Religion

1. Religion Tess and Rapture

2. Religious imagery - Rapture • Can you think of any examples?

3. One of the most striking features of Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture is the sheer amount of religious language it contains, which is perhaps not surprising when we recall that Duffy was brought up and educated as a Catholic: • "shy of a prayer" in 'River' (5) • "like something from heaven on earth, from paradise" in 'Swing' (8) • "baptised my head" in 'Rain' (9) • "my steps to the river are text to a prayer' (10) • "the prayer of rain" in 'Rapture' (16) • "The evening sky / worships the ground" in 'Love' (27) • "like a sacrament" in 'Finding the Words' (31) • "as I drowned in belief" and "the dark church of the wood" in 'Write' (43) • "grace" and "souls" in 'Midsummer Night' (47) • "a church" in 'Unloving' (61) • "without spell or prayer" and "this Christmas dawn" in 'Over' (62)

4. Choose one religious image to explore • What does the image reveal about love/ relationship/ speaker’s feelings?

5. How does Duffy use religious imagery? • Time and time again, Duffy turns to religious language (and to myth) to supply the words and significance she seeks in the relationship described in Rapture. As with Samuel Beckett, Duffy believes that "all poetry is prayer". Or, as she puts it elsewhere: "Poetry and prayer are very similar. I write quite a lot of sonnets and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite."

6. So what does this mean in practice? • The hermeneutic key to this particular set of references can be found in 'Over', the last poem in the collection, in which the abandoned lover asks, "What do I have / to help me, without spell or prayer, / endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous, / the death of love?“ • What do you think is the answer? • What is there to help her?

7. Some ideas to summarise the usage of religious imagery • Duffy replaces organised religion /Catholicism with worship of her lover – she idolises a false God? Jackie Kay? • Duffy appropriates religion for her own purpose to describe the intensity of her relationship – she is not necessarily evoking God but wishes to find a term of reference to describe her exaltation and feelings of rebirth? • This could be considered empowering and blasphemous– especially given the rejection of same-sex relationships by the Church

8. Readers across time – contemporary reader in 2005 Civil Parnership Act 2005 ‘The Act provides registered civil partners parity of treatment with opposite-sex couples that enter into a civil marriage, in a wide range of legal matters ‘ However, views of the Catholic church in 2005: ‘What the government needs to do in terms of public policy is support and promote marriage rather than undermine it. Civil partnership is not based on natural complementarity of male and female and the natural purpose of sexual union cannot be achieved by same sex partnerships, nor can a same sex couple co-operate with God to create new life’ 1999 – Duffy reportedly misses out on becoming poet laureate due to Tony Blair’s anxieties about appointing a lesbian in this role 2009 – Duffy is first female poet laureate

9. Readers across time - 2014 Catholic church on same sex couples in May 2014: • Last July, when asked about homosexual priests, the Pope said: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” • His comments did not fundamentally change the policy of the Catholic Church, which holds that while homosexual orientation is not in itself sinful, homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered”

10. Tess & religion • Hardy presents ‘the bankruptcy of contemporary religious ethics’ • Hardy presents a bleak view of human existence as one of injustice and tribulation with not caring deity to mete out justice or provide relief from toil and degradation. • Which references to the Church / religion / spirituality can you recall?

11. Tess as pagan goddess and Greek goddess He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names half teasingly, which she did not like because she could not understand them."Call me Tess," she would say askance; and he did. Artemis was the Hellenic goddess of hunting, moon and chastity Demeter is the goddess of the earth and of fertility – this makes sense, because Tess has already repeatedly been associated with fertility rituals Angel sees Tess as a mythic, idealized woman, rather than as a unique individual, and his failure to recognize that she has a history drives them apart.

12. Tess as Eve Alec as serpent & later the devil p.445 But Tess also as the serpent p.217 ‘coiled-up cable of hair’ Angel as Adam p.167 (ch 20) ‘divine being’ p.258

13. Subjects of Hardy’s satire and attack on the simplistic self-righteous judgments of the sign-painter • Travelling preacher – sign painter p.101 T: ‘suppose your sin was not of your own seeking’ TP: I cannot split hairs on that burning query’

14. God’s allotment – damnation and innocent children • Sorrow’s baptism p.122 T: ‘Will you give him a Christian burial?’ V: "Ah — that's another matter.“ ‘Maiden No More’

15. Angel - hypocrisy Angel’s agnosticism – he has turned away from following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a minister but when Tess confesses… ‘forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person ; now you are another’ p.292 ‘The Woman Pays’

16. Alec – ‘The Convert’ • Alec’s false conversion • P.294 the greater the sinner the greater the saint’

17. Paganism • Stonehenge – pagan altar Tess as sacrificial victim – dies for her sins Perpetrator is ‘the President of the Immortals’ who had ended his ‘sport’ with Tess. Hardy perceives Christian God as cruel and unfeeling as the God of Greek myth

18. Key religious contextual points for Tess • Darwin • Religious doctrine ‘civilisation’ oppose ‘nature’ • Instability of the Bible – no longer authoritative/ no literal meaning • Crisis of faith – diminishing control of the church on Victorian society – number of agnostics and atheists at the turn of the century • In Tess, Angel's father is an example of the evangelical Church of England. Hardy appears to admire his sincerity and courage. It upheld the importance of preaching, the Bible, individual conversion or a personal experience of God, and was often quite simple in its worship • Angel's two brothers are good examples of high churchmen. Hardy clearly does not have much sympathy with them, seeing them as having lost touch with personal relationships and human values. They talk a good deal about liturgy and theology. • The religious sign-painter Tess meets would probably have been a Methodist. And when Alec is ‘converted', it was probably within a Methodist context