AUTHORS AND REBELLION

JOHN DONNE

During his life, John Donne has proven several times to be a rebel and revolutionary: he began to write since he was 12 years old sonnets of love and satire, which were successful among his friends. He secretly married in 1601 to Ann More, who was only 17 years old. During the years when he and Ann More gave birth to their 12 children (of which 5 died as babies) Donne wrote the Divine Poems (1607) and two anti-Catholic pamphlets in which he publicly criticized the Catholic religion. This led King James I to take an important role in the Anglican Church. Donne’s imagery is impressive for its huge variety and also for his rejection of conventional ornamental. He concerned a lot about physical body and its mystical potential, talking also about women’s appearance, emphasizing woman’s inconstancy and describing many scandalous characters, from the innocent girl to the woman that is aware of sexual pleasure.

JOHN MILTON

John Milton has been frequently associated with rebellion, both by moderns and by his contemporaries. Objectively speaking, he may very well be a rebel; however, looking to his own works complicates the issue. In fact, Milton makes very clear in his writing, especially in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, that he abhors rebellion mainly because it is unlawful, but in his masterpiece “Paradise Lost” we have the character that probably best incarnates Rebels, Satan. Satan’s life is a constant rebellion against God: in the first place, Satan gathered angels from all the orders and attacked heaven and God, unfortunately for him he was defeated and cast into Hell, along with all the angels that joined him in the rebellion. He then attacked God’s creation, Man, he tempted Adam and Eve and made them eat the forbidden fruit, just to rebel against God. Moreover, after being sent to Hell and banned from Heaven, Satan doesn’t surrender and starts to organize another rebellion to take over Heaven. Also if Milton didn't mean to, the image of Satan that he described in "Paradise Lost" became iconic, as Satan was represented with the characteristics of a classic hero more than those of a villain.

WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake is considered one of the most rebellious authors of English literature: he was known for being a strange person, who considered himself as a prophet claiming to see angels. He had hallucinations several times, but he thought that he was able to see at grade of reality that no one else was able to perceive. During his life, he was considered as an anti conformist artist who was also devoted to mysticism. He introduced a new idea of imagination in occidental culture that consisted in an imagination went beyond the five empirical senses. His rebel character is also connectable to the Romanticism: he thought that church and nation were things that made humans stay closer to perdition than redemption. He was convinced that the only way to achieve purity was to let the spirit free to learn and to imagine, without any kind of moral limit. Critics also says that his philosophy is actually closer to Oriental philosophy than Occidental philosophy.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The “Rebels and Rebellions” topic has to do with the figure of Wordsworth as he was one of the main exponents of the first stream of Romanticism, and Romanticism was really all about going against the Industrial Revolution and what it was causing to the world, substaining the excellence of Nature rather than the Industrialisation. He also wrote the “Manifesto of English Romanticism”, in which he emphasised the authenticity of rustic life, the use of simple language and the importance of emotions and imagination. Moreover, also Wordworth's private life has been characterized by rebellion : though his political views became more lenient and conservative as he grew older, William Wordsworth was still seen as a rebel by the moral standards at the time. He had an illegitimate child and he was living with two women, one of them his sister; these things caused speculations and made people talk.