerome and Juvenal, Juvenal’s moral indignation provided patterns and even a vocabulary useful to the Christian Jerome.
Pence is very helpful in showing readers in detail how much Jerome’s intellectual life was shaped by the Latin satirists, including but not limited to Juvenal.
Although we are especially interested in the satiric force of Jerome’s writing, Pence also shows other sides of his thinking and experience. He chokes in sorrow at rumors of the fall of Rome: “’My voice sticks in my throat, and sobs choke my words, as I dictate [this letter]. The city has been taken, which once took captive the whole world’”(323).
Her claim seems to be that Jerome was a satirist. Or that he can legitimately be seen as a satirist.
He “rails against all classes of society—patricians, plebeians, and even slaves” (323).
“Again and again he pointed a finger of shame at the woman of the world who painted her face and showed off a robe of shining silk” (324). He rails at women who paint their faces (324) and at women who “disfigure their faces so men will be sure to know they have been fasting” (326).
His criticism of Christians, living a worldly life, is especially pointed. (325). By Jerome’s time, Christianity was a powerful institution, and Jerome criticizes ecclesiastics for their visits to women. 327
A scholar himself, he criticized those who saw in Virgil’s fourth eclogue a prophecy of the coming of Christ.
He was not afraid to “arous[e] long-lasting hatred against himself” (328).
Jerome is like Lucilius in attacking still living enemies, especially those who had criticized him (e.g., a monk who criticized his position on Jovinian). Juvenal usually used people already dead as satiric examples. Pease quotes some rather harsh, punitive, comments Jerome makes about his enemies.
The ethical principles of the earlier satirists were especially important to Jerome 334: “satirists are always preachers, and Jerome no less than Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.” 334
“In his moral attitude he was rigorous to the extreme” (336).
Peer reading and conferences
Bring 3 copies of your draft on Thursday, May 24, 2 for peer readers, 1 for AJVS.
By Sunday (May 27), e-mail your comments to the writers of the papers you read. Bring copies of these e-mails to peer conferences on May 29.
Tuesday, May 29 Peer-instructor conference schedule
Your peer group will be determined by the time slot in which you sign up.
BAGELS and cream cheese provided. BYO coffee, tea, milk, etc.
Conference times |
Names of participants |
8:20-9:20 |
1. Helen Jung |
9:30 -10:30 |
1. Hannah Wells |
10:40-11:40 |
1. Marissa Dunham |
11:50-12:50 |
1. Doris Kwan |
1:00-2:00 |
1. Jessica Aliberti |
2:10-3:10 |
1. Amory Zschach |
|| CHECK LIST: REVIEW BEFORE TURNING IN FINAL DRAFT
Items to be turned in
1. Revised paper
2. Draft with AJVS comments
3. Peer-reading sheets that you received
4. Peer-reading sheets that you wrote
5. COMMENTARY
6.If you want to: Stamped, self-addressed envelope
a) If you want me to mail your paper to you, please provide a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Go to the post office and ask the clerk to weigh your paper so that you can provide the proper postage.
b) If you want me to mail only a general comment on the paper, please provide a stamped, self-addressed envelope.