I should add that the problem in question, "daparted Catholic parents,"
seems to be part of Eliot's missing or obscured "objective correlative" for
the anxieties beclouding Shakespeare's Hamlet: see, for some of the
evidence, John E. Curran, Jr., 'Hamlet,' Protestantism and the Mourning of
Contingency (Ashgate, 2006), where the "Foreword" is from an old lecture
where some of the theme was treated by yours truly (e.g., what would it mean
to be without the sacraments of Confession and Extreme Unction, and without
the indulgence of "post-mortem expiation": "Purgatory explained how sins
can be forgiven, without one’s having completed satisfaction for them, by
allowing post-mortem expiation. Murder could be pardoned — Purgatory created
sufficient opportunity for satisfaction. It motivated men to start
purgation in this life, knowing that patience could have its perfect work in
the next. Allowing fulfillment of one’s judgment against one’s sins, it was
an arm of justice. Hamlet calls the Ghost a vision, and swears by St.
Patrick it’s an honest ghost."). But again I'd refer to Dante, e.g.,
Virgil's speaking in Purgatorio VII, 1-39 ("'...Not for things done but
undone 'twas my fate / To lose the vision of the Sun on high, / By thee
desired and known by me too late. / Down there a place is that no torments
try / But only darkness grieves, where the lamtet / Hath not the sound of
wail, but is a sigh. / There dwell I with the babies innocent / Who bitten
by the tooth of Death expired / Before they were from human guilt exempt. /
There dwell I among those never attired / In the three holy virtues; without
sin / All the others [= the cardinal virtues] they both followed and
desired.'" {Binyon trans. [old] The Portable Dante, 9th printing, Viking,
1957, p. 220}
On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:20:13 -0500
"James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I think this can be understood as an ancient problem in a new guise. It
>extends back beyond Gregory the Great on the Emperor Trajan, and forward to
>baptism of the dead in the Mormon faith. In between comes Dante on
>Virgil--i.e., Beatrice's initial promise to speak, in Virgil's behalf, to
>the powers that be: as someone must have done for Riphaeus in the Paradiso.
>
> On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:24:40 -0500
> James Broaddus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> In my belated attempt to acquaint myself with something of sixteenth
>>century
>> English attitudes toward Catholicism, I have run across brief references
>>to
>> those who, having lived in former times, were not exposed to the newly
>> recovered truths and were necessarily deluded by the false. My memory is
>> that the feeling was that some accommodation would be made so that those
>> departed fathers, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers would not suffer
>> for beliefs they had grown up with.
>>
>>
>>
>> Could someone refer me to such references?
>>
>>
>>
>> Jim Broaddus
>>
>> --
>> Retired, Ind. State.Univ.
>> 2487 KY 3245
>> Brodhead, KY 40409
>
> [log in to unmask]
> James Nohrnberg
> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
> Univ. of Virginia
> P.O Box 400121
> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
|