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Teaching Columbus' Letters about the New World with Horace's Epode 16

8/28/2015

 

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Roman poet, Horace
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I am going to take a brief break from my ongoing discussion about my course, Gender and Clothing in Shakespeare's Plays, to talk about a really productive revision that I've made to my American Lit class. I've written before about teaching Columbus to students in context with other Spanish authors in translation. This blog post will be about close-reading Columbus' letters along with Horace's Epode 16, sometimes called either "A Remedy for Civil War" or "The Isles of the Blest." Although Horace was writing many centuries before Columbus ever set sail for the New World, his poem is relevant for a discussion of Columbus' letters because he offers a model for talking about voyages and discoveries.

Here are some of the passages that resonate with Columbus' Letter to Luis de Santangel regarding the First Voyage and his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella regarding the Fourth Voyage.

Horace begins his poem with a lamentation about the destruction that the Romans have done in their Civil War:
What the neighbouring Marsians could not destroy,
Nor the threat of Porsena’s Etruscan armies,
Nor Capua’s rival strength, nor the fierceness of Spartacus,
Nor the Gauls, who proved disloyal in changing times,
Nor that savage Germany he conquered, with its blue-eyed youth,
Nor Hannibal detested by our ancestors:
Our impious generation, of cursed blood, will destroy,
And the land will belong again to beasts of prey.
I ask students to comment on what strikes them as interesting, and I tell them not to worry about proper nouns that they may or may not recognize. Usually someone notices right away that many of the lines in this section begin with "nor." I ask the students to consider the effect that this use of anaphora might have on a reader or a listener.  Very dependably, some student will mention that it's to "emphasize his point," as if that's an interesting idea. So I push them a little further and ask them to paraphrase this sentence into "2015 English."

One way to paraphrase this section is to say neither this guy, nor that guy, nor this enemy, nor that enemy, none of them has been able to destroy us; through out wickedness, we ourselves have destroyed what our enemies could not.

This paraphrase helps to develop the general statement about emphasis and it also points the students towards thinking about this poem as employing a combination of patriotism (no one defeated us) and shame (we are an impious generation). Here the students can see that the poem is still a propagandistic poem that ultimately praises Rome for its past glory even as it bemoans the present political upheaval. It sets up a lovely point of contrast with the end of the poem, where Horace describes the isles of the blest.

The total devastation of Rome through civil war creates a desolation that pushes the virile out of their former city. Quite simply, it is impossible to stay and it is impossible to return. Instead, Horace (either rhapsodically or ironically) prophecies that they will head out for these mythical islands:
You who have courage, away now with womanish weeping,
Sail on swiftly beyond the Etruscan shores.
The encircling Ocean is awaiting us: let us seek out
The fields, the golden fields, the islands of the blest,
Where the land, though still untilled, yields a harvest every year…
Jupiter set aside these shores for a virtuous people,
When once he had dimmed the age of gold with bronze:
With bronze, with iron, he made the centuries harder, from which
My prophecy grants the virtuous sweet escape. 
In this passage, Horace offers a beautiful depiction of paradise and he also qualifies some of his searing criticism of the Romans from the passage I quoted above. Whereas before they were an impious generation, now they are a chosen people, the virtuous ones for whom Jupiter has set aside a bountiful land of leisure.

I thought it was worth it to ask my students to talk about the idea that the land, though untilled, would still yield harvest. Intriguingly, some of my students suggested that this was a sign of "laziness" on the part of the Romans; that they wanted to reap the harvest without doing the hard work of farming. This lead to an interesting debate wherein some students maintained this idea whereas other suggested that, in Horace's poem, the land seemingly offers itself to them as a reward for their virtue. They have suffered, but now they won't any more. They see themselves as entitled to this land, which is part religious paradise and part fantasy. Horace's description is not a sign of laziness but a sign of hope.

The imagery and the themes of this poem dovetail beautifully with Columbus' letters. These are both excerpted in the Norton Anthology of American Literature. The first letter really captures the themes of both wonder and entitlement. In the second letter, Columbus' attempts to self-fashion as a hero even as his legacy is being tarnished and his honors are stripped away.

Here is a snippet from the first letter:
This island [Hispaniola] and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous… All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky. And I am told that they never lose their foliage, as I can understand, for I saw them as green and as lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some in another stage, according to their nature. And the nightingale was singing and other birds of a thousand kinds in the month of November there where I went…
Discussion questions:
  • As your footnote mentions, the nightingale and the honeybee (which Columbus refers to obliquely later in the letter) are not native to the Western Hemisphere.  Why does he mention them (even indirectly)? 
  • Compare and contrast this description of what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic to the fictional Isles of the Blest that we read in Horace.
Students really liked thinking about how the island that doesn't seem to know winter and how it's similar to the island where the land yields harvests without farmers tilling the earth. Both of these texts contain a similar tone of wonder. 

This lead to a great discussion about whether or not Columbus seems to think that the Indies are some sort of reward to which he is entitled because of his virtue, past toil, and the glory of the empire for which he is writing. I direct students to the following passage to develop this discussion:
I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which the most illustrious king [...] our sovereigns gave to me. And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island which I found I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine Majesty, Who has marvelously bestowed all this; the Indians call it "Guanahani." To the second I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Concepción; to the third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the fifth, Isla Juana and so to each one I gave a new name.
Students pick up on Columbus' language here that Christ has "bestowed all this" on him and Spain, and we compare that to the idea in Horace that Jupiter has "set aside these shores for a virtuous people." The earlier debate about entitlement, reward, laziness and hope comes back to this new text. I also ask students to think about what's in a name. Why doesn't Columbus just use the name "Guanahani" to talk about the place where he landed? How does the act of renaming the island signify something. This question produced excellent student debate--about how Columbus shows what he values and what he does not value in this act of renaming.

The topic of how Columbus develops a persona for himself is a useful transition to the second letter:
The fear of this, with other sufficient reasons, which I saw clearly, led me to pray your highnesses before I went to discover these islands and Terra Firma, that you would leave them to me to govern in your royal name. It pleased you; it was a privilege and agreement, and under seal and oath, and you granted me the title of viceroy and admiral and governor general of all...

The other most important matter, which calls aloud for redress remains inexplicable to this moment. Seven years I was at your royal court, where all to whom this undertaking was mentioned, unanimously declared it to be a delusion. Now all, down to the very tailors, seek permission to make discoveries...

Who will believe that a poor foreigner could in such a place rise against Your Highnesses, without cause, and without the support of some other prince, and being alone among your vassals and natural subjects, and having all my children at your royal court? … It must be believed that this was not done by your royal command. The restitution of my honor, the reparation of my losses, and the punishment of him who did this, will spread abroad the fame of your royal nobility.
I simply ask students to identify how Columbus presents himself in these three passages. He presents himself as a proxy for the King and Queen (and thus a person of considerable power, even if it is borrowed), a heroic voyager, a genius who was first unfairly scoffed at and then poorly imitated, a slandered person who has become vulnerable, etc. The students will have a lot to say in response to this question, because Columbus is doing some considerable rhetorical work to present himself to the King and Queen.

Here a comparison with Horace is helpful. Although Horace mentions the "impious generation" (a note of shame) he does so in a way that emphasizes the past glory of Rome (a note of pride). While Columbus does discuss his relative lowliness and disgrace ("poor foreigner," "vassal"), he does so in a way that emphasizes his past heroic deeds.  The idea of Columbus as a hero is one that gets picked up in later history as well. For this reason, I like to bring in 19th century paintings of Columbus.
These three images are discussed (along with many others) at the website Painting History: Constructing National Identities with Art, on the page dedicated to Columbus and the Discovery of America. This is really cool website, and one worth reading or sending your students to for their own research!

I like to ask my students to study the three paintings and look for recurring motifs. Then I ask them to consider if they are propagating a myth of Columbus that he has set in motion in his own letters. I ask them to point to the particular passages in the letter that a painter might conceivably be thinking about.

Although Columbus might not have read Horace directly and the painters might not have read Columbus' letters, neither Columbus nor the nineteenth-century painters were working in a vacuum.  Myths of heroism tend to accumulate over time. They become archetypal, drawing from recurring patterns in our culture and affecting the way we see the world around us and our place in it.  This unit is just as much about myth-building as it is about close-reading.

With that in mind, I think that it is absolutely necessary to consider counter-narratives about Columbus that are much more critical of his actions. To this end, I ask student to read critiques of Columbus, both ones that were contemporary to him and ones that are contemporary to us, as I have written about before. I think that it's important to consider writers like Bartolmé de las Casas because he offers us proof that people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were fully capable of seeing the humanity in the Native Americans and that the encomienda system that Columbus helped to establish was not an inevitable consequence of the Europeans' discovery of the Americas.

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Teaching early lit of exploration in translation

9/13/2014

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Christopher Columbus' map. Lisbon, workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus, c.1490. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (CPL GE AA 562 RES).
I teach a unit on early explorations of the New World. Because these narratives are in Spanish and then translated into English for the Norton Anthology, I have found that it's important to give a variety of angles into the texts since students can't "close read" with the same precision that they would be able to if they were reading the author's direct words. We read three Spanish explorers in this unit: Christopher Columbus, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Bernardino de Sahagún. In the following blog post I will trace my general strategy for these three authors.

Columbus

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Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus (born about 1446, died 1506), by Sebastiano del Piombo (aka Sebastiano Luciani), 1519. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Norton's selections of Columbus' writings are unusual. The editors selected two letters that Columbus wrote: 1) Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage (February 15, 1493); and 2) Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage (July 7, 1503).  The first letter makes Columbus look like a hero who has discovered a marvel, and the second makes him look like a deluded man embittered by his fall from grace.

It is useful to compare and contrast the two letters to each other: what kind of persona does Columbus create for himself in each letter? How does he consider the Native Americans? How does he consider the Spanish? In the first letter, why does he reference things like the nightingale and honeybees which were not in the New World but were in Spain? To whom is he writing in either letter and how does that affect the way we understand his tone?

The Norton's selection opens up students to critique Columbus, but it also maintains enough ambiguity that they could still walk away from their reading with a rather simplistic and laudatory view of him still intact. I find it useful to bring in other voices to challenge their uncritical view. First, I give them a critique of the encomienda system that emerged from Columbus' policies, a critique that was written by Columbus' near contemporary Bartolomé de las Casa.  A selection of de las Casas' The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies (1552) is available in the Norton on pp. 38-42. In this section, de las Casas outlines in harrowing detail the atrocities that the Spanish were inflicting on the natives of the Caribbean. I like to ask my students: what is de las Casas’ seeming purpose in writing and how does that compare to Columbus? Compare and contrast the way that Columbus and de las Casas speak about the New World and its inhabitants. Also consider the way that these two early modern explorers use Hispaniola in order to draw contrasts between Native American culture and Spanish culture.

I also ask the younger students to read the essay by Ian W. Toll, “The Less Than Heroic Christopher Columbus,” in The New York Times, September 23, 2011, available online at this link, which is a really lovely review of Laurence Bergreen's Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (2012). Toll summarizes various "readings" of Columbus throughout history and praises Bergreen for his assessment of Columbus as one who "became progressively less rational and more extreme, until it seemed as if he lived more in his glorious illusions than in the grueling reality his voyages laid bare.” Bergreen's book would be good to excerpt for older students, but Toll's editorial in The New York Times is sufficient for my purposes with ninth graders. I ask them to explain Toll’s criticisms about Columbus and to consider if they accord with de las Casas’ text. Additionally, if the early modern explorers’ account of Hispaniola can tell us something about the way they view Spain, does Toll’s account of Columbus tell us something about how he views modern-day America? Why do you think we celebrate Columbus Day anyway?

Cabeza de Vaca

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Fun fact: "Cabeza de Vaca" means "Cow Head" in Spanish!
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had a crazy, crazy life. He came to the New World as part of the ill-fated 1527 Narváez expedition. After surviving a hurricane and losing the ship, Cabeza de Vaca and a handful of other survivors made rafts and floated from western Florida to Galveston, Texas, where they were captured and enslaved by the Capoques and Hans Indians. After years of enslavement, Cabeza de Vaca became a merchant and then eventually a faith-healer among the Indians. He and the other three remaining members of the expedition traveled by foot all over what is now the southwest United States, amassing thousands of followers. Over an eight-year period of wandering, Cabeza de Vaca ended up in Mexico City where he was reunited with his countrymen and then eventually brought back to Spain. He wrote of his adventure in The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, which he offered to Charles V as being "of no trivial value for those who go in your name to subdue those countries and bring them to a knowledge of the true faith and true Lord and bring them under the imperial dominion."

The Norton excerpt focuses on the initial period of enslavement and the reunion with the Spanish in Mexico city. I like to supplement the Norton's brief section with passages from The Relation that focus on what it was like for Cabeza de Vaca to become a faith-healer. As the excerpt above suggests, Cabeza de Vaca is on board with the colonialist project, but he also critiques the Spanish practice of enslaving the Indians, saying, "
they received us with the same awe and respect the others had--even more, which amazed us. Clearly, to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way."

The way that he describes becoming a faith healer is especially useful for exploring his divided sense of self.  He alternates between Machiavellian cunning as he seeks to augment the natives' misconception that he is from heaven and heartfelt wonder that God has seemingly chosen him as a vessel to bless, heal, and unite people who are sick or at war with each other. In short, he alternates between wanting to use the Indians and sincerely wanting to help them.

I ask my students to trace the "narrative" or agenda that is pro-colonization, pro-Spanish, and pro-exploitation. Then I also ask them to trace the "counter narrative" that is critical of colonization, the Spanish, and exploitation. We consider also what might account for tension between the two narratives: is this symptomatic of a divided loyalty, a divided sense of self, a product of being in a liminal space between "Spanish" and "Native American"? Is Cabeza de Vaca the "first" American?

Sahagún

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Illustration of Bernardino de Sahagún from Narrative and Critical History of American (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1886).
Bernardino de Sahagún also had an amazing life, although his was one of study instead of one of adventure.  He was a Franciscan missionary priest who spent more than 50 years studying the language, culture, and beliefs of the Aztec Indians. He translated parts of the bible into Nahuatl, the Aztec language. He also wrote the General History of the Things of New Spain which is considered the first ethnographic study to use objective and consistent methods for gathering information. Because of his innovations in ethnography, he is known as the "first anthropologist."

Very simply, Sahagún created a survey that he administered to the Aztecs about a wide range of topics. He administered the survey in their native language,
Nahuatl, and he interviewed a wide range of people (including women). The survey was very simple in its basic premise. The written responses--given in Nahuatl and then translated into Spanish in a side-by-side translation--suggest that the majority of Sahagun's questions were three-part: 1) what is a ____? 2) what is a "good" ____?, and 3) what is a "bad" ____?

Sahagún intended the General History to be an all-purpose reference book: a dictionary, a cultural snapshot for missionaries who were coming in to convert the natives, and a record of a culture to preserve it.  He also worked with the Aztec very closely. The research assistants for his study were all Aztec, and he employed Aztec "feather painters" to illustrate his book. Here are some of their beautiful illustrations:
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The attorney
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The solicitor
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The virtuous daughter
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Good and bad sons
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Female physicians
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A person suffering from possession, turned into an animal
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A female weaver
It is really useful to ask students to articulate what the responses suggest is valued in certain groups. You can look at professions, at age groups, at gender groups, etc. Students can pick up patterns such as children are expected to be obedient (no matter the gender), and adulthood seems to be measured according to whether or not a person is responsible for teaching a younger generation. That is, adulthood is measured by having had children or by adopting children from other family members. It is also useful to think about similarities and differences between our culture and the Aztec culture. Although there are definite differences (according to the General History, a "good" grandfather is one who beats one with nettles!), there are also many, many similarities between our culture and theirs. This document suggests and invites empathy with the Aztecs.

World Digital Library offers high resolution scans of all volumes at The Florentine Codex, named for the best preserved copy of Sahagún's book (located at a library in Florence).

I find it very useful to compare and contrast Cabeza de Vaca and Sahagún, especially around the concept of empathy.  I use the following as a paper prompt:
Compare and contrast the representation of the Native Americans that we see in Cabeza de Vaca and in Sahagún.  How does the form of these two texts (the method the writers use to present information) affect the content of their writing (the actual description of the New World and its inhabitants)?

The two forms are so different: one is a series of definitions and the other is a series of event set into narrative form like an adventure story. The former highlights Sahagún's willing decision to empathize with the Aztecs (even in their own language and giving preference to their own words) whereas the other shows Cabeza de Vaca as he is forced to undergo a partial (but still incomplete) process of acculturation to the native cultures of the American Southwest.
Historical relativists would urge us to keep these offenses in perspective. It was another era, they remind us, when men were governed by different moral and ethical codes. 

--Ian Toll
The prompt, and indeed the entire unit, help to combat the "historical relativists" who excuse the darker side of the colonialist project as critiqued by Bartolomé de las Casas. We see that there was a vibrant and discursive debate about how the Spanish should interact with Native Americans and even moments of questioning why the Spanish would want to conquer the New World at all. Underlying these moments of questioning is the quiet insistence that Native Americans count as humans, and that the Spanish are opening themselves up to condemnation by history and the world for greed and barbarity.  Such a pedagogical move might even make students question why we want to rewrite history to excuse what happened at the beginning of Europe's conquest of the Americas.
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Approaching Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra with Images of Marriage from Early Modern Emblem Books

6/19/2014

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John William Waterhouse, Cleopatra (1888)
I am going to be teaching a Shakespeare survey in the spring, and I have spent the past few days putting my syllabus together. I am so freaking excited about this course! Generally speaking, I have had really awesome students at the OHS, and now that I am on the semester system instead of the dreaded quarter system, I can really dig into a topic and do it justice! With students who are up to the challenge!

I am using a "Texts and Contexts" approach to this course. Every class meeting, students will come to class having read contextual material in addition to an act of Shakespeare's play. I am really excited about the transitional material between As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra.  Students will read
Francis Beaumont’s “Salmachis and Hermaphroditus”and look at a selection of icons allegorizing marriage from early modern emblem books.
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Emblem 50, "Conjugal Love" from Nikolaus Reusner, Aureola Emblemata Liber (1587)
My Latin is not very good (basically non-existent except for what I can hobble together through my French and Google Translate), but I think that the motto could be translated more or less into the following: one flesh, one mind out of two: let neither death, the bed, nor the tomb put asunder those who are together tied. Let me know if you have a better translation. There is also a German couplet there, but I am at a complete loss for that one. If you're reading, German-speaking friends and relatives, let me know.
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Detail from Emblem 50 of Nikolaus Reusner's Aureola Emblemata Liber (1587)
The Latin couplet and the pictura allude to several biblical verses.
  • In Mark 10:8: they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
  • Genesis 2:24: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
  • Ephesians 5:32: a man [shall] leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
Those biblical verses, and indeed Reusner's image above, idealize this dissolution of two into one. Perhaps As You Like also idealizes this type of union in its whopping FOUR marriages at the conclusion. But this blending of boundaries is something that can produce anxiety and fear as well as pleasure and comfort, as we see in Antony and Cleopatra.
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Joannes Sambucus, “In sponsalia Ioannis Ambii Angli, & Albae Rolleae D. Arnoldi Medici Gandavensis filiae.” [On the engagement of John Ambius [or of Ambium] of England, and Alba Rollea, daughter of Mr. Arnoldus doctor from Ghent] from Emblemata (1564).
The image above was published in two emblem books, one in French and one in Latin. The subscriptio in both can be translated as follows:

O son of Angles [English], and offspring of noble ancestors, has, then, a chaste maiden given you the pledge of her hand? Did you know how to win the love of a girl of high-born virtue, so that Juno, patroness of weddings, is binding you as equals, in matrimony? I congratulate you, and I pray all happiness for this fecund beginning. Let conjugal love grow, and let God, through it, make you twins. Let the Author in the sky keep you faithful to your marriage-vows, and let the desired act be celebrated
…

It is worthwhile to ask students to think about the discrepancies between the idealizing language ("let the desired act be celebrated") and the language that presents marriage as entrapment ("binding you").  There is an emphasis on sameness here: the married couple will be "twins" to each other, "equals" in matrimony. What is up with the picture depicting this union? Why do they look terrified? Why are they bound with chains? Why is there a snake that winds itself between the two couples? Why would being twins or equals be anything other than a good thing?
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Barthélemy Aneau “Matrimonii Typus” from Picta poesis (1552).
This emblem has the following subscriptio:

Let there be a Hermaphrodite of double shape in a single body; and let one face be a woman’s, the other a man’s. Let kisses then be given and taken as if with a twin mouth: which are the shared exchanges of sweet love. Let, on the one side, the Sage say that both are one flesh; but on the other (when they fight), let the satyr laugh that they are two. For the horned Jew commanded that they be two in a single flesh; this body is what the Androgyne expresses. [N.B. ‘the horned Jew’ refers to Moses. This epithet is based on a mistranslation of a Hebrew word and is not meant to be antisemitic.]

Then, let a fruitful TREE stand near, in whose branches many a bird shall sit…

FINALLY in the field far behind, a second scene takes place, a herdsman ploughing with two oxen. He does the equal work of shared labor and a like concern for making wealth grow. This is an apt symbol for well-grounded marriage in a wedding-bed blessed by law.

What does it meant to say that two people in a marriage--or even in love--are like a hermaphrodite? How does the term "hermaphrodite" register in our culture now, and do you think our connotations of the term are the same as they might have been when these emblem books were written and when Shakespeare was writing Antony and Cleopatra?

Myths of Hermaphrodites:

Ovid (a Roman poet) and Francis Beaumont (an early modern English poet and playwright) both have version of this myth, which you could assign for students depending on their grade level and ability. The poets tell the story of the female water nymph Salmachis who suffers unrequited love for the beautiful male hunter named Hermaphroditus. When she dives into the pool where he is swimming, she clasps her arms against his unwilling body and prays to the gods that they will make her embrace of him permanent. They do, and the two bodies fuse into one, both male and female.
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Detail of the conjoined Salmachis and Hermaphroditus from Jan Gossaert's "The Metamorphosis of Hermaphrodite and Salmacis" (c. 1517). Notice how closely Gossaert's painting resembles the emblem books' depiction of marriage.
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Students might not see this myth as a depiction of rape because they are (generally speaking) not used to the ideas that men can be raped and that women can rape men, but they WILL see this myth as depicting a loss of the male's agency and freedom. It make take some coaxing, but get them to identify who's got the power in this story.

Consider the following important question:
what does it mean, then, that these emblem books draw on iconography and literary allusions that invoke this particular myth when they are describing marriage and heterosexual love?

I think that this discussion will be useful to pair with Shakespeare's tragedy, especially around the repeated claims (made by the Romans), that Antony, once a phallic "
pillar of the world" has lost his masculinity because of his love for Cleopatra.  The threat of hermaphrodism lurks in the play when Caesar says that Antony "is not more man-like / Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy / More womanly than he." In other words, they are equally androgynous. Whereas Cleopatra and Antony seem to find this equality sexy (they even cross-dress in each others clothes), Caesar sees this equality as a sign of Antony's debasement.

My aim in this exercise is to get students to think about how--within the early modern period and the world of this specific play--desire itself could be seen as destabilizing heroic masculinity, even if the object of desire was the "appropriate" female object. 

I mean THIS is what our culture associates with Cleopatra:
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Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra © 1963 20th Century Fox
So fierce.

I want to emphasize that the 1963 Cleopatra is not just another example of Hollywood sexing up a story. On some level, "Cleopatra" as a cultural idea has become a signifier for sex, passion, and female authority--this cultural work has been literally hundreds of years in the making. Sometimes she's demonized for that (see the "wicked books" that the Wife of Bath's husband reads to her) and sometimes she's praised for that, but she has pretty statically remained a sex symbol since Roman times. 

Antony getting to be with Cleopatra is like Joe DiMaggio getting to be with Marilyn Monroe, or Brad Pitt getting to be with Angelina Jolie.  Cleopatra's pretty much the crème de la crème of women out there, and we could feasibly argue that Antony's ability to win her affection makes him more "manly" and not less. Why, then, does Caesar make the opposite argument?

What I hope that my students will get out of this discussion is the concept that ideas of masculinity and ideas of heterosexuality do not line up universally or naturally. 
If those two ideas line up now (so that we think of straight men as "real" men), then we have culturally constructed that association just as much as Caesar has constructed his ideas of masculinity and martial austerity.  According to Caesar, there is only one way to be a "real" man and it is never in the bedroom.

Hopefully, though, seeing the diversity of images from the emblem books will help students to see that this militant austerity is only one conception of masculinity, and a pretty dangerous one at that.  Antony and Cleopatra's love seems like a poignant and courageous protest against the gender norms of Rome, and their deaths seem all the more tragic to me.
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    Claire Dawkins

    English Instructor at Stanford's Online High School

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