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.
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/9780198187226.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Spenser's reception of the rich and complex imaginative, historical, and political traditions involved in Middle English romance is an aspect of The Faerie Queene which has been grossly neglected. ...
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Spenser's reception of the rich and complex imaginative, historical, and political traditions involved in Middle English romance is an aspect of The Faerie Queene which has been grossly neglected. Many areas and topics relating to Spenser's interaction with Middle English romance remain untouched, such as his completion in Book IV of Chaucer's Squire's Tale. This book has dealt only with Books I, II, and V because they arguably present a coherent narrative of response to native romance which does not necessitate detailed consideration of the convergent influences of Ariosto and Tasso; opening the door to Italianate romance, necessary in consideration of other books, would have resulted in a much larger, and possibly more diffuse study. The general neglect of interest in Spenser's use of native romance hopefully justifies a focused and single-minded book such as this.Less
Spenser's reception of the rich and complex imaginative, historical, and political traditions involved in Middle English romance is an aspect of The Faerie Queene which has been grossly neglected. Many areas and topics relating to Spenser's interaction with Middle English romance remain untouched, such as his completion in Book IV of Chaucer's Squire's Tale. This book has dealt only with Books I, II, and V because they arguably present a coherent narrative of response to native romance which does not necessitate detailed consideration of the convergent influences of Ariosto and Tasso; opening the door to Italianate romance, necessary in consideration of other books, would have resulted in a much larger, and possibly more diffuse study. The general neglect of interest in Spenser's use of native romance hopefully justifies a focused and single-minded book such as this.
Bart van Es
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199249701
- eISBN:
- 9780191719332
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249701.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses that the book tried to place Edmund Spenser in the context of different and coexisting conceptions of the past, particularly those influenced by religious, nationalistic, and ...
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This chapter discusses that the book tried to place Edmund Spenser in the context of different and coexisting conceptions of the past, particularly those influenced by religious, nationalistic, and scholarly perspectives on history. It investigates Early Modern England's absorption, use, and critical awareness of diverse modes of historical narrative, and argues for the significance of these modes in determining the writer's or reader's outlook on distant events. It illustrates the ways in which the poet engaged with the languages of history surrounding him. It concludes that the poet has a profound, playful, and above all, multiform sense of the past for he was deeply knowledgeable about the historical writing of his day—using it extensively across the full range of his literary production.Less
This chapter discusses that the book tried to place Edmund Spenser in the context of different and coexisting conceptions of the past, particularly those influenced by religious, nationalistic, and scholarly perspectives on history. It investigates Early Modern England's absorption, use, and critical awareness of diverse modes of historical narrative, and argues for the significance of these modes in determining the writer's or reader's outlook on distant events. It illustrates the ways in which the poet engaged with the languages of history surrounding him. It concludes that the poet has a profound, playful, and above all, multiform sense of the past for he was deeply knowledgeable about the historical writing of his day—using it extensively across the full range of his literary production.
Joseph Campana
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823239108
- eISBN:
- 9780823239146
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823239108.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The Pain of Reformation examines a constellation of masculinity, vulnerability, and ethics in the tradition of heroic poetry in Renaissance England. While many understand representations of ...
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The Pain of Reformation examines a constellation of masculinity, vulnerability, and ethics in the tradition of heroic poetry in Renaissance England. While many understand representations of masculinity to be direct reflections of cultural definitions of manliness or the triumphant expression of nationalist and proto-imperial ideologies, for some the discourses of masculinity and virtue provided opportunities to reflect on the ethics of responding to bodily and cultural vulnerability in the wake of the Reformation. This book argues that the most illuminating meditation on vulnerability, masculinity, and ethics in the wake of the Reformation came from Spenser, a poet often associated with the brutalities of English rule in Ireland. The underside, or shadow, of violence in both the fantasies and the realities of Spenser's England was a corresponding contemplation of the nature of the precarious lives of subjects in post-Reformation England. Spenser's 1590 Faerie Queene opens with a gesture of disarmament consonant with early modern allegories of peace in which Venus, or Love, disarms Mars, or War. The poem explores the possibility that vulnerability was a solution to, not merely an unfortunate consequence of, real and imagined forms of violence. From this meditation on what it means to be vulnerable to harm emerges a capacious exploration of an ethics emerging from a series of necessary vulnerabilities to affect, bodily sensation, and sympathy for others.Less
The Pain of Reformation examines a constellation of masculinity, vulnerability, and ethics in the tradition of heroic poetry in Renaissance England. While many understand representations of masculinity to be direct reflections of cultural definitions of manliness or the triumphant expression of nationalist and proto-imperial ideologies, for some the discourses of masculinity and virtue provided opportunities to reflect on the ethics of responding to bodily and cultural vulnerability in the wake of the Reformation. This book argues that the most illuminating meditation on vulnerability, masculinity, and ethics in the wake of the Reformation came from Spenser, a poet often associated with the brutalities of English rule in Ireland. The underside, or shadow, of violence in both the fantasies and the realities of Spenser's England was a corresponding contemplation of the nature of the precarious lives of subjects in post-Reformation England. Spenser's 1590 Faerie Queene opens with a gesture of disarmament consonant with early modern allegories of peace in which Venus, or Love, disarms Mars, or War. The poem explores the possibility that vulnerability was a solution to, not merely an unfortunate consequence of, real and imagined forms of violence. From this meditation on what it means to be vulnerable to harm emerges a capacious exploration of an ethics emerging from a series of necessary vulnerabilities to affect, bodily sensation, and sympathy for others.
Rachel E. Hile
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719088087
- eISBN:
- 9781526121073
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088087.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book examines the satirical poetry of Edmund Spenser and argues for his importance as a model and influence for younger poets writing satires in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth ...
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This book examines the satirical poetry of Edmund Spenser and argues for his importance as a model and influence for younger poets writing satires in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book focuses on reading satirical texts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in relation to one another, with specific attention to the role that Edmund Spenser plays in that literary subsystem. The book connects key Spenserian texts in The Shepheardes Calender and the Complaints volume with poems by a range of authors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including Joseph Hall, Thomas Nashe, Tailboys Dymoke, Thomas Middleton, and George Wither to advance the thesis that Spenser was seen by his contemporaries as highly relevant to satire in Elizabethan England. For scholars of satire, the book offers a fuller discussion and theorization of the type of satire that Spenser wrote, “indirect satire,” than has been provided elsewhere. A theory of indirect satire benefits not just Spenser studies, but satire studies as well. For scholars of English Renaissance satire in particular, who have tended to focus on the formal verse satires of the 1590s to the exclusion of attention to more indirect forms such as Spenser’s, this book is a corrective, an invitation to recognize the importance of a style of satire that has received little attention.Less
This book examines the satirical poetry of Edmund Spenser and argues for his importance as a model and influence for younger poets writing satires in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book focuses on reading satirical texts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in relation to one another, with specific attention to the role that Edmund Spenser plays in that literary subsystem. The book connects key Spenserian texts in The Shepheardes Calender and the Complaints volume with poems by a range of authors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including Joseph Hall, Thomas Nashe, Tailboys Dymoke, Thomas Middleton, and George Wither to advance the thesis that Spenser was seen by his contemporaries as highly relevant to satire in Elizabethan England. For scholars of satire, the book offers a fuller discussion and theorization of the type of satire that Spenser wrote, “indirect satire,” than has been provided elsewhere. A theory of indirect satire benefits not just Spenser studies, but satire studies as well. For scholars of English Renaissance satire in particular, who have tended to focus on the formal verse satires of the 1590s to the exclusion of attention to more indirect forms such as Spenser’s, this book is a corrective, an invitation to recognize the importance of a style of satire that has received little attention.
Eric Klingelhofer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082467
- eISBN:
- 9781781702505
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082467.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book examines life in the leading province of Elizabeth I's nascent empire. It shows how an Ireland of colonising English farmers and displaced Irish ‘savages’ were ruled by an imported ...
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This book examines life in the leading province of Elizabeth I's nascent empire. It shows how an Ireland of colonising English farmers and displaced Irish ‘savages’ were ruled by an imported Protestant elite from their fortified manors and medieval castles. The book displays how a generation of English ‘adventurers’ including such influential intellectual and political figures as Spenser and Ralegh, tried to create a new kind of England, one that gave full opportunity to their Renaissance tastes and ambitions. Based on decades of research, it details how archaeology had revealed the traces of a short-lived, but significant, culture that has, until now, been eclipsed in ideological conflicts between Tudor queens, Hapsburg hegemony and native Irish traditions.Less
This book examines life in the leading province of Elizabeth I's nascent empire. It shows how an Ireland of colonising English farmers and displaced Irish ‘savages’ were ruled by an imported Protestant elite from their fortified manors and medieval castles. The book displays how a generation of English ‘adventurers’ including such influential intellectual and political figures as Spenser and Ralegh, tried to create a new kind of England, one that gave full opportunity to their Renaissance tastes and ambitions. Based on decades of research, it details how archaeology had revealed the traces of a short-lived, but significant, culture that has, until now, been eclipsed in ideological conflicts between Tudor queens, Hapsburg hegemony and native Irish traditions.
Syrithe Pugh
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more ...
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This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more political, than traditional readings have implied. It explains that these two poets share Petrarch's condemnation of desire but do not display their contemptus mundi. It also discusses Spenser's recognition of the Petrarch's authority as a model for creating a sense of nationhood in thrall to a monarch and his use of this model to create a counter-national poetry whose authority is independent of political power.Less
This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more political, than traditional readings have implied. It explains that these two poets share Petrarch's condemnation of desire but do not display their contemptus mundi. It also discusses Spenser's recognition of the Petrarch's authority as a model for creating a sense of nationhood in thrall to a monarch and his use of this model to create a counter-national poetry whose authority is independent of political power.
Jonathan Bate
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129943
- eISBN:
- 9780191671883
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129943.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Charles Brown asserts that Keats's genius was initiated by The Faerie Queene wherein this earliest attempt which was included in his collection published in 1817 was seen as an ‘Imitation of ...
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Charles Brown asserts that Keats's genius was initiated by The Faerie Queene wherein this earliest attempt which was included in his collection published in 1817 was seen as an ‘Imitation of Spenser’. Richard Woodhouse believed that even in Keats's first poem, the Shakespearean influence was already made visible. However, some of the indications such as the use of the word ‘teen’ was viewed by many simply as an example of Elizabethan diction and was not brought about by Shakespearean influence. As such, Keats was found to be under not the traditions of Shakespeare but rather to that of Spenser or Spenser who is mediated by Leigh Hunt. This chapter explores how the young Keats expresses his debt and influence not only from Shakespeare but from other prominent authors.Less
Charles Brown asserts that Keats's genius was initiated by The Faerie Queene wherein this earliest attempt which was included in his collection published in 1817 was seen as an ‘Imitation of Spenser’. Richard Woodhouse believed that even in Keats's first poem, the Shakespearean influence was already made visible. However, some of the indications such as the use of the word ‘teen’ was viewed by many simply as an example of Elizabethan diction and was not brought about by Shakespearean influence. As such, Keats was found to be under not the traditions of Shakespeare but rather to that of Spenser or Spenser who is mediated by Leigh Hunt. This chapter explores how the young Keats expresses his debt and influence not only from Shakespeare but from other prominent authors.
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.
James Kuzner
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642533
- eISBN:
- 9780748651580
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642533.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate ...
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Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.Less
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.
Nicholas Canny
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198200918
- eISBN:
- 9780191718274
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198200918.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book is the first comprehensive study of all the plantations that were attempted in Ireland during the years 1580-1650. It examines the arguments advanced by successive political figures for a ...
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This book is the first comprehensive study of all the plantations that were attempted in Ireland during the years 1580-1650. It examines the arguments advanced by successive political figures for a plantation policy, and the responses which this policy elicited from different segments of the population in Ireland. The book opens with an analysis of the complete works of Edmund Spenser who was the most articulate ideologue for plantation. The author argues that all subsequent advocates of plantation, ranging from King James VI and I, to Strafford, to Oliver Cromwell, were guided by Spenser's opinions, and that discrepancies between plantation in theory and practice were measured against this yardstick. The book culminates with a close analysis of the 1641 insurrection throughout Ireland, which, it is argued, steeled Cromwell to engage in one last effort to make Ireland British.Less
This book is the first comprehensive study of all the plantations that were attempted in Ireland during the years 1580-1650. It examines the arguments advanced by successive political figures for a plantation policy, and the responses which this policy elicited from different segments of the population in Ireland. The book opens with an analysis of the complete works of Edmund Spenser who was the most articulate ideologue for plantation. The author argues that all subsequent advocates of plantation, ranging from King James VI and I, to Strafford, to Oliver Cromwell, were guided by Spenser's opinions, and that discrepancies between plantation in theory and practice were measured against this yardstick. The book culminates with a close analysis of the 1641 insurrection throughout Ireland, which, it is argued, steeled Cromwell to engage in one last effort to make Ireland British.
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 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/9780199591244.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The conclusion emphasizes that in the schools Virgil's poems were celebrated not just as objects to be imitated, but as spectacular images of mastery in subservience to mastery (chiefly, subservience ...
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The conclusion emphasizes that in the schools Virgil's poems were celebrated not just as objects to be imitated, but as spectacular images of mastery in subservience to mastery (chiefly, subservience to the example of Homer). The conclusion emphasizes once again how fully the poet had become a creature of the schoolroom during the centuries since Quintus Caecilius Epirota introduced his works to the pedagogical scene at Rome. As grammarians and schoolmasters from ancient Rome to Renaissance England wrapped their lessons around Virgil's hexameters, and as English schoolboys struggled with the octavo Virgils they held in their hands, they were studying poems that were already studying the schoolmaster's ambitions. In grammar schools all across Renaissance England ‘the book of Maro’ was a gateway to upper-form studies of the auctores. Even more significantly, it was a gateway to some of humanist pedagogy's most self-conscious meditations on the promise and fragility of the educational project.Less
The conclusion emphasizes that in the schools Virgil's poems were celebrated not just as objects to be imitated, but as spectacular images of mastery in subservience to mastery (chiefly, subservience to the example of Homer). The conclusion emphasizes once again how fully the poet had become a creature of the schoolroom during the centuries since Quintus Caecilius Epirota introduced his works to the pedagogical scene at Rome. As grammarians and schoolmasters from ancient Rome to Renaissance England wrapped their lessons around Virgil's hexameters, and as English schoolboys struggled with the octavo Virgils they held in their hands, they were studying poems that were already studying the schoolmaster's ambitions. In grammar schools all across Renaissance England ‘the book of Maro’ was a gateway to upper-form studies of the auctores. Even more significantly, it was a gateway to some of humanist pedagogy's most self-conscious meditations on the promise and fragility of the educational project.
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.
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/9780198200918.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
Many of the concerns voiced by Spenser, in both the View and the Faerie Queene, can only be comprehended when they are considered in the context of England's experience with Ireland during Spenser's ...
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Many of the concerns voiced by Spenser, in both the View and the Faerie Queene, can only be comprehended when they are considered in the context of England's experience with Ireland during Spenser's own lifetime. The most striking dimensions to the English presence in Ireland at the time of the composition of the View, compared to what it had been but twenty years previously, were its size and its ubiquity. These features alone would not have satisfied Spenser that Ireland was set on a right course. This chapter shows that there were indeed considerations concerning both the personnel and the preoccupations of the English who served and settled in Ireland that occasioned unease for commentators who were altogether less sensitive than Edmund Spenser. The nature of those problems will become clear once account is taken of how English authority in Ireland had been increased over the preceding decades.Less
Many of the concerns voiced by Spenser, in both the View and the Faerie Queene, can only be comprehended when they are considered in the context of England's experience with Ireland during Spenser's own lifetime. The most striking dimensions to the English presence in Ireland at the time of the composition of the View, compared to what it had been but twenty years previously, were its size and its ubiquity. These features alone would not have satisfied Spenser that Ireland was set on a right course. This chapter shows that there were indeed considerations concerning both the personnel and the preoccupations of the English who served and settled in Ireland that occasioned unease for commentators who were altogether less sensitive than Edmund Spenser. The nature of those problems will become clear once account is taken of how English authority in Ireland had been increased over the preceding decades.
Peter Mack
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691194004
- eISBN:
- 9780691195353
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691194004.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary ...
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In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary tradition, from the middle ages to the twenty-first century, revealing in new ways how it helps writers and readers make new works and meanings. The book argues that the best way to understand tradition is by examining the moments when a writer takes up an old text and writes something new out of a dialogue with that text and the promptings of the present situation. The book examines Petrarch as a user, instigator, and victim of tradition. It shows how Chaucer became the first great English writer by translating and adapting a minor poem by Boccaccio. It investigates how Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser made new epic meanings by playing with assumptions, episodes, and phrases translated from their predecessors. It then analyzes how the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell drew on tradition to address the new problem of urban deprivation in Mary Barton. And, finally, it looks at how the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in his 2004 novel Wizard of the Crow, reflects on biblical, English literary, and African traditions. Drawing on key theorists, critics, historians, and sociologists, and stressing the international character of literary tradition, the book illuminates the not entirely free choices readers and writers make to create meaning in collaboration and competition with their models.Less
In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary tradition, from the middle ages to the twenty-first century, revealing in new ways how it helps writers and readers make new works and meanings. The book argues that the best way to understand tradition is by examining the moments when a writer takes up an old text and writes something new out of a dialogue with that text and the promptings of the present situation. The book examines Petrarch as a user, instigator, and victim of tradition. It shows how Chaucer became the first great English writer by translating and adapting a minor poem by Boccaccio. It investigates how Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser made new epic meanings by playing with assumptions, episodes, and phrases translated from their predecessors. It then analyzes how the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell drew on tradition to address the new problem of urban deprivation in Mary Barton. And, finally, it looks at how the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in his 2004 novel Wizard of the Crow, reflects on biblical, English literary, and African traditions. Drawing on key theorists, critics, historians, and sociologists, and stressing the international character of literary tradition, the book illuminates the not entirely free choices readers and writers make to create meaning in collaboration and competition with their models.
S. J. Connolly
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198208167
- eISBN:
- 9780191716546
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208167.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, rose to power, first as England's client in Ulster, but subsequently as the main opponent of the extension there of the crown's authority. His rebellion in alliance with ...
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Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, rose to power, first as England's client in Ulster, but subsequently as the main opponent of the extension there of the crown's authority. His rebellion in alliance with other Ulster lords, often referred to as the Nine Years War, represented the century's most serious challenge to English rule. Although O'Neill's initial aim was to preserve his regional autonomy, his decision to seek the support of Spain led him to put himself forward as a champion both of Catholicism and of an Irish patriotism. Edmund Spenser has been presented as the spokesman for a new policy of ruthless repression that determined the way in which the war was prosecuted by government forces. It is argued that English attitudes were more divided, and the shift in policy less dramatic than this implies. Following his defeat, O'Neill was in fact restored to his estates, but his departure into exile five years later (the Flight of the Earls) prepared the way for a more radical restructuring of Ulster society.Less
Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, rose to power, first as England's client in Ulster, but subsequently as the main opponent of the extension there of the crown's authority. His rebellion in alliance with other Ulster lords, often referred to as the Nine Years War, represented the century's most serious challenge to English rule. Although O'Neill's initial aim was to preserve his regional autonomy, his decision to seek the support of Spain led him to put himself forward as a champion both of Catholicism and of an Irish patriotism. Edmund Spenser has been presented as the spokesman for a new policy of ruthless repression that determined the way in which the war was prosecuted by government forces. It is argued that English attitudes were more divided, and the shift in policy less dramatic than this implies. Following his defeat, O'Neill was in fact restored to his estates, but his departure into exile five years later (the Flight of the Earls) prepared the way for a more radical restructuring of Ulster society.
Eric Klingelhofer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082467
- eISBN:
- 9781781702505
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082467.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The epigraph presented at the beginning of this chapter reveals Edmund Spenser's image of Man's creation as a divine plan to colonize that ‘waste and empty place’ forfeited by the Fallen Angels, a ...
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The epigraph presented at the beginning of this chapter reveals Edmund Spenser's image of Man's creation as a divine plan to colonize that ‘waste and empty place’ forfeited by the Fallen Angels, a clear metaphor for Elizabeth's policy of settling Ireland with English Protestants. This book cannot fully satisfy the rising demands for information on southern Ireland's Plantation Period, Elizabethan material culture, or the personal lives of Edmund Spenser and other Renaissance figures. It is intended, rather, to present the views on the topic to a knowledgeable audience in Ireland and Britain, while informing the wider, literary-based readership of the Manchester Spenser series.Less
The epigraph presented at the beginning of this chapter reveals Edmund Spenser's image of Man's creation as a divine plan to colonize that ‘waste and empty place’ forfeited by the Fallen Angels, a clear metaphor for Elizabeth's policy of settling Ireland with English Protestants. This book cannot fully satisfy the rising demands for information on southern Ireland's Plantation Period, Elizabethan material culture, or the personal lives of Edmund Spenser and other Renaissance figures. It is intended, rather, to present the views on the topic to a knowledgeable audience in Ireland and Britain, while informing the wider, literary-based readership of the Manchester Spenser series.
Virginia Lee Strain
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474416290
- eISBN:
- 9781474444903
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474416290.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. While the majority of Law and Literature studies ...
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This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. While the majority of Law and Literature studies characterise the law as a force of coercion and subjugation, this book instead treats in greater depth the law’s own vulnerability, both to corruption and to correction. The dominance of law in early modern life made its failings and improvements of widespread concern: it was a regular and popular focus of criticism. The terms and techniques of legal reform provided modes of analysis through which legal authorities and literary writers alike evaluated form and character. Legal reform, together with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from it, were represented by courtly, coterie, and professional writers. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the Gray’s Inn Christmas revels of 1594-5, Donne’s ‘Satyre V’, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale all examine the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of legal reform’s contribution to local and national governance.Less
This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. While the majority of Law and Literature studies characterise the law as a force of coercion and subjugation, this book instead treats in greater depth the law’s own vulnerability, both to corruption and to correction. The dominance of law in early modern life made its failings and improvements of widespread concern: it was a regular and popular focus of criticism. The terms and techniques of legal reform provided modes of analysis through which legal authorities and literary writers alike evaluated form and character. Legal reform, together with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from it, were represented by courtly, coterie, and professional writers. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the Gray’s Inn Christmas revels of 1594-5, Donne’s ‘Satyre V’, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale all examine the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of legal reform’s contribution to local and national governance.
Christopher Tilmouth
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199212378
- eISBN:
- 9780191707254
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212378.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book surveys ideas of passion, reason, appetite, and self-control in English literature and moral thought from 1580 to 1680. Drawing on tragedy, poetry, moral philosophy, and sermons, the book ...
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This book surveys ideas of passion, reason, appetite, and self-control in English literature and moral thought from 1580 to 1680. Drawing on tragedy, poetry, moral philosophy, and sermons, the book explores how Renaissance writers transformed their understanding of the passions, re-evaluating emotion so as to make it an important constituent of ethical life rather than the enemy within which allegory had traditionally cast it as being. Part One of the book describes various ethical positions available to early modern readers, including those of Erasmus, the Stoics, and Calvin. It then explores the role of psychomachia and a hostility to the passions in Spenser's Faerie Queene, before turning to plays by Shakespeare and Chapman (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Bussy D'Ambois) which challenge the moral assumptions, and particularly the antipathy towards the emotions, prevalent in late Elizabethan England. It also examines the impact which Augustinianism and Aristotelianism had on the poetry of Herbert, Crashaw, and Milton. These latter traditions are shown to promote a positive evaluation of emotion when that emotion is inflected either by God's grace or by a principle of rational moderation. Part Two of the book traces the rise and fall of Restoration libertinism, particularly under the influence of Hobbes's philosophy and French libertinism. This tradition, which celebrated passion and appetite as natural, and accorded them free expression, is traced in works by Etherege, Dryden, and the Earl of Rochester. It is argued that such libertinism ultimately proved dissatisfying even on its own terms.Less
This book surveys ideas of passion, reason, appetite, and self-control in English literature and moral thought from 1580 to 1680. Drawing on tragedy, poetry, moral philosophy, and sermons, the book explores how Renaissance writers transformed their understanding of the passions, re-evaluating emotion so as to make it an important constituent of ethical life rather than the enemy within which allegory had traditionally cast it as being. Part One of the book describes various ethical positions available to early modern readers, including those of Erasmus, the Stoics, and Calvin. It then explores the role of psychomachia and a hostility to the passions in Spenser's Faerie Queene, before turning to plays by Shakespeare and Chapman (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Bussy D'Ambois) which challenge the moral assumptions, and particularly the antipathy towards the emotions, prevalent in late Elizabethan England. It also examines the impact which Augustinianism and Aristotelianism had on the poetry of Herbert, Crashaw, and Milton. These latter traditions are shown to promote a positive evaluation of emotion when that emotion is inflected either by God's grace or by a principle of rational moderation. Part Two of the book traces the rise and fall of Restoration libertinism, particularly under the influence of Hobbes's philosophy and French libertinism. This tradition, which celebrated passion and appetite as natural, and accorded them free expression, is traced in works by Etherege, Dryden, and the Earl of Rochester. It is argued that such libertinism ultimately proved dissatisfying even on its own terms.
