Adventures in English & American Literature: 13 Essays on Huxley, Milton, Emerson, Thoreau and Other English & American Authors

By Corbin Buff

This selection of 13 essays from independent writer and scholar Corbin Buff explores some of the most important work in the American and English literary canon.

Pack your bags, as Buff guides you on a journey into the deepest works of literature, and provides new, thought-provoking insights into timeless themes like:

• True love
• Individuality
• Spirituality
• Death
• And much more...

You'll discover whole new interpretations to your favorite English and American authors, including:

• Huxley
• Milton
• Emerson
• Thoreau
• Shakespeare
• And much more...

So, if you're ready to take a timeless journey into the human experience, and begin the grandest adventure of all...

You're ready for Adventures in English & American Literature.

Order your copy today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silver Buffalo Press
• Release date: Nov 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223516286

Book preview

Corbin Buff

Adventures in English & American Literature

13 Essays on Huxley, Milton, Emerson, Thoreau and Other English & American Authors

Copyright © 2021 by Corbin Buff

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Corbin Buff has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Introduction

Knowledge, Beauty, Power: Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Huxley’s Brave New World

Society Never Advances – Self-Reliance as Social Change in Emerson and Thoreau

Of Clay and Wattles Made: Minimalism, Solitude, and Natural Inspiration in Thoreau and Yeats

Emerson and Thoreau’s Influence Upon Whitman’s Poetics

The Necessities and Gifts of Emersonian Self Trust

Miraculous Materialism: The Metaphysics of George Oppen’s Materials and Of Being Numerous

Corruptio Optimi Pessimum Est : The Corruption of the Best is the Worst

Damned in the Midst of Paradise: Monomania in Milton’s Satan and Melville’s Ahab

The Thin Line Between Love and Hatred

The Nature of Political Power in Shakespeare’s Othello and Henry IV, Part One

Purgatory and Pilgrimage on the Road to One’s Vocation: Heaney’s ‘Station Island’ as a Song of the Soul

The Morbidly Prophetic Melville: Melville’s Representation of Death in Moby Dick

Who Benefits from Despair? The Religion of Tech and Progress in Delilo’s Zero K

Introduction

The following essays represent some of my reflections from the greatest English and American authors. In the following pages you’ll explore death, love, beauty, solitude, politics, spirituality, and everything in between. Join me as we explore some of the world’s greatest authors, and find new insights into the world’s oldest themes. Join me for these exploratory essays, these adventures in English and American literature.

Knowledge, Beauty, Power: Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Huxley’s Brave New World

Many people are aware that Huxley named his dystopian novel Brave New World after the afore-quoted lines in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. What is less discussed is why he may have done so, and what parallels there may be between these two texts. I propose that both texts examine the role books and knowledge play in the achieving of personal power. They also examine, in the tradition of Plato’s allegory of the cave, how worldviews and understandings of truth can be conditioned through selective education and controlled exposure to certain types of media and information. I conclude the essay by touching on the most important and obvious difference between these two texts: that the Tempest ends positively and Brave New World negatively. This is representative of how the truths revealed in these texts (the relationship between knowledge and power, and the potential of conditioning) can be used for good or evil. Prospero, a sort of philosopher king, notes the importance of mercy and virtue, and ultimately surrenders his powers. Huxley’s World State, on the other hand, continues to reign over and condition its subjects.

Huxley makes it very clear in Brave New World that his novel is in a sort of dialogue with the works of Shakespeare. References to Shakespeare in the novel are frequent, and John the Savage can even be read as an allegorical stand in for the anachronistic Shakespearean worldview/consciousness. There are times in the novel where he quotes word for word whole lines from The Tempest:

The Savage speaks, we realize, very largely in quotations from Shakespeare, one of the principal sources of his education. John is not simply a well-read savage, however: Shakespeare’s morality has invaded his consciousness. It is not by accident that the book of plays [in a scene in BNW] opens to Hamlet’s denunciation of his mother. John identifies himself with the young prince, and he sees in Linda’s liaison with Pope a re-enactment of the incestuous union of Gertrude and Claudius. Later in Brave New World in his frenzied attacks upon lechery John identifies himself with Othello and Lear. (Grushow, Brave New World and The Tempest, 42)

Clearly Shakespeare is a favorite author of John the Savage. And is it mere coincidence that the Savage is named John, a book in the bible known for promoting words, logos, and wisdom: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

I bring up words because perhaps the most prominent similarity between The Tempest and Brave New World is that both texts emphasize the role of books and language in the attainment of personal power. Prospero excuses himself frequently to look to his books: I’ll to my book, / For yet ere supper-time must I perform / Much matter appertaining. Indeed, it becomes increasingly clear throughout the Tempest that books and language are the secret source of Prospero’s wizardry. Caliban warns the others:

Remember

First to possess his books; for without them

He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not

One spirit to command. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Just as Prospero’s power is connected with his skill at reading and language, Caliban’s lack of personal power and his savagery seems to stem from his disinterest in embracing these intellectual pursuits. Prospero, who attempted to share some of his skill with Caliban, says to him:

I pitied thee,

Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes

With words that made them known.

Caliban, in turn, has nothing but disdain for these teachings, replying: You taught me language; and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your language! Prospero’s magic may even be pure metaphor, an allegory for the magic of intellectual learning, and how it allows one to achieve power over others:

Over all this spirit world Prospero bears sovereign rule by the power of a commanding intellect. His subjects are weak masters, he says; that is, weak individually, weak in the capacity for combining to make the most of their ability to do certain things that men cannot do. Prospero knows how to make them work in carrying out his far-reaching plans. By your aid he says, weak masters, though ye be, I have wrought the marvels of my art. (Shakespeare’s Comedy of The Tempest)

This association between book learning and power or success brings to mind modern examples like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, who supposedly spend up to 5-6 hours a day reading. These are real life examples of how, just like in the world of The Tempest, reading, language, and power are intricately linked.

It should also be noted that on the island in The Tempest, books seem to be a controlled resource in that no one else but Prospero has them. He is a teacher, attempting to impart some of his knowledge to his daughter and to Caliban, but they are at the mercy of what he chooses to allow them to know/read. This scarcity and control helps secure Prospero’s power. We find literature is similarly controlled in Brave New World, when we learn that reading Shakespeare has been banned. John the Savage’s eyes light up when the Controller of Brave New World’s World State quotes Shakespeare:

The Savage’s face lit up with a sudden pleasure. Have you read it too? he asked. I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England.

Almost nobody. I’m one of the very few. It’s prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them.

But why is it prohibited? asked the Savage. In the