Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Angry Consoler
- Chapter 2 The Emergence of Compassionate Moderation
- Chapter 3 Praise and Mourning
- Chapter 4 The Shift from Anxious Elegy
- Chapter 5 Surrey and Spenser
- Chapter 6 Jonson and King
- Chapter 7 Milton
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - The Emergence of Compassionate Moderation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Angry Consoler
- Chapter 2 The Emergence of Compassionate Moderation
- Chapter 3 Praise and Mourning
- Chapter 4 The Shift from Anxious Elegy
- Chapter 5 Surrey and Spenser
- Chapter 6 Jonson and King
- Chapter 7 Milton
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Clown. Good madonna, why mourn'st thou?
Olivia. Good fool, for my brother's death.
Clown. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Olivia. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Clown. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)In Renaissance England a consoler seeking support from Christianity in the battle against grief has three major options, although they are not equally available throughout the period because the theological discussions of mourning, like the letter-writing formularies, are more sympathetic towards grief by the early seventeenth century. The most common and familiar position is also the most flexible and confusing: grief is permissible but must be moderate. Conceptions of moderation differ dramatically, however, and moderation can be opposed to one of two excesses, immoderate mourning or inhuman insensibility. Some views of moderation are even more severe than total prohibition of grief, and moderate mourning can range from a day, as Wilson suggests, to much longer and more turbulent periods. Unrestricted mourning never finds a theological champion, but some advocates of moderation insist upon mourning as a necessary expression of humanity. This second position is really a matter of emphasis because the necessity of moderation is never lost sight of.
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- Information
- Grief and English Renaissance Elegy , pp. 27 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985