A Theatre for Spenserians

[Hyacinth Girl]

Freudian psychanalysis, begone! There, we all agree.

were you interested in looking at the relationship between epic and romance as genres as a part of the project?

Actually, yes, that was a portion of it. I have to admit, most of it was not fleshed out in any detail. I began the project while at Bread Loaf, started preliminary research, then returned to UM to find our two Spenserians on sabbatical. I'll go back through my papers this weekend and see if I can give you a more lucid description - it's been several years now, and the brain has died.

University of Montana sounds like a good place. I've always thought Bread Loaf sounded like fun.

UM was beautiful, although the lit faculty is much stronger in Modern/Post-Modern lit than anything else. The MFA program, however, is stupendous. Bread Loaf was the best experience of my life. I can't even begin to describe what it is like, because it changes from year to year, yet it is always a refuge from real life. It is an incredible way to spend the summer - in the middle of the mountains among old buildings and people who love nothing more than to sit around talking about Descartes, or Milton, or Stoppard. The professors are laid back, yet you learn an incredible amount of information in a brief period of time. Your only responsibility is to do your coursework - the rest of the time is spent how you will. There were poetry readings once a week, a student production of "The Master Builder," Renaissance choir (guess who was in that! ), the "repressed desires" dance, annual Frost cabin picnic, karaoke in the local dive 10 miles down the mountain, impromptu soccer games on the green . . . postcard material. There was an ugly side as well - think "Dangerous Liaisons" and term papers - but that paled in comparison to the rest.
Okay, done waxing poetic now. Will go look for my notes on FQ

[genoveva]

Well, I just read my first Spenser today, and let me tell ya- that's some thick stuff! Maybe it's the copy I have (Oxford Edition edited by Smith and Selincourt 1937 reprint) but, I sure had a hard time reading his stuff! I am fascinated by the Faerie Queen, and plan to read that! Here is one sonnet that I did find lovely:

Sonnet XXI

Was it the worke of nature or of Art,
which tempred so the feature of her face,
that pride and meeknesse mixt by equall part,
doe both appearet' adorne her beauties grace?
For with mild pleasance, which doth pride displace,
she to her loue doth lookers eyes allure:
and with sterne countenance back again doth chace
their looser lookes that stir up lustes impure.
With such strange termes her eyes she doth inure,
that with one looke she doth my life dismay:
and with another doth it streight recure,
her smile me drawes, her frowne me driues away.
Thus doth she traine and teach me with her lookes,
such art of eyes I neuer read in bookes.

[Petrarch's Love]

Genoveva--Welcome to the Spenserian fold. I have a particular soft spot for the sonnet you quote, and I used the first line as the title of my thesis on sonnet sequences a few years back. The Amoretti is one of my favorite collections of sonnets, and I love the fact that, unlike all those unrequited sonnet lovers, he ended up married to the woman he wrote these for. When you finish reading through the sonnets you should read the Epithalamion, which was meant to accompany the Amoretti. The Epithalamion celebrates his marriage to Elizabeth, the woman he wrote the sonnets for, with each stanza representing an hour of his marriage day. It's absolutely beautiful poetry when you get to know it.

As you say, Spenser's verse can indeed some "thick stuff," but it gets easier the more you read of it, and you're starting out well with the Amoretti. I'm not very familiar with the Oxford edition, but if you're going to try the Faerie Queene you'll need an edition with some pretty thorough annotations. If you don't want to stick with the Oxford there are some other good editions to look for either at the bookstore or the library. For the complete FQ, the Penguin edition, edited by Thomas P. Roche is both affordable and well annotated. The Longman edition, edited by A.C. Hamilton, is also very good, but more expensive. If, like most people, you're not really sure about reading every syllable of the FQ but you'd like to have read the juicy parts, the Norton Critical Edition of Edmund Spenser's Poetry is clearly annotated and contains all of book one and book three (usually acknowledged to be the best books), and the choicer segments of the other books. The Norton also contains all of the Amoretti , the Shepheardes Calender , and several other of the shorter works, as well as some fine critical essays to shed some light on the mysteries of Spenser's works (it's also, as I recall, quite affordable).

[Hyacinth Girl]

Hello Genoveva! Welcome to Spenserland!
Have you been reading all of the Amoretti, or just this selection? Like PL, I recommend the Epithalamion if you are reading the sonnet sequence.
Here is my personal favorite of the Amoretti sonnets:

SONNET. LIIII.

OF this worlds Theatre in which we stay,
My loue lyke the Spectator ydly sits
beholding me that all the pageants play,
disguysing diuersly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I ioy when glad occasion fits,
and mask in myrth lyke to a Comedy:
soone after when my ioy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she beholding me with constant eye,
delights not in my merth no[r] rues my smart:
but when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry
she laughes, and hardens euermore her hart.
What then can moue her? if nor merth, nor mone,
she is no woman, but a sencelesse stone.

I like how it uses the common convention of the stage that we see so often in Shakespeare, also Raleigh, but posits the lover as an actor. Most women would not like the idea of a lover acting and using artifice, but Spenser dares to do it. He also conveys the frustration of the lover in the last couplet, while subtly challenging the woman as well - by calling her femininity and sentiousness into questions, he draws her into action.

The Longman edition, edited by A.C. Hamilton, is also very good, but more expensive.

I have this edition and I absolutely LOVE it. . . definitely worth the extra pennies if you can find them.

[stlukesguild]

Since there's at least one other Spenser fan running periodically in and out of the forests of this forum I thought I'd start a thread where anyone interested in things Spenserian can post. Comments, questions, encomium, or criticism of Spenser and his works is welcome here. Those who are wondering why I'm not posting in the "Spenser" thread of the individual author section are clearly unaware of the shocking fact that such a thread does not exist. I think there should be threats of challenge to mortal combat if such a situation persists!

Indeed! I have long been a fan of Spencer but have yet to read the Faerie Queene in total I took a Masters course on his work but unfortunately was forced into dropping out mid-way through due to the demands of my job. As a visual artist I was very much enthralled with Spencer's visual imagery. For all the glorious music of his Baroque language, he seems incredibly visual... almost cinematic. Petrarch'sLove, you mention coming to Spencer with a background in Italian Renaissance lit... especially the sonnet. Undoubtedly you are aware of Orlando Furioso. Did you ever explore the links between Ariosto's epic and that of Spencer? We were made well aware that Spencer had intentionally set out to surpass this very poem which was perhaps THE epic of the time. I know that John Harington's translation appears almost simulataneously with the FQ. We also explored Spencer's impact upon English lit and discussed him versus Chaucer. While Chaucer may indeed be the greater writer, he has no immediate heirs, while Spencer's achievement's seem to clearly pressage Shakespeare and the rest of the English baroque. This makes the fact that he is so ignored even more lamentable. Harold Bloom noted that with the creation of Finnegan's Wake, Joyce succeeded in creating the greatest unread masterpiece of English literature since the Faerie Queene. This is indeed sad... even from my limited perspective having read less than half of the work... as well as the Amoretti, Epithalimion, and Muiopotmos (forgive any misspelling... I'm too tired at the time to check with my copy of Spencer.) I am suddenly realizing that I must add FQ to my list of "must read" books which I am embarassed to admit I have yet to read in total. That puts it along side of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which I am working on right now (I swear, its true! ) and the Qu'ran.

[Petrarch's Love]

Indeed! I have long been a fan of Spencer but have yet to read the Faerie Queene in total I took a Masters course on his work but unfortunately was forced into dropping out mid-way through due to the demands of my job. As a visual artist I was very much enthralled with Spencer's visual imagery. For all the glorious music of his Baroque language, he seems incredibly visual... almost cinematic.

Welcome to the Spenserian wood St. Luke's Guild. What a shame you couldn't finish your Spenser course. Duty calls, I suppose. Yes, one of the things I love most about Spenser is the visual nature of his imagery. One of my particular areas of scholarly interest is the relationship between the verbal and the visual arts in the Renaissance period, and I've done some work on the visual aspects of Spenser's work, especially in terms of Emblematics and the inflluences of artistic theory and philosophy coming over from Itally. It's also been a great excuse to take a lot of art history courses, which I love.

Petrarch'sLove, you mention coming to Spencer with a background in Italian Renaissance lit... especially the sonnet. Undoubtedly you are aware of Orlando Furioso. Did you ever explore the links between Ariosto's epic and that of Spencer? We were made well aware that Spencer had intentionally set out to surpass this very poem which was perhaps THE epic of the time. I know that John Harington's translation appears almost simulataneously with the FQ.

I've read both works (FQ more than once), so I've had the chance to compare the two informally and chat about them with my professors and fellow students, but I haven't done any formal written work on the two. I may yet, depending on what I work out as a dissertation topic, and I'm hoping to look more deeply at them both as I prepare for my exams this coming year. The similarities are certainly striking, and there's no doubt that Spenser was out to outdo Ariosto. Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata was another big influence from the Italians. Harrington's translation of OF did indeed come out on the heels of Spenser's Romance, published just one year after the first three books of FQ came out.

We also explored Spencer's impact upon English lit and discussed him versus Chaucer. While Chaucer may indeed be the greater writer, he has no immediate heirs, while Spencer's achievement's seem to clearly pressage Shakespeare and the rest of the English baroque.

Yes, it's odd having that big gap between Chaucer and the Elizabethans. I'm not too sure about this claim to Chaucer being necessarily the "greater writer" ( ), but it's certainly true that he didn't succeed in starting up a literary movement unless you count his influence on the Elizabethans well over a century later. One thing Spenser was doing with the intentionally archaic language of his poetry(archaic even for his own time) was trying to go back to the language of Chaucer and "improve" upon it in an attempt to establish an English literature that could rival the literatures of the Italians and the French and, as you say, he was an influence on subsequent writers. One pedantic little academic note, I think the term Baroque is applied a little earlier in the visual arts than it is in English literature, which I would guess is why you're applying the term here. The period of Spenser, Shakespeare, Sidney etc. isn't really referred to as the "Baroque" (though one could obviously use the word baroque adjectivally to describe some aspects of the style) The period is usually termed the "Elizabethan" (up until 1603), the "Renaissance," or the "Early Modern" period. Just thought you might like to know.

This makes the fact that he is so ignored even more lamentable.

Lamentable indeed.

I am suddenly realizing that I must add FQ to my list of "must read" books which I am embarassed to admit I have yet to read in total. That puts it along side of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which I am working on right now (I swear, its true! ) and the Qu'ran.

I wouldn't be too embarassed, since I know PhD students specializing in the Renaissance who still haven't read through all of FQ. It is well worth making through it all though. Best of luck with that and Temps Perdu (which I certainly haven't read through ). If you decide to work your way through FQ and you'd like to chat, ask questions or opinions etc. as you go, then you know which thread to come to.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hyacinth--I also like the Amoretti 54 you shared with us. Thanks for posting it. Other favorites of mine from the sequence are these two. In the second one the lady wittily replies to his conceit in the first of the pair (highly uncharacteristic of most sonnet sequences in which the lady is silent and admired from afar), and I love the sense of a dialogue happening between them.

SONNET. XXVIII.

THE laurell leafe, which you this day doe weare,
guies me great hope of your relenting mynd:
for since it is the badg which I doe beare,
ye bearing it doe seeme to me inclind:
The powre thereof, which ofte in me I find,
let it lykewise your gentle brest inspire
with sweet infusion, and put you in mind
of that proud mayd, whom now those leaues attyre.
Proud Daphne scorning Phoebus louely fyre,
on the Thessalian shore from him did flie:
for which the gods in theyr reuengefull yre
did her transforme into a laurell tree.
Then fly no more fayre loue from Phebus chace,
but in your brest his leafe and loue embrace.


SONNET. XXIX.

SEE! how the stubborne damzell doth depraue
my simple meaning with disdaynfull scorne:
and by the bay which I vnto her gaue,
accoumpts my selfe her captiue quite forlorne.
The bay (quoth she) is of the victours borne,
yielded them by the vanquisht as theyr meeds,
and they therewith doe poetes heads adorne,
to sing the glory of their famous deedes.
But sith she will the conquest challeng needs
let her accept me as her faithfull thrall,
that her great triumph which my skill exceeds,
I may in trump of fame blaze ouer all.
Then would I decke her head with glorious bayes,
and fill the world with her victorious prayse.

[Petrarch's Love]

Alas too many posts were made
I clicked "submit" too many times...

[Petrarch's Love]

I thought I'd copy Burma Shave
And fill the space up with a rhyme.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch'sLove;

I don't neccessarily agree with the ranking of Chaucer above Spencer myself (although I would have to give Milton and Shakespeare the edge). To compare the two would be rather more than difficult... perhaps akin to a comparison of Giotto and Rubens. Like Giotto, Chaucer strikes me as less consciously "artful" and more muscular... especially when reading him in the original Middle English... but then again, that may just be my later-day response to a now very archaic language. I actually prefer Rubens myself... but seeing as I am currently reading a bit of Chaucer along side of Peter Ackroyd's brief bio, I may be a bit biased.

I do agree that the terms "Baroque" & "Renaissance" are especially slippery when crossing from one art form to another. In the visual arts the Renaissance is generally seen as dating from approximately 1300 (coinciding with Giotto's frescos in the church of St. Francis of Assisi [1295] and those in the Capella degli Scrovegni, Padua [c. 1305]) through 1527 and the French sack of Rome, after which time the visual arts show an increasingly artificial and anti-Renaissance direction which became known as "Mannerism." Of course this "end to the Renaissance" was not universal. Although the artists of Venice (Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese) do show certain Mannerist elements, their art remains essentialy more naturalistic and in line with Renaissance thinking until the late 1500s (1580s/90s), and there are artists to the north, such as Peter Breughel, who are also clearly within the Renaissance tradition well after the date of 1527. The "Baroque", on the other hand, is seen as a rejection of the artifice of Mannerism and a return to Renaissance naturalism, albeit with an even greater sense of "realism"/illusionism and drama. The birth of the Baroque in the visual arts is generally dated from around 1600 with the work of the Carracci brothers and Caravaggio. Baroque art continues until around 1700, well after the deaths of Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velazquez, the greatest practicioners of the era. With the 1730s, or there-about, visual art enters into the Rococo era.

Crossing over into other art forms we find that the greatest "Baroque" composer, J.S. Bach, does not become active until after the final years of the Baroque era (well after the deaths of the greatest Baroque artists), and his final deeply serious, spiritually moving and profound works are produced along side the frills and fireworks of the Rococo. Mozart and Haydn, the great "classicists" of music, are actually active in the late Rococo through early Neo-Classicism. On the other hand, Monteverdi, who is usually defined as a Renaissance composer is born well after 1527 and cannot have been active until nearly the birth of Baroque art. In literature, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer all fall well within the period known as the Renaissance in visual art... but Chaucer, like Dante, always seems to straddle the line from medieval to Renaissance. Spencer and Shakespeare fall into the time of Mannerism and early Baroque (ignoring those pesky Venetians)... but I have often heard them termed "Renaissance" or "Elizabethan". And how do we define Cervantes?

I've always liked the term "Elizabethan" myself... but it is somewhat problematic in that the central Elizabethan writer, Shakespeare, continues to be active well after the death of Elizabeth and accenssion of James I. I think I'm partial to the term "Baroque" because I imagine much of the writing of Spencer (as well as Shakespeare and the King James Bible
as being closer in mood and style to Baroque art (with the lushness, the sensuality, the drama, and the flamboyance) than it is to the art of the Renaissance... or worse yet, to Mannerism with its self-conscious artfulness and lack of naturalism. If anything, I am far more apt to use a term like "Baroque" to describe something in formal terms (to my mind Moby Dick and even McCarthy's Blood Meridian make use of a language or style that I might define as "baroque"... but that's just me.

[Petrarch's Love]

St. Luke's Guild,

Well, I wouldn't actually dream of trying to claim superiority for either Chaucer or Spenser. I think they're different enough that there isn't really a way of saying who's "better," though naturally as a Renaissance scholar I'll give Spenser the edge .

As for naming periods, it is, as you say, slippery. In terms of literature the Renaissance period is generally said to begin on the continent with Petrarch (1304-1374), just as it does about the same time in the arts with Giotto. The cultural changes of the Renaissance moved slowly geographically however, and England's a bit behind in terms of the revival of the classics and all the rest. The English Renaissance is later in terms of nearly every aspect of the culture and doesn't really begin until about the 16th century. Basically the culture of England in the 16th and early 17th centuries is more like Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries, with the visual arts lagging behind a bit more than the literature, due in part to the reformed church--it's not until Inigo Jones (1573-1649) in the Jacobean era, for example, that England starts seeing anything like the kind of architecture that Italy saw around the quattrocento with the likes of Brunelleschi and Bramante.

In terms of literature, More's Utopia (1516) marks the early English Renaissance, and soon after Wyatt (1504-1542) and Surrey (1517-1547) introduced the sonnet, and along with it the vogue for imitating Petrarch, into English. The 1590's is an important decade among English literary scholars, and considered a highpoint of the poetry, when everything started really taking off. In terms of literature, the English Renaissance is then usually marked as ending with Milton (1608-1674), with Spenser (1552-1599) and Shakespeare (1554-1616) falling squarely into what is sometimes termed the high English Renaissance (though some distinctions are made in the types of shifts that occur between the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras within this larger "Renaissance" period). Since you asked, Cervantes is usually considered a Renaissance author as well, though I'll agree that he does straddle more of a divide into a later period. Since all of this does get rather confusing, scholars have taken to referring to a very broad period as "Early Modern," which seems to cover everything from Petrarch and Giotto to Milton and Rubens very neatly. It's not a term that's caught on much outside academic circles yet though.

Laying aside the picky details as to what we call these periods, I find it interesting that you associate Spenser on a stylistic level with the baroque. I had always associated Rubens' style somehow with Milton's poetry, and I think of Shakespeare in something of a Caravaggio or Rembrandt light, but Spenser I generally envision in terms of earlier Renaissance art. At times those set battles on a plain (in which the combatants are described symbolically as animals), or certain of the processions he describes have almost a flat and symbolic Medieval feel, and I think the archaic language and, to some extent, the allegorical nature of FQ in general tends to hark back to an earlier style. At other times the images come out much more fully of course. I always think of Calidore's vision of the graces in book 6 as being much like Botticelli's Primavera for example, and the characters of book one's House of Holiness I always see as being somehow being rather like the figures of a Filippo Lippi or a Benozzo Gozoli for some reason, while I've always thought Bosch would do a bang up job depicting the Masque of Cupid in book three. But enough with the speculations of my own fancy. It's interesting the way we all envision things differently as we read.

[Bastet]

Cervantes's style is normally considered Renaissance in Spain, mostly because it's normally compared to that of Quevedo and Góngora, two of the writers of the Spanish "Siglo de Oro" which best represent the Baroque style.

[Petrarch's Love]

Thanks for confirming that, Bastet. I thought Cervantes was generally considered Renaissance, but I'm not as expert in Spanish literature as I am in others.

[Bastet]

Glad to help, Petrarch's Love!

[stlukesguild]

Interesting that Cervantes would be seen as a "Renaissance" figure... although I can clearly see the difference between him and the poetry of Quevedo and Gongora. By the way... are there any good Gongora translations into English? I have only been able to come across a scarce few poems. Turning back to Cervantes... it is interesting that while he is seen as part of the Renaissance, in many ways he seems far more modern. His nearly simulatneous "invention" and dissection (deconstruction) of the novel reminds me far more of later writers such as Sterne, than of what I usually imagine the Renaissance as being.