Spenser and Venture Smith

Today has been a very eclectic day. First, I read Book II canto xii of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. I read this canto for class, and it is, in fact, the only canto I have read from Book II, so I cannot necessarily say a whole lot about its context within the narrative of Book II. However, I can discuss the aspects that caught my attention.

Book II relates Guyon's travels through, and eventual destruction of, the Bower of Bliss. Guyon's path to, and through, the Bower, echos Odysseus's travels in Homer's The Odyssey. Guyon and the Palmer, who I assume is Guyon's guide, must sail their boat through narrow straights to reach the Bower. The first section contains a whirlpool on one side and a rocky cliff on the other. These natural objects echo Homer's Charybdis and Scylla. Along with this, the mermaids recall the sirens of The Odyssey and the enchantress at the end of the canto recalls Circe.

To me, though, the character of the Palmer jumps out the most. In essence, he is a Christ figure and also part of Guyon's conscience. Taking in everything that Palmer does (calming the sees, continually subduing animals, and steering Guyon away from temptation) I cannot help but see this character as Jesus in control of a Christian's life. Along with this, the fact that Spenser relates the trek to the Bower over 40 stanzas in the canto, recalling Jesus' temptation in the desert, his forty days on earth after the resurrection, and other biblical references. What this means right now, I do not now, but I enjoyed it.

The second text I read comes from The Cambridge Companion to The African American Slave Narrative. It's an entry by Yolanda Pierce entitled "Redeeming Bondage: The Captivity Narrative and the Spiritual Autobiography in the African American Slave Narrative Tradition." The article examines Venture Smith's and George White's slave narratives. She begins, of course, by discussing the literary tradition of the captivity narrative and its relationship to the slave narrative. However, she does not mention one of the most well known captivity narratives, Mary Rowlandson's. This could be because she focuses on male authors. With the captivity narrative, Pierce examines Venture Smith's narrative. She focuses on the fact that Smith presents himself as a "self-made man" like we see in the captivity narrative, and she also discusses why we see such a focus from Smith on capitalism and wealth instead on specific protests against chattel slavery. Pierce argues that Smith gives us a great insight into African culture during the eighteenth century, especially in regards to family structure and wealth. Part of this insight possibly shows us why Smith does not necessarily attack chattel slavery directly even when he was slave. For example, Smith's father taught him honesty and integrity. As Pierce says,



Contrary to eighteenth-century sentiment, Smith does not embrace bondage because his African racial ancestry somehow makes him suited to it. He detests being a slave, but in his mind willful wrongdoing is far worse than forced captivity. (88)




She then proceeds to discuss the formative event in Smith's life and its relation to his narrative. This event occurs when European captors beat his father to death for not telling them where he hid his treasure. Part of what Smith does, Pierce argues, is build an "African village in a New World" (91) by buying his family and three other individuals out of slavery. In order to do this, he must have money. Perhaps the most important note I can take from the section on Smith deals with the reversal of the "savage" and the "civilized" that we see in the captivity narrative. Pierce writes,



Because of his [Smith's] formative instruction by his African family, Smith never believes that he is the one who is savage; he never believes that he is the moral of intellectual inferior of his captors; he never believes that his native home is uncivilized wilderness, and that his fellow African descendants are destined by God to be slaves for life. (91)




This reversal, of course, can also be see in Equiano's narrative. One aspect that I wish Pierce explored a little more, would be Smith's economic accomplishments and growth in relation to Benjamin Franklin's. I say this because Elisha Niles, Smith's amanuenses, compares Smith Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

The second part of Pierce's article focuses on George White's slave narrative and its use of the spiritual autobiography tradition. Since I have not read White's narrative, I cannot say much about this section; however, I will point out items that I think are important. The section begins with a definition of the spiritual autobiography. Two items jump out in the discussion of White's narrative. One deals with the reason why White chose to continually attempt to receive his minister's license from the Methodist Church. It took him five attempts to finally acquire it. Pierce argues that he did this, instead of accepting his role as an exhorter, because "White desires the liberty to speak directly from the Bible, because to preach from this sacred text is to speak from a position of authority" (95). As an exhorter, White could not preach from the Bible. He had to base his teachings off of a minister's choice of scripture and words. He did not change denominations, Pierce proposes, because he wanted to preach to blacks and whites alike. If he moved to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he would be limited to preaching to blacks. One of White's main beliefs was that we should be "enslaved to the righteousness of God" (96). As for White's lack of direct of attacks against chattel slavery, Pierce again points to a specific incident in White's life that accounts for this. Instead of focusing on the temporal existence of the earthly world, White focuses on the spiritual afterlife. Part of this focus could be because of the fact that he becomes removed from his mother, in the temporal realm, at a young age like many other slaves were. He sees her later in life, but they were unable to spend much time together. In the eternal afterlife, they will be able to spend eternity together. While Smith's and White's scenes point to the reasons the authors take the approaches that they do, Pierce acknowledges that these specific scenes, along with other instances, serve as ammunition against chattel slavery during the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The final text I looked at comes from The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Written by Geoffery Sirc, "Never Mind the Tagmemics, Where's the Sex Pistols" explores the convergence, or lack thereof, of composition studies and popular culture during the late 60s to late 70s, using Punk as a metaphor. I do not have time to go through this right now, so I will leave you with a video of The Sex Pistol. Online letters at CCC in response to Sirc.