"May-Pole of Merry Mount": Hawthorne's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
1993; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0039-3789
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Studies
ResumoIn his 1991 essay New Roots for |Merry Mount': Barking Up Wrong Tree, John F. Birk asserts that John Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso offer an out-and-out blueprint (345) for Nathaniel Hawthorne's May-Pole of Mount. Birk discounts Sheldon W. Liebman's 1972 essay, which argued that Comus served as Milton's chief influence on Merry Mount, stating that the greater bulk of evidence points to [L'Allegro and Il Penseroso] as more for Hawthorne's story (352). Although Birk's fertile taproot probes ground common to both works, such as language, setting, figures, imagery, and (354), it does not go deep enough. Close examination not only reveals that Merry Mount is much more richly allusive to L'Allegro and Il Penseroso than Birk recognized, but also that his analysis of underlying is flawed. Evidence for this comes from analyzing structural and thematic elements of both works. As we shall see, unnoticed by Birk, Merry Mount offers an inversion of Milton's mirth/melancholy dialectic to present an almost identical theme: higher consciousness through unity and harmony. Birk sensed that works come together via structure and theme when he identified that they share a dialectic divided more or less equally between mirth and melancholy (351). He argues that revelers' mirth in Merry Mount correlates with mirth in L'Allegro, and that tale's melancholy--personified by Puritans--captures melancholy spirit of Il Penseroso (345-47). The result, according to Birk, is that two works share a common structure that explores similar aspects of opposing mindsets (351). Unfortunately, this neat, crisp rendering of structural similarity misses mark. And it does so because Birk does not acknowledge--and this is critical to grasp fully just how Hawthorne has used Milton's material--the different kinds of melancholy and mirth operating in respective works. Had he done so, he would have discovered that dialectics do not match-or at least not in way his essay relates. That is, revelers' mirth is not mirth of L'Allegro character, just as Puritans' melancholy is not pensive meditation of Il Penseroso. To understand this, we must first consider that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso explore both destructive and constructive types of mirth and melancholy. Rosemond Tuve explains, Each poem begins with a banishing of travesty of what is praised in other (64). Thus, L'Allegro begins by casting out black melancholy: Hence loathed Melancholy / Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born (lines 1-2). Diction invoking such negatives as horrid shapes, I'shrieks, sights unholy, brooding darkness, jealous wings, and night Ravens (3-10) further establishes just how nefarious this kind of melancholy is. According to Merritt Y. Hughes (Hughes 67-68) and Marjorie Hope Nicolson (Nicolson 54), this negative melancholy has its roots in Robert Anatomy of Melancholy, a work that discusses both black and white forms of a melancholic temperament (Nicolson 53). In A Variorum Commentary on Poems of John Milton, A. S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush observe, Burton's painful melancholy is of kind banished at beginning of L'Allegro' . . . (232). In contrast, Il Penseroso considers a white melancholy, one completely opposed to destructive force L'Allegro banishes to dark Cimmerian desert (10). Note different tenor of But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy / Hail divinest Melancholy . . . (Il Penseroso lines 11-12). Concerning divine melancholy in Il Penseroso, Gerard H. Cox states, Renaissance thinkers . . . associated [this kind of] melancholy with contemplative genius. Those who dedicated themselves to . . . [it] could learn secrets of divine realm and excel in theology and prophecy (53). That Il Penseroso builds on this tradition is clear: Peace and Quiet (45), Leisure (49), Contemplation (53), and Silence (54) describe pensive, constructive melancholy poem celebrates. …
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