Tuesday, April 5, 2011
For Glory, God, and Gold, And the Virginia Company!
As soon as I turned to the page, I couldn't get this out of my head. Michael Drayton's Ode to the Virginian Voyage is a classic advertisement of the expedition of the Virginia Company. Tales and promises of heroic deeds, gold, pearls, adventure, a true paradise!
In this ode, the form is pretty simple. Each stanza has six lines - 1 rhymes with 5, 2 with 6, and 3 and 4 are a set. However, there is one stanza that doesn't exactly fit, and I'm here to ruminate on why:
"And cheerfully at sea,
Success you still entice,
To get the pearl and gold,
And ours to hold,
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise,"
Line 5 here violates the same pattern as the other stanzas. There are several reasons I think why this doesn't exactly fit the same format as all the other stanzas. My first impulse is to suggest that Virginia does not fit the form in order to place special emphasis on it - after all, it is Earth's only paradise. A second less plausible reasoning would be to suggest that Drayton simply lost focus. But perhaps I'm missing something? Something "lost in translation," that is, in the pronunciation of the word. This is where the "Pocahontas" clip above comes in: "On the beaches of Virginny, There's diamonds like debris." Was Virginia pronounced differently before, and therefore rhyme with "sea?" Perhaps it was called "Virginia" as we say now, but "Virginny" was the name bestowed on it by enthusiasts?
What do you think?
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I'm OBSESSED with "Pocohantas", and became even more so in the 8th grade (weird I know) when we actually learned about the real history behind it all. In all honesty, I feel as though the song writers probably just changed it to "Virginny" to go with the other words better. I'm pretty sure Disney isn't super concerned about their historical accuracy, so it seems like that could be the case. But after dealing with the whole punctuation changes thing in Donne's work, like you stated in the Rumination, I wouldn't be shocked if the name was in fact changed either.
ReplyDeleteI like where you are going with this and I think it's a valid question...but I agree with Kate. Disney probably just thought it was cute to say Virginny. However, I'd like to think Disney does some research before producing its movies so you never know! Nice job finding that clip by the way! Love Pocohantas!
ReplyDeleteHmm, I'd like the comments to keep the conversation moving forward. What tools could you use to answer questions about historical pronunciation?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the word Virginia needing emphasis. If you take into account the punctuation of the stanza also, the commas slow you down right before the word Virginia.
ReplyDeleteVirginia was named after Queen Elizabeth, the virgin queen, hence Virginia. This being said, I think it is also interesting, how Virginia can be a girl's name. Giving it its own line adds special emphasis, as if talking adoringly to someone.
Great choice of video. I love seeing some embedded media on these ruminations. It gets my creative juices flowing a bit more especially at this point in the semester.
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to believe that Drayton made sea/Virginia an imperfect rhyme to emphasise Virginia as such a different land. If it's really such a fantastic, out-of-this-world place, it makes sense that the rhyme with which it is associated should be just as different and outside the normal bounds of the standard poetic form by which he abides in the rest of the poem.
Something else interesting about this stanza. If you just read the last word in each lined you read: sea, entice, gold, hold, Virginia, paradise. As I read this, I thought it was interesting how these words sort of sum up the story of the voyage to Virginia. Across the sea, lead forward with hope, to find gold, and make it theirs, in Virginia, which they deemed a paradise. This is sort of a game I find I play with myself when reading poems.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting the video with your rumination. It just makes me want to go home and get out the DVD!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say that I find Joanna's suggestion of the deliberate use of an imperfect rhyme to be intriguing.
I also agree that the wording of Virginny was just changed by the song writers.
Yeah I don't think we should read to much into Disney changing around the word Virginia to Virginny. I thought along the same lines about the deviation in form being on purpose. It is very clever way to draw attention to what he wants the readers focus on, your mind latches onto it before you even really understand what is drawing you. Great rumination.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the comments! I don't really want to read into Disney's changing of the word, but rather what it did was spark an idea, a possibility that people once did call Virginia "Virginny" in an endearing way. Perhaps it was some slang of the lower class, and this poem was geared toward the lower class (so the form would make sense) in order to entice more of the lower class to go on the perilous journey to the new land. This way, if the new land should be just really crappy, well, we only lost a few low class people...
ReplyDeleteHmm...to be honest, I'm not really sure, but I'd be interested to find out what the answer is. Did YOU ever find out? It's fascinating, what one can discover when they dig a little deeper into what they're reading.
ReplyDelete