Jesse Tales Essay

— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

Jesse, John

Tales of the Dead, and Other Poems. London: Murray, 1830. Pp. 126.

Descriptive Essay

Tales of the Dead: and Other Poems, John H. Jesse's second collection of poems, consists of a long narrative poem of ninety-seven pages, "Tales of the Dead," and eight miscellaneous short poems including "To," "The Funeral of Percy Bysshe Shelley," "The Stirrup Cup," "To Mary," "To a German Pipe," "Stanzas," and "Addio Bellissima". While John H. Jesse made his principal fame in historical writing, he failed to draw people's attention to his literary works. Tales of the Dead is essentially one of these unproductive efforts. It was published in 1830, but this publication was the first and the last: the volume was never reprinted. Moreover, we can assume that this collection may have been more or less a total failure, considering that there remain few contemporary responses to the collection. Critics were apparently so uninterested that they did not even mention it negatively.

"Tales of the Dead" is subdivided into the four tales, each of which is told by a different speaker. This work uses a frame structure in which the author (or primary narrator, or perhaps "editor") only introduces how these stories were told, after which the four different narrators talk about their interesting stories. Each story is narrated by the first person, 'I.' This narrative style helps to diminish the distance between the speaker and the reader. The readers feel like they are hearing the story from the speaker face to face.

"Tales of the Dead" begins with the author's introductory narration. While the author is in the midst of appreciating the beautiful sunset in the company of a small party of friends on the lovely banks of the Lago Maggiore in Italy, a young countess proposes that each of the party should tell some interesting tales. This poem, then, is a collection of the four tales which we are to understand were selected by the author/narrator/editor out of the narrated ones.

The first tale comes with a subtitle, "A Vision of the Tomb," and consists of sixteen cantos. Lorenzo and the speaker, 'I', are the best friends from the childhood. However, Lorenzo falls in love with a beautiful maid whom the speaker also loves. The speaker feels strongly jealous about the woman's love for Lorenzo and, at the same time, fears that Lorenzo might leave him for love. After a while, they go to battle. Before leaving, Lorenzo promises the woman to marry her after he comes back. However, at one night, Lorenzo anticipates his own death and asks his friend (and rival) to tell her that he blessed her when he died and to cheer up his fiancé whenever she is in distress. Next day, he dies in battle and the speaker weeps, missing him and recalling by his grave how precious their friendship had been. At this moment, he sees dead Lorenzo standing by his side. He looks fair and bright like an angel. Realizing that Lorenzo has merged into his home of bliss, or heaven, the speaker begins to soften his grief. After coming back from the battle, he visits the woman in order to deliver Lorenzo's last words. After a while, she dies too, and the speaker can't help weeping again at her death.

The title of the second tale is "Bride of Modena." This story is not an account of the speaker's direct experience. In the first canto, the speaker says that he heard this story at his father's hall and that this is a true story which is full of grief. This story is about a beautiful maiden's shocking death which was brought about by her own silly archness. Old Orsini, who lives in Modena, has a lovely daughter, Generva, whom he loved more than anything in the world. However, on her wedding day, she is found to be missing and her distressed father rushes into a distant war and dies. Some years later, a new host's daughter chances to view an oaken chest which is carved with old Orsini's crest in the tower. In it she finds bones and the relics of the dead. These turn out to be Generva's remains. On her wedding, we learn, she had sought this lone, deserted tower to cheat her fiancé out of a moment's bliss. She found an old chest there and hid herself in it, but, at that moment, the spring closed the lid. Generva could not escape and so died. The speaker finishes the tragic story by grieving for her death.

The third story is "The Grave of the Suicide". This tale is about the suicide of a maiden who was abandoned by her lover. In his youth, the speaker fell in love with a beautiful maiden named Gertrude and ruined her chastity. However, he left her, although he does not say the reason why he left her. After a while, he came back to her, but she had gone insane as a result of being abandoned. He tried to save her from her insanity, but it was useless. She committed suicide after all. At the tale's conclusion the speaker regrets his past behavior and prays for her wretched spirit.

The last tale, "The Dream of the Maniac" is different from the previous three tales in that this story shows the speaker's imaginative experience. The speaker tells about how he sat with his lover on Albano's banks at night. She had a premonition of death and tells him this. From this moment, he himself sees some scenes in which she dies and in which he is also in the tomb. He feels extreme horror through this imaginative experience. Luckily, it appears that it was all just a dream. When he is awakened from madness, he finds that nothing has been changed. He realizes that terror is just a hideous dream, a horrible creation of the mind.

This poem shows, in part, the influence of chivalric romance. The author partially adopts some elements of this tradition. According to M. H. Abrams, the central interest of the chivalric romance is courtly love. (35) In courtly love, woman is described as an ethereal beauty and the man as a passionate adorer. And devoted love is suggested as a crucial motive which makes it possible to overcome every worldly ordeal. This main features of this typical description are frequently observed in this poem. Generally, the speakers who give the description of a maiden's beauty a lot of space inthe poems tend to identify woman's beauty with lofty virtue, chastity, purity, etc. The following description from the first tale shows this idealized image of woman's beauty.
          Yet was there one, whose loftier mien
          But seldom in those bowers was seen;
          The scion of a time-worn race,
          Tho' decked with every maiden grace;
          A form whose fairy footsteps fell
          As light as those of the gazelle;
          An eye whose every glance confest
          The free emotions of her breast;
          A face in which were traits of love,
          That seem'd as they were fix'd above;
          And yet, when of each guileless look
          A nearer view the gazer took;
          It seem'd as if a lover's sigh
          Might draw a portion from the sky.
          That face-I can recall it yet,
          So deeply in my mind 'tis set;
          'Twas not that bright unchanging hue
          That dazzles while it charms the view:
          The long, distinct, and glittering light
          That woos us on a summer night:
          Hers was that beauty, more refin'd,
          So soft, so tender, and serene,
          That none forget who once have seen;
          And stern were he who could defy
          The witchery of her pensive eye!   (10-11)
As seen in this long description, the woman's beauty transcends even the beauty of nature and shows divinity like an angel. The speaker expresses just such an admiration of woman's beauty repeatedly in this tale. This ideal characterization of woman's beauty is presented in every tale of this poem.

Along with the description of woman's ideal beauty, the emphasis on the man's valor also comes from the tradition of chivalric romance. In the first tale, Lorenzo who went to battle with the speaker gives an extended speech,
          "Hugo," he said, "to-night we part,
          "I feel a chillness at my heart,
          "Which tells me that thy friendly tear
          "Ere long will fall upon my bier;
          "My doom is fix'd to-morrow's light
          "Will be the summons to a fight,
          "Where thrust for thrust, and blow for blow
          "Will lay you sleeping warriors low;
          "And give to me, amid the brave,
          "I shun it not-a soldier's grave!   (23)
As is evident from the above lines, this poem defends the chivalric ideal which emphasizes manliness. The positive attitude toward the chivalric spirit is also found in the account of old Orsini's death in the second tale. Old Orsini, who fell into a deep despondency after his daughter's disappearance, "rushed into a distant war, and found the glorious death he sought beneath the Moslem's scymetar" (51). As is suggested by the word, "glorious," the speaker values the death in the battle highly. This resolute valor which is not afraid of death in battle corresponds to the aristocratic sense of responsibility and duty to the state. The defense of chivalric courage found in this poem reflects Jesse's own social orientation. Jesse, who is from the aristocracy, reveals a desire to preserve the dominant values of the aristocracy which has been the ruling class of the English hierarchical social order by defending traditional chivalric values.

In spite of the interesting contents of the tales, "Tales of the Dead" is surely not an accomplished work aesthetically. The most fatal flaw of this poem is found in the author's ambiguous attitude toward his material. It is never entirely clear what exactly the author intends to deliver. All four tales introduce strange experiences with a grotesque and mysterious atmosphere. In the first tale, the speaker's best friend anticipates his death intuitively and his ghost appears to the speaker by his grave. The second tale deals with a beautiful maiden's mysterious death on her wedding. The third tale speaks about insanity and the suicide of a maiden who is abandoned by her lover. The last one describes the speaker's horrible imaginary experience. In this way, all of these four stories deal with the supernatural experience and abnormal mental states.

These tales adopt the Gothic style in order to raise tensions about these common subject matters. According to Abrams, the Gothic romance writers set their stories in the medieval period or in a Catholic country, especially Italy or Spain. And the typical story makes bountiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other sensational and supernatural occurrences (111). Ernest A. Baker also points out that Gothic romance writers "dabbled in the supernatural, either playing upon or playing with feelings of superstition; and, later on, those who had become acquainted with German folk-lore and its ghosts and elves and goblins found their account in satiating the greediest appetites for crime, diabolism, and nameless horrors."(176) "Tales of the Dead" is faithful to the Gothic tradition in many respects. First, the setting of these tales is not England, but Italy. The author hears these tales at the Lago Maggiore in Italy, and the other tales also reveal specific Italian local names such as Ferrara, Modena, Arno, and Albano. In addition, as seen in the subject matters of the four tales, this poem deals with mysterious disappearances and deaths, supernatural experiences such as the appearance of the dead friend's ghost, and the experience of abnormal mental states such as madness.

However, even with all these Gothioc trappings, this poem fails to achieve the Gothic effect. The principal aim of Gothic romance is to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery and a variety of horrors, according to Abrams (111). Gothic romance brings the repressed human sub-conscious to the surface and evokes catharsis. Every element of a Gothic romance serves to draw out the hidden fear and horror to extreme levels. However, in this poem, Gothic elements do not contribute to drawing out the extreme fear and horror. This explains the reason why the theme of this poem is not expressed clearly. While this poem deals with Gothic subject matters, the author lays stress on describing the sentimental emotions which are caused by the loss of loving people in the first three tales. By stressing this excessive sentimentalism, he fails to evoke horrible feelings. He appears to devote all his energies instead to his attempts to excite piteous tears.

In addition, another factor which makes this poem ambiguous is found in the last tale. This tale clearly shows the author's inconsistency. While he focuses on sentimental description from the first to the third tale, in the fourth tale he concentrates on describing the feeling of terror which the peculiar mental experience of death arouses. This shows a different approach to the subject matter, compared to the previous three tales. In the respect that this tale does not attempt to touch the piteous feeling, but concentrates instead on the experience of terror and fear, it appears to be faithful to the Gothic style. However, unexpectedly, Jesse takes a didactic attitude at the last moment. He has his speaker say,
          My madness ceas'd—its curse was at an end—
          Yet it had been so palpable, so fraught
          With living terrors, that 'twas long before
           I learnt to view it as a hideous dream,
          A horrible creation of the mind!   (97)
In this way, he gives a rational comment on his mental madness by mentioning that the terror is just an imaginary dream which has resulted from the wickedness of the mind. His didactic tone prohibits the free gush of hidden emotions.

The excessive sentimentalism, didactic attitude, and inconsistency among the tales are the fatal factors which break the organic structure of this poem and interrupt the effective development of the Gothic theme. It is certain that this poem is an aesthetic failure. However, Jesse had an outstanding historical imagination and this made him a great historical writer even though he did not have enough talent to be a great poet.

Sources

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Hartcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Baker. Ernest A. The History of the English Novel. New York: Barnes & Noble. Inc., 1929.
Jesse, John Heneage. Tales of the Dead: and Other Poems. London:Murray, 1830.