Andrew King
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187226
- eISBN:
- 9780191674662
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187226.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Scholarship on Middle English romance has done little to access the textual and bibliographical continuity of this remarkable literary tradition into the 16th century and its impact on Elizabethan ...
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Scholarship on Middle English romance has done little to access the textual and bibliographical continuity of this remarkable literary tradition into the 16th century and its impact on Elizabethan works. To an even greater extent, Spenserian scholarship has failed to investigate the significant and complex debts The Faerie Queene owes to medieval native verse romance and Malory's Le Morte D'arthur. This book accordingly offers a comprehensive study of the impact of Middle English romance on The Faerie Queene. It employs the concept of memory, in which both Middle English romance writers and Spenser show specific interest, in building a sense of the thematic, generic, and cultural complexity of the native romance tradition. The memorial character of Middle English romance resides in its intertextuality and its frequent presentation of narrative events as historical and consequently the basis for a favourable sense of local or even national identity. Spenser's memories of native romance involve a more troubled engagement with that tradition of providential national history as well as an endeavour to see in pre-Reformation romance a prophetic and objective authority for Protestant belief.Less
Scholarship on Middle English romance has done little to access the textual and bibliographical continuity of this remarkable literary tradition into the 16th century and its impact on Elizabethan works. To an even greater extent, Spenserian scholarship has failed to investigate the significant and complex debts The Faerie Queene owes to medieval native verse romance and Malory's Le Morte D'arthur. This book accordingly offers a comprehensive study of the impact of Middle English romance on The Faerie Queene. It employs the concept of memory, in which both Middle English romance writers and Spenser show specific interest, in building a sense of the thematic, generic, and cultural complexity of the native romance tradition. The memorial character of Middle English romance resides in its intertextuality and its frequent presentation of narrative events as historical and consequently the basis for a favourable sense of local or even national identity. Spenser's memories of native romance involve a more troubled engagement with that tradition of providential national history as well as an endeavour to see in pre-Reformation romance a prophetic and objective authority for Protestant belief.
Judith H. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228478
- eISBN:
- 9780823241125
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228478.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The author conceives the intertext as a relation between or among texts that encompasses both Kristevan intertextuality and traditional relationships of influence, imitation, allusion, and citation. ...
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The author conceives the intertext as a relation between or among texts that encompasses both Kristevan intertextuality and traditional relationships of influence, imitation, allusion, and citation. Like the Internet, the intertext is a state, or place, of potential expressed in ways ranging from deliberate emulation to linguistic free play. Relatedly, the intertext is also a convenient fiction that enables examination of individual agency and sociocultural determinism. The author's intertext is allegorical because Spenser's Faerie Queene is pivotal to her study and because allegory, understood as continued or moving metaphor, encapsulates, even as it magnifies, the process of signification. Her title signals the variousness of an intertext extending from Chaucer through Shakespeare to Milton and the breadth of allegory itself. Literary allegory, in her view, is at once a mimetic form and a psychic one—a thinking process that combines mind with matter, emblem with narrative, abstraction with history. The first section of the book focuses on relations between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Spenser's The Faerie Queene, including the role of the narrator, the nature of the textual source, the dynamics of influence, and the bearing of allegorical narrative on lyric vision. The second section centres on agency and cultural influence in a variety of Spenserian and medieval texts. Allegorical form, a recurrent concern throughout, becomes the pressing issue of section three, which treats plays and poems of Shakespeare and Milton and includes two intertextually relevant essays on Spenser.Less
The author conceives the intertext as a relation between or among texts that encompasses both Kristevan intertextuality and traditional relationships of influence, imitation, allusion, and citation. Like the Internet, the intertext is a state, or place, of potential expressed in ways ranging from deliberate emulation to linguistic free play. Relatedly, the intertext is also a convenient fiction that enables examination of individual agency and sociocultural determinism. The author's intertext is allegorical because Spenser's Faerie Queene is pivotal to her study and because allegory, understood as continued or moving metaphor, encapsulates, even as it magnifies, the process of signification. Her title signals the variousness of an intertext extending from Chaucer through Shakespeare to Milton and the breadth of allegory itself. Literary allegory, in her view, is at once a mimetic form and a psychic one—a thinking process that combines mind with matter, emblem with narrative, abstraction with history. The first section of the book focuses on relations between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Spenser's The Faerie Queene, including the role of the narrator, the nature of the textual source, the dynamics of influence, and the bearing of allegorical narrative on lyric vision. The second section centres on agency and cultural influence in a variety of Spenserian and medieval texts. Allegorical form, a recurrent concern throughout, becomes the pressing issue of section three, which treats plays and poems of Shakespeare and Milton and includes two intertextually relevant essays on Spenser.
NICHOLAS CANNY
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198200918
- eISBN:
- 9780191718274
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198200918.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter explores the intellectual progression of Edmund Spenser from 1579, when he first came to prominence as a poet, to 1598 when permission was sought by his printer to have the View ...
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This chapter explores the intellectual progression of Edmund Spenser from 1579, when he first came to prominence as a poet, to 1598 when permission was sought by his printer to have the View published. The early Spenser identified himself as an English social critic after the manner of Geoffrey Chaucer or John Skelton, and it was only Spenser's invocation of classical and continental authorities and models that made it clear that he wished to be considered as an English representative of the Renaissance while remaining within the tradition of pastoral criticism. His involvement with Ireland would seem to have placed him in an ideal location from which to criticize the life and politics of the court, and the insights into his thinking that are provided both in the Faerie Queene, and in Spenser's brief appearance as an interlocutor in Bryskett's Discourse, make it clear that he successfully married the roles of pastoral critic in the English tradition and that of Renaissance reformer in the classical sense.Less
This chapter explores the intellectual progression of Edmund Spenser from 1579, when he first came to prominence as a poet, to 1598 when permission was sought by his printer to have the View published. The early Spenser identified himself as an English social critic after the manner of Geoffrey Chaucer or John Skelton, and it was only Spenser's invocation of classical and continental authorities and models that made it clear that he wished to be considered as an English representative of the Renaissance while remaining within the tradition of pastoral criticism. His involvement with Ireland would seem to have placed him in an ideal location from which to criticize the life and politics of the court, and the insights into his thinking that are provided both in the Faerie Queene, and in Spenser's brief appearance as an interlocutor in Bryskett's Discourse, make it clear that he successfully married the roles of pastoral critic in the English tradition and that of Renaissance reformer in the classical sense.
RAPHAEL LYNE
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198187042
- eISBN:
- 9780191718984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187042.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Edmund Spenser's local debts to Ovid are well-known, but this chapter goes further than its predecessors in seeing The Faerie Queene as structurally indebted to the Metamorphoses. The problems and ...
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Edmund Spenser's local debts to Ovid are well-known, but this chapter goes further than its predecessors in seeing The Faerie Queene as structurally indebted to the Metamorphoses. The problems and opportunities in the theme of change are traced through Spenser's other works to his epic. It is argued that in The Faerie Queene, Ovidian stories are never far away, and they are evident in large-scale imitations, clustered references, unfulfilled gestures, and in surprising non-metamorphoses as well as satisfying metamorphoses. Overall, the Metamorphoses are a constant presence, sometimes enriching the emerging poem, sometimes obstructing it.Less
Edmund Spenser's local debts to Ovid are well-known, but this chapter goes further than its predecessors in seeing The Faerie Queene as structurally indebted to the Metamorphoses. The problems and opportunities in the theme of change are traced through Spenser's other works to his epic. It is argued that in The Faerie Queene, Ovidian stories are never far away, and they are evident in large-scale imitations, clustered references, unfulfilled gestures, and in surprising non-metamorphoses as well as satisfying metamorphoses. Overall, the Metamorphoses are a constant presence, sometimes enriching the emerging poem, sometimes obstructing it.
Robert H. F. Carver
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199217861
- eISBN:
- 9780191712357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217861.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter discusses Apuleian influences in The Faerie Queene. It argues that Spenser used different parts of The Golden Ass in various ways and with varying degrees of success. Meroë and Pamphile ...
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This chapter discusses Apuleian influences in The Faerie Queene. It argues that Spenser used different parts of The Golden Ass in various ways and with varying degrees of success. Meroë and Pamphile contributed to the pool of attributes from which Duessa and Acrasia emerged, and the combination of Homeric, Italian, and Apuleian elements was, by and large, an effective one. The account of Psyche's fall supplied a screen behind which Una could be clothed in the human colours that strict allegory would deny her, while Apuleius' description of her exile and her responses to trials and adversity provided a backdrop against which the virtues both of Una and Guyon could be measured. But it is when Spenser — in Muiopotmos as well as in The Faerie Queene — makes explicit reference to ‘Cupid and Psyche’ that the difficulties really begin.Less
This chapter discusses Apuleian influences in The Faerie Queene. It argues that Spenser used different parts of The Golden Ass in various ways and with varying degrees of success. Meroë and Pamphile contributed to the pool of attributes from which Duessa and Acrasia emerged, and the combination of Homeric, Italian, and Apuleian elements was, by and large, an effective one. The account of Psyche's fall supplied a screen behind which Una could be clothed in the human colours that strict allegory would deny her, while Apuleius' description of her exile and her responses to trials and adversity provided a backdrop against which the virtues both of Una and Guyon could be measured. But it is when Spenser — in Muiopotmos as well as in The Faerie Queene — makes explicit reference to ‘Cupid and Psyche’ that the difficulties really begin.
Andrew Hadfield
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183457
- eISBN:
- 9780191674044
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183457.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter shows that The Faerie Queene is indisputably an allegorical work which contains a vast series of representations of political and historical events. But it demands to be read within a ...
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This chapter shows that The Faerie Queene is indisputably an allegorical work which contains a vast series of representations of political and historical events. But it demands to be read within a cultural context where its status is uncertain and insecure. Spenser's attempt to participate in a political sphere, the writing of A View, would seem to have provided him with a much smaller — albeit, possibly, more influential — audience than the writing of his epic poem dedicated to the queen, so that the latter reached a significantly wider public sphere as a printed text, even though it could be defined as a less straightforwardly public (masculine) statement.Less
This chapter shows that The Faerie Queene is indisputably an allegorical work which contains a vast series of representations of political and historical events. But it demands to be read within a cultural context where its status is uncertain and insecure. Spenser's attempt to participate in a political sphere, the writing of A View, would seem to have provided him with a much smaller — albeit, possibly, more influential — audience than the writing of his epic poem dedicated to the queen, so that the latter reached a significantly wider public sphere as a printed text, even though it could be defined as a less straightforwardly public (masculine) statement.
David Norbrook
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247189
- eISBN:
- 9780191697647
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247189.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
The first part of The Faerie Queene was published in 1590, three years after Philip Sidney's death. Edmund Spenser's heroic poem is the fullest poetic embodiment of the political ideals of Sidney and ...
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The first part of The Faerie Queene was published in 1590, three years after Philip Sidney's death. Edmund Spenser's heroic poem is the fullest poetic embodiment of the political ideals of Sidney and his circle; and it reveals the complexities and contradictions inherent in those ideals. Like Sidney, Spenser argued that poetry could convey political ideas more memorably than abstract philosophy. Spenser's ‘feigned commonwealth’, Faerie Land, is not, however, a precisely imagined political entity like Sidney's Arcadia; it is a cloudier realm, more romanticized and idealized. Spenser's monarchical figures are presented with more reverence than Sidney's Basilius; the poem reveals the influence of the Italian courtly aesthetic. Spenser's Faerie Queen in The Faerie Queene is presented as a mirror or image of Queen Elizabeth who is in turn imaged by other female figures — Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, Medina — all of whom are emanations of the glory of the Virgin Queen.Less
The first part of The Faerie Queene was published in 1590, three years after Philip Sidney's death. Edmund Spenser's heroic poem is the fullest poetic embodiment of the political ideals of Sidney and his circle; and it reveals the complexities and contradictions inherent in those ideals. Like Sidney, Spenser argued that poetry could convey political ideas more memorably than abstract philosophy. Spenser's ‘feigned commonwealth’, Faerie Land, is not, however, a precisely imagined political entity like Sidney's Arcadia; it is a cloudier realm, more romanticized and idealized. Spenser's monarchical figures are presented with more reverence than Sidney's Basilius; the poem reveals the influence of the Italian courtly aesthetic. Spenser's Faerie Queen in The Faerie Queene is presented as a mirror or image of Queen Elizabeth who is in turn imaged by other female figures — Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, Medina — all of whom are emanations of the glory of the Virgin Queen.
Cynthia N. Nazarian
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501705229
- eISBN:
- 9781501708268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705229.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses the use of Petrarchan themes to explore modes of legitimate political resistance by considering the constant collaborative dialogue between Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence ...
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This chapter discusses the use of Petrarchan themes to explore modes of legitimate political resistance by considering the constant collaborative dialogue between Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence Amoretti and his epic-romance poem The Faerie Queene. It argues that Amoretti's Petrarchism is political, whereas The Faerie Queene's politics are Petrarchan: the two works collaboratively stage contests between lyric and epic that test each genre's strategies of resistance to tyranny. It shows that the sonnets articulate contestation and critique through lyric countersovereignty, while the epic-romance overthrows various Petrarchan Beloveds through its narrative teleology. By delegitimizing their Beloveds' sovereignty, both texts open up the possibility of lyric resistance to tyranny. They also share highly specific imagery in their portrayals of subjection and vulnerability.Less
This chapter discusses the use of Petrarchan themes to explore modes of legitimate political resistance by considering the constant collaborative dialogue between Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence Amoretti and his epic-romance poem The Faerie Queene. It argues that Amoretti's Petrarchism is political, whereas The Faerie Queene's politics are Petrarchan: the two works collaboratively stage contests between lyric and epic that test each genre's strategies of resistance to tyranny. It shows that the sonnets articulate contestation and critique through lyric countersovereignty, while the epic-romance overthrows various Petrarchan Beloveds through its narrative teleology. By delegitimizing their Beloveds' sovereignty, both texts open up the possibility of lyric resistance to tyranny. They also share highly specific imagery in their portrayals of subjection and vulnerability.
Andrew Hadfield
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183457
- eISBN:
- 9780191674044
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183457.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter focuses on how the allegory of justice in Book V of The Faerie Queene is centred around Spenser's Irish experience. Artegall's quest for justice begins and ends in Ireland; in between, ...
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This chapter focuses on how the allegory of justice in Book V of The Faerie Queene is centred around Spenser's Irish experience. Artegall's quest for justice begins and ends in Ireland; in between, there are numerous key representations of the Irish at significant points, constantly reminding the reader that discussions of concepts such as justice cannot be considered in an abstract manner, a lesson Irenius had to teach Eudoxus in A View.Less
This chapter focuses on how the allegory of justice in Book V of The Faerie Queene is centred around Spenser's Irish experience. Artegall's quest for justice begins and ends in Ireland; in between, there are numerous key representations of the Irish at significant points, constantly reminding the reader that discussions of concepts such as justice cannot be considered in an abstract manner, a lesson Irenius had to teach Eudoxus in A View.
Kenneth Borris
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198807070
- eISBN:
- 9780191844843
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198807070.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Despite the centrality of Spenser’s faery queen for his Faerie Queene and its Platonically idealized mode of mimesis, most studies do not define her symbolic scope or address her transcendental ...
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Despite the centrality of Spenser’s faery queen for his Faerie Queene and its Platonically idealized mode of mimesis, most studies do not define her symbolic scope or address her transcendental implications, though the poem explicitly evokes them. Elizabeth I was typically represented as God’s image and proxy, and Spenser extrapolates Gloriana from her through Platonic idealization of the beloved (I.pr.4). Just as Gloriana never directly appears in the action and Arthur cannot find her despite his continuing searches, so she is definitively beyond representation. Her role reflects divinity’s paradoxical immanence yet transcendence in Platonic and Judeo-Christian traditions: to some extent mediated, rather as Gloriana’s agents somewhat express her nature; yet still beyond apprehension. Spenser’s engagement with these issues of theology and representation approximates Florentine Platonism’s serio-ludic “poetic theology” involving paradox, wordplay, and riddling fables. By creating this deliberately inconclusive fiction, he audaciously rejected the prevailing requirements of literary narrative so as to adumbrate sublimities beyond the ordinary scope of language.Less
Despite the centrality of Spenser’s faery queen for his Faerie Queene and its Platonically idealized mode of mimesis, most studies do not define her symbolic scope or address her transcendental implications, though the poem explicitly evokes them. Elizabeth I was typically represented as God’s image and proxy, and Spenser extrapolates Gloriana from her through Platonic idealization of the beloved (I.pr.4). Just as Gloriana never directly appears in the action and Arthur cannot find her despite his continuing searches, so she is definitively beyond representation. Her role reflects divinity’s paradoxical immanence yet transcendence in Platonic and Judeo-Christian traditions: to some extent mediated, rather as Gloriana’s agents somewhat express her nature; yet still beyond apprehension. Spenser’s engagement with these issues of theology and representation approximates Florentine Platonism’s serio-ludic “poetic theology” involving paradox, wordplay, and riddling fables. By creating this deliberately inconclusive fiction, he audaciously rejected the prevailing requirements of literary narrative so as to adumbrate sublimities beyond the ordinary scope of language.
Kenneth Borris
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198807070
- eISBN:
- 9780191844843
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198807070.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Spenser bases his heroic poem The Faerie Queene upon a Platonic concept that he often cites: “hero” derives from “Eros,” so that “hero” means “born of love,” which thus inspires “great work” ...
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Spenser bases his heroic poem The Faerie Queene upon a Platonic concept that he often cites: “hero” derives from “Eros,” so that “hero” means “born of love,” which thus inspires “great work” (Cratylus, 398c–d). For Plato in the Phaedrus and Symposium, genuine love involves a desire for beauty that promotes development of personal character through trial and stimulates heroic achievement by disclosing inspirational ideals. Invoking deities of love and his “dearest” Queen Elizabeth in the first proem, Spenser claims to perceive a sublime ideal personified as faery’s queen, that he considers the poem’s fundamental “argument” and inspiration (I.pr.1–4). He thus follows the Platonizing procedures of early modern idealized mimesis, whereby a poet seeks to imitate Ideas more than nature. Seeking to counter the antipoetic arguments of Plato’s Republic and help dispel society’s illusions with higher vision like that dialogue’s responsible philosopher in the fable of the cave, Spenser innovatively transforms the poetics, conceptual content, and scope of heroic poetry.Less
Spenser bases his heroic poem The Faerie Queene upon a Platonic concept that he often cites: “hero” derives from “Eros,” so that “hero” means “born of love,” which thus inspires “great work” (Cratylus, 398c–d). For Plato in the Phaedrus and Symposium, genuine love involves a desire for beauty that promotes development of personal character through trial and stimulates heroic achievement by disclosing inspirational ideals. Invoking deities of love and his “dearest” Queen Elizabeth in the first proem, Spenser claims to perceive a sublime ideal personified as faery’s queen, that he considers the poem’s fundamental “argument” and inspiration (I.pr.1–4). He thus follows the Platonizing procedures of early modern idealized mimesis, whereby a poet seeks to imitate Ideas more than nature. Seeking to counter the antipoetic arguments of Plato’s Republic and help dispel society’s illusions with higher vision like that dialogue’s responsible philosopher in the fable of the cave, Spenser innovatively transforms the poetics, conceptual content, and scope of heroic poetry.
J. B. Lethbridge
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079627
- eISBN:
- 9781781701058
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079627.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introductory chapter discusses the influence Edmund Spenser had on William Shakespeare, showing how Shakespeare read Spenser and addressing the question of the relations between the them. It ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the influence Edmund Spenser had on William Shakespeare, showing how Shakespeare read Spenser and addressing the question of the relations between the them. It explores some distinctions between borrowing and allusion, and also clarifies the definition of the term ‘influence’, furthermore examining the poetry of Spenser and Christopher Marlowe, and identifying the differences between them. The chapter also looks at some of Marlowe's obvious and popular linguistic borrowings, as well as several of Shakespeare's more subtle ones, from Spenser's The Faerie Queene.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the influence Edmund Spenser had on William Shakespeare, showing how Shakespeare read Spenser and addressing the question of the relations between the them. It explores some distinctions between borrowing and allusion, and also clarifies the definition of the term ‘influence’, furthermore examining the poetry of Spenser and Christopher Marlowe, and identifying the differences between them. The chapter also looks at some of Marlowe's obvious and popular linguistic borrowings, as well as several of Shakespeare's more subtle ones, from Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
Andrew Wallace
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199591244
- eISBN:
- 9780191595561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591244.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter studies the relationship between one of the central preoccupations of educators (the need not just to teach but also somehow to enforce the retention of knowledge) and one of pedagogy's ...
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This chapter studies the relationship between one of the central preoccupations of educators (the need not just to teach but also somehow to enforce the retention of knowledge) and one of pedagogy's principal anxieties (the fact not only that students forget lessons they have learned, but also that such forgetting is quotidian and unexceptional, a natural property of the mind). Schoolmasters, translators, and commentators were anxious that the schoolboy's experience of reading Virgil's Aeneid brought him into dangerous proximity with what David Quint calls the poem's investigation of ‘the therapeutic effects of forgetting’. This chapter engages with a broad range of materials, from the Aeneid itself and the translations of Books Two and Four executed by the Earl of Surrey, to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century directives for teaching Virgil's epic. It concludes with a reading of several significant Virgilian moments in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. The chapter argues that there is a sense in which the history of epic in early modern England can be read as a history of forgetting epic, and that the poetry of the 1590s manages to dwell not on the consolidating moment of the schoolboy's encounter with ancient epic, but on the seas of smaller texts those schoolboys encountered under the watchful eye of their masters. Counterintuitively, the project of forgetting epic is a form of remembering mastery, and poetic modes such as pastoral draw a significant amount of their power from the poet's dream (unless it is a nightmare) that a master is either watching him or about to re-enter the schoolroom.Less
This chapter studies the relationship between one of the central preoccupations of educators (the need not just to teach but also somehow to enforce the retention of knowledge) and one of pedagogy's principal anxieties (the fact not only that students forget lessons they have learned, but also that such forgetting is quotidian and unexceptional, a natural property of the mind). Schoolmasters, translators, and commentators were anxious that the schoolboy's experience of reading Virgil's Aeneid brought him into dangerous proximity with what David Quint calls the poem's investigation of ‘the therapeutic effects of forgetting’. This chapter engages with a broad range of materials, from the Aeneid itself and the translations of Books Two and Four executed by the Earl of Surrey, to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century directives for teaching Virgil's epic. It concludes with a reading of several significant Virgilian moments in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. The chapter argues that there is a sense in which the history of epic in early modern England can be read as a history of forgetting epic, and that the poetry of the 1590s manages to dwell not on the consolidating moment of the schoolboy's encounter with ancient epic, but on the seas of smaller texts those schoolboys encountered under the watchful eye of their masters. Counterintuitively, the project of forgetting epic is a form of remembering mastery, and poetic modes such as pastoral draw a significant amount of their power from the poet's dream (unless it is a nightmare) that a master is either watching him or about to re-enter the schoolroom.
Andrew King
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187226
- eISBN:
- 9780191674662
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187226.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter investigates the use of native romance in Book I of The Faerie Queene to understand Spenser's strategy in creating a Protestant romance-epic. It examines two aspects of Spenser's ...
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This chapter investigates the use of native romance in Book I of The Faerie Queene to understand Spenser's strategy in creating a Protestant romance-epic. It examines two aspects of Spenser's ‘reformation’ of native romance: allegory and use of chivalric romance mode. It begins with one instance of Spenser's use of native romance in Book I, the dragon-fight. It then considers the figures of Redcrosse and Una and their intertextual relation to comparable figures from native romance.Less
This chapter investigates the use of native romance in Book I of The Faerie Queene to understand Spenser's strategy in creating a Protestant romance-epic. It examines two aspects of Spenser's ‘reformation’ of native romance: allegory and use of chivalric romance mode. It begins with one instance of Spenser's use of native romance in Book I, the dragon-fight. It then considers the figures of Redcrosse and Una and their intertextual relation to comparable figures from native romance.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
There is no author so prey to double violence against self and past as Torquato Tasso; and there is no author who feels so keenly the tortured energy released by an antiquarianism that seeks vainly ...
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There is no author so prey to double violence against self and past as Torquato Tasso; and there is no author who feels so keenly the tortured energy released by an antiquarianism that seeks vainly to strip away layers of anachronistic misreadings from past texts. The Faerie Queene might seem at first to be written in a quite different spirit. It is a bewildering amalgam of topicality and timelessness, which seems to celebrate the power of the author to blend different periods, different writers, and different idioms into one vast composite, with little sign that such a process is difficult or dangerous. Edmund Spenser's language mingles archaism with contemporary usage, and his imaginary location, Faerie-land, is at once a distant, idealized space, and a parallel version of things going on next door. The poem's allegory ranges from the very recent history of England to an atemporal world of myth.Less
There is no author so prey to double violence against self and past as Torquato Tasso; and there is no author who feels so keenly the tortured energy released by an antiquarianism that seeks vainly to strip away layers of anachronistic misreadings from past texts. The Faerie Queene might seem at first to be written in a quite different spirit. It is a bewildering amalgam of topicality and timelessness, which seems to celebrate the power of the author to blend different periods, different writers, and different idioms into one vast composite, with little sign that such a process is difficult or dangerous. Edmund Spenser's language mingles archaism with contemporary usage, and his imaginary location, Faerie-land, is at once a distant, idealized space, and a parallel version of things going on next door. The poem's allegory ranges from the very recent history of England to an atemporal world of myth.
David Landreth
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199773299
- eISBN:
- 9780199932665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199773299.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
In Book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the debate between the knight Sir Guyon and the demon Mammon over the value of money is expressed in terms of consumption: money proves to be a value that desires to ...
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In Book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the debate between the knight Sir Guyon and the demon Mammon over the value of money is expressed in terms of consumption: money proves to be a value that desires to consume all other values, cruelly disordering not only the processes of bodily sustenance but the mnemonic relation of past to future and even the metaphysical relation of matter to form. But, as Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Spenser's own reconsideration of these problems in Book 5 of The Faerie Queene both demonstrate, attending to an anti-monetary version of consumption fails to account for the utility of money in the world, the ways in which we continue to depend upon money's instrumentality.Less
In Book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the debate between the knight Sir Guyon and the demon Mammon over the value of money is expressed in terms of consumption: money proves to be a value that desires to consume all other values, cruelly disordering not only the processes of bodily sustenance but the mnemonic relation of past to future and even the metaphysical relation of matter to form. But, as Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Spenser's own reconsideration of these problems in Book 5 of The Faerie Queene both demonstrate, attending to an anti-monetary version of consumption fails to account for the utility of money in the world, the ways in which we continue to depend upon money's instrumentality.
Andrew King
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187226
- eISBN:
- 9780191674662
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187226.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter examines Book II of The Faerie Queene where Spenser's incorporation of native romance shifts from the question of salvation to the projected union of history and romance in relation to ...
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This chapter examines Book II of The Faerie Queene where Spenser's incorporation of native romance shifts from the question of salvation to the projected union of history and romance in relation to Britain. The providential scheme for the determination of human lives in Book I is extended into Book II's investigation of British history. This chapter seeks to answer the following questions: How does the Calvinist emphasis on human depravity square with a vision of national redemption, especially in a Book concerned with temperance? How reliable is memory as a guide to one's sense of history as a revelatory of providence? How adaptable are the Arthurian historical materials to a providential historical discourse, particularly in the Tudor era?Less
This chapter examines Book II of The Faerie Queene where Spenser's incorporation of native romance shifts from the question of salvation to the projected union of history and romance in relation to Britain. The providential scheme for the determination of human lives in Book I is extended into Book II's investigation of British history. This chapter seeks to answer the following questions: How does the Calvinist emphasis on human depravity square with a vision of national redemption, especially in a Book concerned with temperance? How reliable is memory as a guide to one's sense of history as a revelatory of providence? How adaptable are the Arthurian historical materials to a providential historical discourse, particularly in the Tudor era?
Ayesha Ramachandran
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226288796
- eISBN:
- 9780226288826
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226288826.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
Expanding its gaze from the scale of the individual self to the communal order of the nation-state, this chapter approaches the challenge of worldmaking through the Renaissance epic. Luis Vaz de ...
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Expanding its gaze from the scale of the individual self to the communal order of the nation-state, this chapter approaches the challenge of worldmaking through the Renaissance epic. Luis Vaz de Camões’s Os Lusíadas and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene epitomize the clash between the imperial and global scales, re-staging the collisions between political and cosmic order that Vergil celebrated in the Aeneid. This chapter considers how such a nationalistic and imperial imagination arises alongside and in contrast to a cosmic, worldmaking vision. It therefore examines the linked literary and intellectual histories of nation, empire, and world, comparing the epics’ treatment of national chronicles against their exposition of cosmic order and universal history. Each poem finally turns to questions of cosmic and metaphysical authority, rather than to imperial apotheosis, revealing the emergence of a global political imaginary distinct from the order of empire in the early modern period.Less
Expanding its gaze from the scale of the individual self to the communal order of the nation-state, this chapter approaches the challenge of worldmaking through the Renaissance epic. Luis Vaz de Camões’s Os Lusíadas and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene epitomize the clash between the imperial and global scales, re-staging the collisions between political and cosmic order that Vergil celebrated in the Aeneid. This chapter considers how such a nationalistic and imperial imagination arises alongside and in contrast to a cosmic, worldmaking vision. It therefore examines the linked literary and intellectual histories of nation, empire, and world, comparing the epics’ treatment of national chronicles against their exposition of cosmic order and universal history. Each poem finally turns to questions of cosmic and metaphysical authority, rather than to imperial apotheosis, revealing the emergence of a global political imaginary distinct from the order of empire in the early modern period.
Jason Lawrence
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780719090882
- eISBN:
- 9781526128348
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090882.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The second chapter focuses on the best-known and most extensive imitation of Tasso’s poem in all of English literature, Spenser’s re-imagining and re-working of Armida’s enchanted garden in cantos 15 ...
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The second chapter focuses on the best-known and most extensive imitation of Tasso’s poem in all of English literature, Spenser’s re-imagining and re-working of Armida’s enchanted garden in cantos 15 and 16 as the Bowre of Blisse in the final canto of Book 2 of The Faerie Queene (1590). Spenser’s almost immediate engagement with Gerusalemme liberata in his own romantic epic has long seen him acknowledged as ‘the arbiter of Tasso’s glory in the first half century of his life in England’. However, despite the voluminous critical work on Spenser’s episode and its sources, the profound indebtedness to Tasso throughout has, surprisingly, still not been fully appreciated and acknowledged. The second chapter of this study therefore offers a detailed re-appraisal of the complex relationship between the two episodes, to try to underline the sustained imitative virtuosity of Spenser’s emulation of his principal Italian source. The chapter also includes a brief consideration of Milton’s indebtedness to Tasso’s episode, and Spenser’s earlier imitation of it, in the poetic evocation of Eden in Book 4 of Paradise Lost.Less
The second chapter focuses on the best-known and most extensive imitation of Tasso’s poem in all of English literature, Spenser’s re-imagining and re-working of Armida’s enchanted garden in cantos 15 and 16 as the Bowre of Blisse in the final canto of Book 2 of The Faerie Queene (1590). Spenser’s almost immediate engagement with Gerusalemme liberata in his own romantic epic has long seen him acknowledged as ‘the arbiter of Tasso’s glory in the first half century of his life in England’. However, despite the voluminous critical work on Spenser’s episode and its sources, the profound indebtedness to Tasso throughout has, surprisingly, still not been fully appreciated and acknowledged. The second chapter of this study therefore offers a detailed re-appraisal of the complex relationship between the two episodes, to try to underline the sustained imitative virtuosity of Spenser’s emulation of his principal Italian source. The chapter also includes a brief consideration of Milton’s indebtedness to Tasso’s episode, and Spenser’s earlier imitation of it, in the poetic evocation of Eden in Book 4 of Paradise Lost.
Christopher Tilmouth
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199212378
- eISBN:
- 9780191707254
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212378.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter explores the presentation of the passions in The Faerie Queene, arguing that Spenser treats these as hostile, morally disruptive forces within the soul, powers which reason must fight ...
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This chapter explores the presentation of the passions in The Faerie Queene, arguing that Spenser treats these as hostile, morally disruptive forces within the soul, powers which reason must fight against in a perpetual psychomachia. It examines the limits of Spenser's debt to Aristotle: Spenser mirrors Aristotle's idea that men are constantly prone to degenerate from a state of akrasia (weakness of will) into one of outright vice (a love of evil), but he does not match Aristotle's faith that characters can develop the other way too, towards moral perfection and consistently virtuous conduct. Afflicted by shame at their own weakness, Spenser's knights struggle to realize virtues such as temperance, often requiring the help of grace. However, important though that grace is, Spenser repeatedly affirms the primacy of reason in steering men's conduct towards goodness. Grace is an assistant power in the struggle for virtue; rational self-determination remains central.Less
This chapter explores the presentation of the passions in The Faerie Queene, arguing that Spenser treats these as hostile, morally disruptive forces within the soul, powers which reason must fight against in a perpetual psychomachia. It examines the limits of Spenser's debt to Aristotle: Spenser mirrors Aristotle's idea that men are constantly prone to degenerate from a state of akrasia (weakness of will) into one of outright vice (a love of evil), but he does not match Aristotle's faith that characters can develop the other way too, towards moral perfection and consistently virtuous conduct. Afflicted by shame at their own weakness, Spenser's knights struggle to realize virtues such as temperance, often requiring the help of grace. However, important though that grace is, Spenser repeatedly affirms the primacy of reason in steering men's conduct towards goodness. Grace is an assistant power in the struggle for virtue; rational self-determination remains central.
