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Creating Identity and Uniting a Nation

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Creating Identity and Uniting a Nation “For I could tell how Natures store Of Majestie appeareth more In waters, then in all the rest Of Elements.” (William Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals, Book I, Song II) Creating Identity and Uniting a Nation - The Development of the Water Motif from Ancient Greek Bucolic to Early Modern English Pastoral Poetry Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Neuphilologischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Institut für Anglistik vorgelegt von Jule F. Pölzer-Nawroth Abgabe: 20.05.2019 Disputation: 22.11.2019 Erster Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Peter Paul Schnierer Zweiter Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Athanassios Vergados Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my beloved parents and sister whose love and support have inspired me to follow my dreams; to my wonderful husband who always understood and whose exceptional encouragement and endless patience allowed me to focus on my research; to Phaeton, Klio and Eos who reminded me to leave the books every so often to find my own Arcadia; and finally, to Benedict, who always believed in me but did not live to see the thesis finished. My project was supported by scholarships from the DAAD and the Graduiertenakademie of Heidelberg Universität for which I am very grateful. “I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in. I'll never meet the ground. Crash through the surface, where they can't hurt us. We're far from the shallow now.” “Shallow” (OST “A Star is Born”, 2018) by Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt and Anthony Rossomando Index of Abbreviations Ap. Hymn to Apollo BP Britannia’s Pastorals Callim. Callimachus Cf. Confer CCCHA Colin Clout’s Come Home Again Ecl. Eclogue et.al. Et alii/aliae f. and the following page ff. and the following pages Hes. Hesiod Hdt. Herodotus Hom. Homer Ibid. Ibidem Id. Idyll Il. Iliad L. Line Mosch. Moschus Od. Odyssey Op. Works and Days P. Page Suid. Suda Theog. Theogony Theoc. Theocritus Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................... 1 1.1. Motivation for this Dissertation ............................ 1 1.2. Previous Research ........................................... 7 1.3. Method ..................................................... 11 2. Theory ........................................................ 14 2.1. Terminology ................................................ 14 2.2. Pastoral Literary Theory ................................... 17 2.3. Spatial Theory ............................................. 23 2.4. Collective and Cultural Memory ............................. 37 2.5. National Identity Building ................................. 45 3. Literary History .............................................. 68 3.1. The Hellenistic Period ..................................... 68 3.2. The First Century BC ....................................... 78 3.3. The English Renaissance .................................... 83 3.4. The Golden Age ............................................. 95 4. Water Motifs ................................................. 102 4.1. Geographic Motifs ......................................... 103 4.1.1. Means of Orientation ................................... 103 4.1.2. Borders ................................................ 121 4.1.3. Locus Amoenus .......................................... 147 4.1.4. Horrible Places ........................................ 169 4.1.5. Meeting Points ......................................... 185 4.2. Cultural Motifs ........................................... 205 4.2.1. Gaze ................................................... 205 4.2.2. Tears .................................................. 218 4.2.3. Drink .................................................. 237 4.2.4. Washing / Cleansing .................................... 250 4.2.5. Uncategorised and Missing Pieces ....................... 259 5. Conclusion ................................................... 280 5.1. Analysis Summary .......................................... 280 5.2. Research Outlook .......................................... 292 6. Bibliography ................................................. 296 1. Introduction 1.1. Motivation for this Dissertation Since the late 90’s and the early 21st century, common interest has grown in multimedia devices, electronics, “smart” tools and worldwide, anonymous communication. In a time that has made it possible to conduct financial business on your smartphone, to program a vacuum cleaning robot to clean your apartment and to order your grocery shopping online to avoid busy super-markets during shopping prime-time, people’s conception and relationship with the natural world might have changed; these presuppositions, however, could allow two possible turns and outcomes. The first would be that nature lost its importance on people’s mind in daily routine and that fast-moving city life, virtual reality and artificially designed parks and recreational areas substitute for real-life encounters with nature. The second possibility, on the other hand, would be a turn to nature; a longing desire for peace, escapism and simplicity, a yearning for a plain and quiet life in a natural balance. This current dilemma shows an issue which has been occupying people’s mind for centuries. Theocritus, the father of bucolic poetry, created loca amoena in his Idylls emphasising the advantages and paradisiac qualities of a life of simplicity as it is led by shepherds in the rocky hills of Sicily. Virgil followed in his footsteps, confronting his civil-war- struck contemporaries with the golden ray of hope that peace and beauty, balanced nature, heavenliness and divinity in landscape surroundings can always be achieved and restored after any level of chaos.1 English pastoral emerged in the Renaissance - a period of literary production both extraneous and fascinating. In many literary introductions to the period, however, the British Renaissance is forced to take a backseat behind the cultural and artistic developments in Italy and France and the religious and ethical evolutions in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Yet, thorough engagement with the inventions, changes and expansions during the 1 The Mediterranean landscapes, may they be real or imagined, provide perfect nostalgic, mythological and traditional geographic backgrounds for the composition of bucolic and pastoral poetry and the creation of rustic ideals: “The Mediterranean, then, is a material text into whose fabric are woven millennia of stories about the human relationship with the more-than-human-world.” (Past in Zapf 2016: 369). 1 British Renaissance suggests otherwise: Britain underwent fundamental changes in almost any aspect of society and culture in the 16th and 17th century, developing a self-confident stand of the English language in literature, changing monarchs and religion, educating artists and poets in classical and humanist learning, while all the time keeping up with European trends in art, architecture, inventions, literature and fashion. The works of early modern pastoral poets such as Ralegh, Marlowe, Spenser, Barclay and Milton are just a few examples for this. They did not simply copy the works of Theocritus and Virgil but developed a new genre in British literary history. From a teleological perspective, one is too often tempted to see the course of history as a smooth sequence of consecutive events adding up to “the future” rather than a bumpy ride of setbacks, retrogressions and hold-ups.2 This applies to the study of literary history as well as it does to all other areas of historic scholarship. For the pursuit of the history and development from Greek bucolic and Latin pastoral literature to early modern English poetry, the temptation to treat temporal development as linear as possible is omnipresent. Of course, there is no straight line in the direct and indirect reception of the literature of antiquity; many manuscripts were lost through the course of centuries, changed in the copying process of the Middle Ages or suffered due to its challenging public accessibility. The public, in this case, meaning the few fortunate enough to not only read and write, but to read and write Latin and Greek. Nevertheless, British pastoral poetry found its way into the literary landscape of the 16th and 17th century, drawing inspiration in content and form from its ancient predecessors and providing a nation young in literature with a truly unique genre.3 This dissertation aims to perform an intercultural comparison of the history of ancient and early modern pastoral and its influence on the development of cultural and national identity with the help of 2 Grethlein describes this telos as “the vantage point from which a course of events is told.” (Grethlein 2013: 2). In this case, the position of a literary scholar of the 21st century. The posteriority of the retrospective might make the modern scholar superior to many before him; however, it must be borne in mind that developments are not as linear as they appear in hindsight. “The look back permits us to master the contingencies to which we are subject in life, to replace vulnerability with sovereignty. Teleology can thus serve as a means of coping with temporality.” (Ibid. P. 5). 3 The transmission history of ancient bucolic and pastoral poems into the early modern European history will be discussed in chapter 3.3. The English Renaissance. 2 the water motif. Since the body of English Renaissance pastoral literature is very extensive, the establishment of certain leading and restricting aspects is highly necessary. A thorough read
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