Hero and Leander

1
Hero and Leander
EN2010 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, 2007

• Such force and virtue hath an amorous looke

2
The first edition
3
Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1593
4
(No Transcript)
5
Emma Darcy sheikhy sheikhy baby!

• ? Emma Darcy. Climax of Passion. New York
  Harlequin, 1995.Emma Darcy. The Falcon's
  Mistress. New York Harlequin, 1988.Emma Darcy.
  The Sheikh's Revenge. New York Harlequin,
  1993.Emma Darcy. The Sheikh's Seduction. New
  York Harlequin, 1998.

6
Perfection? been there, done that

• there was something about him that arrested
  Amandas attention. Not his clothes, they were
  unremarkable. Not his looks. She had seen more
  handsome men. He was tall and lean, like an
  athlete honed to perfection.
• Amanda had seen that before, with the Olympic
  Games team.

7
Come to me, she moaned, Love me

• His clothes were tossed aside. Her eyes feasted
  on his physical beauty. He was perfectly
  proportioned, his body sleekly honed to tight
  flesh stretched over the curves of muscles which
  were strongly delineated. The smooth sheen of his
  skin looked like polished bronze in the
  starlight. She was enthralled by the power of his
  maleness, the visible pulsing of his need for her

8
Sheikhs fly off the shelves

• ? BBC4, 18th September 2006
• A Mills and Boon novel is sold every 2 seconds
• Sub-genres Modern, Tender (bedroom door
  shut), Ruthless, Hot Sheets (18-30),
  Desire, Intrique, SuperRomance, Italian
  Husbands
• but Sheikhs fly off the shelves.

9
Now Thats What I Call Sheikhspeare!

• http//sheikhs-and-desert-love.com/browse_themes.h
  tml

• ? Website offering a thematic index of
  humping-among-the-camels romances

• Typical themes
• Abducted by the Enemy!
• Angry Sheikhs
• Kidnapped by a Handsome Sheikh
• Sheikhs Fearing Commitment

10
The Authentic coup de foudre

• Briefly he caught her glance, held it, and
  dismissed it. Amandas heart skipped a beat. By
  the intense application of willpower she managed
  to wrest her attention back to what she was
  supposed to be doing. What had happened was more
  than disturbing. She had never reacted like this
  before in her life
• ? Relenting Hero's gentle heart was strooke,
     Such force and vertue hath an amorous looke.
  I, 165

11
Kate Belsey Desire Love Stories in Western
Culture (Oxford, 1994)

• ? The Harlequin heroine is in a constant fever
  of anti-erotic anxiety, trying to control the
  flow of sexual passion between herself and the
  hero.

12
Retributive abjection, classic style
I was properly humbled
13
The Heroine tries to fight her own desire

• ? And like a planet, moving several wayes, At
  one selfe instant, she poore soule assaies,
  Loving, not to love at all, and everie part,
  Strove to resist the motions of her hart.
• (I, 361ff)
• Refers to the apparent retrograde (backwards)
  motion of a planet through the heavens on its
  orbit, because the earth is also orbiting, the
  outer planets sometimes appear to move backwards,
  and thus to be going two ways at once, moving
  forwards overall, but backwards too.

14
Tactics of delay, narrative and erotic

• (She) was glad         That she such
  lovelinesse and beautie had,         As could
  provoke his liking, yet was mute,         And
  neither would denie, nor grant his sute.        
  Still vowd he love, she wanting no excuse
          To feed him with delayes, as women use
• I 421ff

15
Problems with the eroticised male body

• ? some illustrations of instability of effect
• (with thanks to
• http//www.worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_no
  vels/ )

16
The romance hero doesnt come in at less than
62, as captured in this archetypal image
17
Once his shirt is off, he tends to the
hypertrophic
18
? One outcome the (female) desiring gaze gets
subverted into a male desiring gaze
19
Hero and Leander Leander as ideal (but
pre-capitalist) romance hero.

• Leander swims to Heros tower she has the
  property, not him where is Pemberley? What
  happened to the palace of the Sheikh of Xabia?

20
Georgia Brown

• Gender and voice in Hero and Leander in
  Constructing Christopher Marlowe ed. Downie and
  Parnell (2000)
• The epyllion is a genre that effeminises its
  author
• The Marlowe of Hero and Leander is really
  Marlowe in drag the crudity of this assertion
  invites correction, but Hero and Leander does
  explore a feminized form of authorship

21
From another angle, though

• Marlowe ostentatiously artful, disconcerting,
  watching its effect on the reader
• Distances the lovers as naïve, absurd, incredible
• Romance ironically narrated counter to Georgia
  Brown, a male romance, told with an Ovidian spirit

• Emma Darcy does everything to assist the reader
  to identify with Amanda.
• Refuses to know that the tale is risible, will
  not break the contract with her reader, which is
  one of quarantine from reality

22
Ignorance isnt bliss

• ? Like Æsops cocke, this jewel he enjoyed, And
  as a brother with his sister toyed, Supposing
  nothing else was to be done, But know you not
  that creatures wanting sense, By nature have a
  mutual appetence, And wanting organs to advance
  a step, Mov'd by Loves force, unto each other
  lep?
• She, fearing on the rushes to be flung,
  Striv'd with redoubled strength, the more she
  strived,
• The more a gentle pleasing heat revived,

23
It-endings, II 71-4

• ? As in plaine termes (yet cunningly) he crav'd
  it.  Love alwayes makes those eloquent that have
  it.  Shee, with a kind of granting, put him by
  it,  And ever as he thought himselfe most nigh
  it,
• Like to the tree of Tantalus she fled,
• And, seeming lavish, sav'de her maidenhead.
  

24
Appeal to male experience?

• ? Ne're king more sought to keepe his diademe,
  Than Hero this inestimable gem. Above our life
  we love a steadfast friend,
• Yet when a token of great worth we send, We
  often kisse it, often looke thereon, And stay
  the messenger that would be gon
• II 79-84

25

• The marginality of Hero and Leander is
  reinforced by its status as an unfinished romance
  and it also resists closure in a variety of
  other ways. It is far more interested in
  processes and beginnings than in endings

26
Doomed lovers Love could not fend off the fates

• Pyramus and Thisbe
• In Pausanias, Melanippus and Komaithò only one
  thing is worth as much as life itself to men
  that a love should be successful
• Then love-devouring Death do what he dare,
• It is enough I may but call her mine

27
Violent delights
These violent delights have violent ends And in
their triumph die, like fire and powder Which as
they kiss, consume
28
Musaeus Dread is Eros

• Tell, O Goddess, of the lamp, witness of secret
  love,
• Tell too, of the darkened marriage never beheld
  by immortal dawn

• Dread is Eros! Ruthless the ocean! Yet the
  sea-strait is but narrow, whereas the flame of
  Eros, lurking within, consumes me

29
(No Transcript)
30
(No Transcript)
31
(No Transcript)
32
(No Transcript)
33
Closure by disclosure? II 310ff

• ? And faine by stealth away she would have
  crept, And to some corner secretly have gone,
  Leaving Leander in the bed alone. But as her
  naked feet were whipping out, He on the sudden
  clingd her so about, That Mermaid-like unto the
  floore she slid, And halfe appear'd the other
  halfe was hid.
• So Heroes ruddie cheeke Hero betrayd.
• And her all naked to his sight displayd
• Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure tooke,
  
• Than Dis on heapes of gold fixing his looke.

34
At the mid-point of Marlowes 818 lines

• ? he often strayd   Beyond the bounds of
  shame, in being bold   To eye those parts,
  which no eye should behold.   And like an
  insolent commanding lover,
• 410 Boasting his parentage, would needs discover
    The way to new Elisium

35
Page 172

• was aflame with desire. She did not try to hide
  her willing receptivity and need for his embrace.
  She lay fully exposed, her back arched in
  anticipation. He came to her like a man who had
  ceased to function for anything other than
  joining with her. He slid between her legs. With
  a hoarse cry he plunged deeply into her body

36
The sexual encounters

• Mercury/country maid at I 397ff
• Leanders first visit to Heros tower, II 43-86
• Neptunes attempt on Leander (the ironic
  reversal/variant), at II 155-226
• These are all unconsummated, before the fourth
  and final encounter, at II 279 ff

37
Wherein Leander on her quivering
breast,         Breathlesse spoke some thing,
and sigh'd out the rest         Which so
prevail'd, as he with small ado,        
Inclos'd her in his armes and kist her too.
        And everie kisse to her was as a charme,
        And to Leander as a fresh alarme.
        So that the truce was broke, and she
alas,         (Poore silly maiden) at his mercie
was.         Love is not full of pittie (as men
say)         But deafe and cruel, where he
meanes to pray.         Even as a bird, which in
our hands we wring,         Forth plungeth, and
oft flutters with her wing. She trembling
strove, this strife of hers (like that        
Which made the world) another world begat,
        Of unknowne joy. Treason was in her
thought,         And cunningly to yield her
selfe she sought.         Seeming not won, yet
won she was at length,         In such warres
women use but halfe their strength.        
Leander now like Theban Hercules,         Entred
the orchard of th'Hesperides.         Whose fruit
none rightly can describe, but he       That
pulls or shakes it from the golden tree
38
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa Lovelace makes his
plan

• There may possibly be some cruelty necessary
  but there may be consent in struggle there may
  be yielding in resistance. We begin, when boys,
  with birds and when grown up, so on to women,
  and both perhaps, in turn, experience our
  sportive cruelty
• Volume 2, Letter 93
• (from Roma Gills edition of Marlowes Poems and
  Translations)

39
W B Yeats from Song of the Wandering Aengus

• Though I am old with wandering
• Through hollow lands and hilly lands
• I will find out where she has gone
• And kiss her lips, and take her hands
• And walk among long dappled grass
• And pluck till time and times are done
• The silver apples of the moon
• The golden apples of the sun.

40
The story completed, 1598

• Editions 1600, 1606, 1609, 1613, 1616, 1617,
  1622, 1629, 1637

41
Hero and Leander as decorative scheme

• Mortlake tapestry, designed for James I in
  1625.
• The meeting of Hero and Leander

42
As seen by Bush and Putin in Bratislava
43
(No Transcript)
44
Musaeus English translation of 1647
45
(No Transcript)