File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1998/phillitcrit.9806, message 8


Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 11:27:46 -0400
From: Brian Connery <connery-AT-oakland.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Imagery


>Could anyone please enlighten me as to the meaning of solar imagery in
literature? 

My knowledge of this may be outdated, but it seems to me that the
fundamental key here is what used to known as the Great Chain of Being (see
Arthur Lovejoy, *The Great Chain of Being*; or E.M. Tillyard, *The
Elizabethan World Picture*).  The chain is essentially a hierarchical
system ordering the components of the created universe; most pertinent here
is that within each "class" there are "primaries" (fossils of which idea
remain deeply embedded in our culture even now).  That is, there is *one*
representative of each class that stands at the top of the class, the rose
as the primary flower, the oak as the primary tree, the eagle as the
primary bird, the head as the primary body member, and the sun as the
primary star.  The King is, obviously, the primary person--and thus is
associated imagistically with all the other primaries.  Check out Lovejoy
and/or Tillyard on this.  

And check out Shakespeare's Richard II, esp. 3.2 and onward, in which
Richard "sets" as Bolingbroke "rises."  Or Hal's soliloquy in 1 Henry IV
("Yet herein will I imitate the sun . . .").

Good luck,

-Brian


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Brian Connery
connery-AT-oakland.edu
<http://www.otus.oakland.edu/english/staff/connery.htm>
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 


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