Poems for study » Duns Scotus' Oxford » Imagery and symbolism in Duns Scotus' Oxford
Several images stand out, though it is probably the diction more than the imagery that makes an impact on us:
- the ‘base and brickish skirt’, a deliberately awkward phrase, seems to demean the old city. It ‘sours’ nature, as opposed to Duns Scotus who ‘sways’, a graceful movement
- ‘the rarest-veinèd unraveller’ takes a little unravelling! Philosophers tie themselves up in knots, we say, so they need unravelling. But why ‘rarest-veinèd’? Maybe it is a reference to an intellectual aristocracy: we talk of ‘blue blood’ for a good breeding. Or, more likely, it is a reference to the fineness of human veins. Duns was known as ‘the subtle doctor’, that is, he was able to make very fine distinctions in his arguments, a very rare achievement.
- What images strike you most?
- Are they visual, aural or intellectual?
- Can you relate any of the images in the octave to those of the sestet?
Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-
racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and
town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;
Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping--folk, flocks, and flowers.
Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;
Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.
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