Mid-Semester Memo

One Paragraph Summary

A comparison between two different scenes present in The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. Both of these scenes show characters exhibiting otherworldly grace in the face of calamity. One being Pamela’s representing otherworldly grace, and specifically in the context of being faced with an unjust death. As she believes she is about to die, she prays, and in that prayer she reflects on virtue and grace in the face of evil. At the end of the book, the character Misodorus faces a similar situation when he is set to face trial and potentially die. He and Pyrocles debate with each other over the nature of death, and of dying a virtuous death. The conclusion they reach is both similar to what Pamela espoused in her prayer, but also reflects the writings of medieval christian writer Abba Philemonon, who frequently writes about virtue allowing one to be unconquerable by outside forces.

bibliographic information for two outside scholarly research sources 

Norris, Richard A. God and World in Early Christian Theology. Seabury Press, 1965.

Cook, Christopher C. H. The Philokalia and the Inner Life: On Passions and Prayer. 1st ed., The Lutterworth Press, 2011. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1cgf4m9. Accessed 8 Mar. 2024.

Turner, Myron. “The Heroic Ideal in Sidney’s Revised Arcadia.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 10, no. 1, 1970, pp. 63–82. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/449696. Accessed 8 Mar. 2024.

two or three bullet points indicating your planned close-reading sections from the book 

• Page 803 to 805, Misodorius’s debate with Pyrocles and poem to his friend
• Page 463 to 465, Pamela’s prayer

 one-sentence thesis in enthymeme form

Because both Misodorius and Pamela’s characters, during moments where they reflect on their own mortality, exhibit otherworldly virtue, they both relate to the writings of medieval writer Abba Philemon, whose writings often address virtue as it relates to personal hardship.