How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
When he awoke he thought he was dreaming. He thought he heard a flute playing breathily and voices singing more breathily still. [. . .] And then he saw, he saw, he saw men and women in the furrows—a pair here and a pair there—making, with ritual seriousness, beast after beast after beast with two backs. Petticoats up and trousers down in the spring sun, in the sown furrows, ripe apples and brown nuts, country copulatives. (4.3.2)
Although Tristram isn't dreaming when he witnesses the rural English folk practicing their favorite new fertility rites in the fields, this passage strongly echoes the dream that Beatrice-Joanna has on the train in Part 2: Chapter 7. What is the significance of their connection?
Quote #8
'It's an affirmation,' said Tristram. 'It's a way of showing that reason is only one instrument for running our lives. A return to magic, that's what it is. It seems very healthy to me.' (4.4.4)
Does the novel itself support Tristram's position, or are the fertility rites being subtly lampooned?
Quote #9
Next came two clowns buffeting and falling at the head of a comic squad in boots, long tunics, but no trousers. [. . .] The tunics and caps of this leering, waving, shouting, staggering bare-legged phalanx had evidently been stolen from the Poppol (where were they now, where were they?) and a card on a stick was held high, lettered neatly COPULATION POLICE. (4.5.2)
Why do the fertility rites and priapic parades seem to gesture back to older and more "traditional" forms of English humor and culture? Have the novel's British citizens simply returned to a simpler and more "wholesome" form of social order?