English A2 - PL/V Flashcards
1) Celia is the epitome of female Christian virtue
Q - “whither, whither, is shame fled human breasts? that with such ease, men dare put off your honours and their own […] for money”
Q - “blazing star of Italy”
Q - “she hath not yet the face to be dishonest”
A03 - “Celia is a strong-minded character who not only plays a pivotal role in the plot but a thematic one as well” - Katherine Maus
- “the conflict between two value systems - one full of desire and greed and another based on Christian morality and reason - is central to ‘Volpone’ and seems to have been a conflict with which Jonson dealt personally” - Richard Glass
A04 - intellectually Jonson identifies with Celia and her values
- epitome of christian virtue
- drawing on Ovid’s Metamorphoses
2) Celia is objectified, weak and passive
Q - “bright as your gold, as lovely as your gold”
Q - “a beauty as ripe as harvest and flesh that melteth in the touch of blood”
Q - “flay my face, or poison it with ointments for seducing your blood to this rebellion”
A03 - “the conflict between two value sysmte - one full of desire and greed and another based on christian morality and reason - is central to ‘Volpone’ and seems to have been a conflict with which Jonson death personally” - Richard Glass
A04 - Celia’s objectification is consistent with the pre-1800s
Golden Age: Paradise Lost
Q - “O Earth how like to Heaven”
Q - “sweet interchange of hill and valley”
Q - “forth came the human pair and joined their vocal worship to the choir”
Q - “her every air of gesture overawed his malice”
A04 - Ovids Metamorphoses: “people passed their lives in gentle peace and security”
- Renaissance was a rebirth of classical learning, fascination with the golden age
Golden Age: Volpone
Q - “well did wise poets by thy glorious name title that age”
Q - “good morning to the day and next my gold” - links to A+E’s morning worship to god, blasphemous
Q - “Stand there and multiply” - blasphemous
A04 - Jonson was an educated classicist, using references to the golden age
- book of genesis: “be fruitful and multiply
1) Mosca is servile
Q - “your sweet nature doth abhor these courses” - flattery
Q - “you shall live still to delude these harpies” - flattery
Q - “all the wise world is little else in nature but parasites and sub parasites”
A04 - Parasitism: act of feeding off another for wealth was become commonplace in the emerging capitalist society
2) Mosca is arrogant
Q - “I fear I shall begin to grow in love with my dear self” - hubris
Q - “I could skip out of my skin like a subtle snake, I am so limber”
Q - “that can rise and stoop (almost together) like an arrow”
A03 - “Mosca functions as a conventional vice figure often found in medieval and Renaissance literature” - Wickham
- “Jonson attempts to generate moral impulses in his audience” - Hiscock (Hitchcock)
A04 - Jonson draws on Roman comedy models, a stock character in Roman comedy was the smart slave - Jonson uses the cunning slave as a model to fashion Mosca
- Parasitism: act of feeding off another for wealth was become commonplace in the emerging capitalist society
corruption of capitalism
Q - Mosca praises Voltore’s ability to “give forked counsel, take provoking gold” - sarcasm
A04 - “market capitalism runs through the play like an energy charge, but also transforms the moral foundations of society” - McEvoy
Eve’s flaws
Q - “render me more equal, and perhaps a thing not undesirable, sometime superior”
Q - “I shall be no more, and Adam wedded to another Eve, shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; a death to think”
Q - “Adam shall share with me in bliss in woe”
