English Assessment Term 4 Year 9 Flashcards
Memorise (26 cards)
Traditionally, individuals relied upon the certainties of Medieval Providentialism
to determine their fate.
The emergence of Humanist ideals, however, challenged this established world view
and instead encouraged individuals to exercise their own free will
William Shakespeare’s tragic play Julius Caesar explores the shifting ideological struggle arising
from the transition from Medieval to Renaissance values, through a dramatisation of the turbulent Roman governmental structure, to advocate for a mediation between extreme agency and the reliance on traditional authority structures.
Conceived as a response to the sociopolitical tensions of the late Elizabethan era
and the anxieties engendered by the imminent death of a monarch.
Shakespeare dramatises the fall of the Roman Republic as an allegory for
the tyranny of egregious political change and revolution.
Cassius’ resentment toward Caesar’s tyranny encapsulated in the simile
describing him “like a colossus.”
Coupled with the juxtaposition of the members of the Senate who are reduced to
“petty men” left to “walk under his legs and peep about.”
This positions Cassius as a Machiavellian archetype
advocating the need to temper authority centralised on a single individual.
Shakespeare exposes Cassius’ unscrupulous nature through a representation of
his propensity for artifice.
Cassius’ rhetorical questions asking “why his name should be sounded more than yours” as he
implores Brutus to consider the metaphorical “weight” of his name, asserting “it is as heavy.”
This allows Shakespeare to act as a mouthpiece for
orthodox monarchs who saw individualism as a corrosive element in the Elizabethan era.
These ambitions coalesce in Cassius’ capacity for self-serving machinations and
his willingness to shape political narratives to align with personal motivation.
Affirming himself as the prototypical Renaissance man, Cassius’ allusion to the Divine Right of Kings
suggesting “men at some time are masters of their own fate,” refutes the traditional belief in providentialism.
Cassius advocates for personal agency in the face of tyranny
mimetic of Renaissance Humanist ideals.
In a new world order defined by self-determination, individuals are empowered to enact
their own subjective justice.
As a direct result of the uncertainty arising from the epistemological shift from Medieval to Renaissance values
the syntactical inversion Brutus’ poignant metaphorical admission he is “with himself at war,” gives voice to the disorientating landscape of freewill.
This foreshadows Brutus’ inability to see beyond his personal ideological motivation and subjective views
of justice untempered by the stability of the monarchy.
In defiance of his loyalty to Caesar, Brutus begins to doubt Caesar’s rule as
non-tyrannical.
Revealing his speculation as mere conjecture, the biblical allusion to the Edenic fall, as Brutus asserts to himself
to “think him as a serpent’s egg.”
This positions Caesar as vulnerable to the temptation of absolute power, preemptively envisioning Caesar as tyrannical once
he usurps the throne.
Allowing Shakespeare to warn against
individualism that interferes with divine providence.
Brutus’ interference in the stabilising force of the monarchy catalyses a period of
existential discord.
Brutus’ soliloquy revealing his inability to rest, denoted through the extended metaphor of sleep
describing how “since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, I have not slept.”
Acknowledges his feelings of
guilt and self reproach for his part in plotting the death of his friend
