Spenser and Milton

Edmund Spenser and John Milton: the two Protestant epic bards of English literature, from whom great English literature since has sprung.

Coleridge, Keats, Blake, Byron, Dickens, Melville, Hawthorne - all these have taken from the wellspring of Spenser and Milton.

The Faerie Queene is one of the most renowned epic romances, and Paradise Lost the English language's greatest epic (not including Chapman's Homer, Pope's Homer, Dryden's Iliad, and Arthur Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses).

The Faerie Queene, by the way, is respected by Camille Paglia, Harold Bloom, George Saintsbury, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, C. S. Lewis, and was even, to my knowledge, influential to Shakespeare and Milton in significant ways.

Whom then do you prefer?

Camille Paglia, in Sexual Personae, has effectively ranked Spenser over Milton, arguing that Milton's attempt to combat Spenser's visual Apollonian impulse via word-fetishism has failed to exceed the grandeur of Spenser.

When I had contacted Harold Bloom about this, he ranked Spenser just below Milton, though he loves both. And it seems that the literary world, while loving both, has generally preferred Milton's high grandness to Spenser's luxuriant yet dreamlike visual fancy.

So whom do you find greater? And why? In style, form, themes, general influence, etc.?

If you prefer Paradise Lost to Faerie Queene, and vice versa, why?

As an uneducated man. I preferred Paradise Lost because it was easier. If, like me, you try to read Faerie Queen without understanding one tenth of the allegoric content it becomes a chore. OK the verse form goes along trippingly, but even that tends to induce a kind of trance like state where you find you are pages in, and can't remember what has passed, (my mind being undisciplined an' all). I understand Byron used the same form in Childe Harold, which I liked and followed well enough, so perhaps it is the language that is the barrier for me.

Not so Paradise lost. Milton's blank verse paints more realistic pictures and- as Mick Jagger once sang- even manages to engender sympathy for the devil (that's at least one general influence I suppose) What I mean is, you can empathise with the characters within, as the epic tale unfolds without.

I've just finished reading Paradise Lost and I read a few cantos of The Faerie Queen a few years back.

I was brought up in the shadow of F R Leavis, who totally dismissed Milton. I now found the poetry compelling, provided you don't have Leavis' expectations. I don't agree with much of the theology and as an attempt to "justify the ways of God to man" (let alone woman - I studied feminist theology twenty years ago) it is a failure in my judgment. In particular having God the Father as one character among the rest is a major mistake theologically.

I have to say I can't remember much of the plot or characters in Spenser. The bit I remember vividly is the section with the seven deadly sins, a definitely Catholic idea. I will give Spenser another go soon.

And this obsession with ranking is just silly - it is what lead Leavis to dismiss both Milton and Spenser in favour of Donne.

I read very little of Spenser in a survey course in college. I read most of Paradise Lost --- the first 10 books or chapters. It was long. It was true what they say: that Satan was great and majestic.

I had a friend who was a dedicated Marxist and he loved Milton - he was a republican of course, which is why Samuel Johnson didn't like him.

MILTON
By P. Bum

John Milton fastened a kilt on
And wandered all over the town.
And there he met Satan bemoaning his fate and
Lying about on the ground.

"Poet, I've fallen!" the old boy was callin',
"A fate that I share with all men;
But given the choice, I think 'me an' da boys'
(And the ladies) would fall once again."

"Aroint thee, foul fiend!" the polemicist keened,
"A plague on your lying and falling!
God meant you for hell, that's the reason you fell
'Like lightning'--tis frightening, appalling!

But its God's will not ours, and the coward who cowers
Considers not God nor the Good,
Who willed His creations His own sublimations
Of freedom--enough to have stood."

I wear a kilt every day I don't have a doctor's appointment or have to go to a funeral. I can't see Milton wearing one at all.

Incidentally the fall of the rebel angels is not scriptural.

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

I wear a kilt every day I don't have a doctor's appointment or have to go to a funeral. I can't see Milton wearing one at all.

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Me neither. Guess I must have been employing a kind of faux metonymy to achieve an absurd image in comic verse. It sounds like the sort of thing I'd get up to.

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

Incidentally the fall of the rebel angels is not scriptural.

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True enough, but my allusion (and brief quotation) came from Luke 10:18, in which Jesus tells the 70 apostles "I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven." I know that's not about the rebel angels, but I'm not sure Milton did. And my bekilted Milton assures me it's the first he's heard of it. You two can sort it out.

Interesting personal details, though. What's your tartan? :)

Where's the serious discussion of Spenser and Milton? Not much, I see.

Paging stlukesguild

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Originally Posted by ajvenigalla

Where's the serious discussion of Spenser and Milton? Not much, I see.

Paging stlukesguild

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I agree with JR: "this obsession with ranking is just silly." If that's the kind of "serious discussion" you mean, then sure, page away. Otherwise maybe you could offer an opinion of your own about one or both of these authors. We're not your TV, aj--or your study guide.

OK, I’ve just read the first canto of Book 1 of The Faerie Queene. I read Barbara Reynolds’ translation of Ariosto a long time back and I think the best way for me to appreciate Spenser is to ignore the Protestant allegory (One – I’m not at all sympathetic to exclusively Protestant Christianity and Two – with its stress on sola scriptura, Protestantism tends to underestimate or ignore symbolism and allegory in any case).

So I’ll try to appreciate the poem as a poem and fantasy like Ariosto.

One obvious difference is that Milton proceeds in his narrative in blank verse, which allows his sentences and paragraphs of whatever length is needed. Spenser adopts a verse form that should be a terrible constriction –not only in stanzas, but stanzas he himself invented with an additional ninth line two syllables longer than the other lines. This should hold up the narrative flow dreadfully, but as far as I can make out, Spenser’s (complicated) narrative flows and the ninth line often makes a point.

I still think Milton is telling a better story, theologically suspect though I think it is.

And the tartan?

At the moment I'm wearing Scott Hunting Ancient, but I have a number other tartans. Since the chief of the Scott family (who being on the Border aren't a Highland Clan) is the Duke of Buccleuch with his main house near Kettering, it seems to me you can be English and wear it. If any Scott got stroppy with me I can say I have read all the novels and principal narrative poems of Sir Water Scott, and I bet they haven't.

The Duke is descended from Anne Scott, the last heiress of the name, who was married off by Charles II to his favourite bastard, James Scott. James Scott was the Absalom in Dryden's poem and also Duke of Monmouth. When he rebelled against Charles II's brother, James II of England (VII of Scotland), the title of Duke of Monmouth was forfeited. His widow, Anne Scott, retained the Buccleuch title and her descendents hold to today. They are so filthy rich that they don't need to open Boughton House near Kettering except for the bare minimum to qualify for a maintenance grant. It is meant to be a spectacular baroque country house, and having briefly visited Kettering, the area could do with some glamour.

To get back to the subject, Milton would have deeply disapproved.

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

To get back to the subject, Milton would have deeply disapproved.

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Yes, yes, but was he greater than Spenser? After all, they also serve who only stand and rate. ;-)

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Yes, yes, but was he greater than Spenser? After all, they also serve who only stand and rate. ;-)

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Have not read much of Spenser, but quite a bit of Milton.

I'd say Milton may have been the grander figure, with Spenser as a poetic forerunner (as Harold Bloom noted). Though there could be a good argument for Spenser being the ultimately greater poet, as Spenser was the "poet's poet."

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

OK, I’ve just read the first canto of Book 1 of The Faerie Queene. I read Barbara Reynolds’ translation of Ariosto a long time back and I think the best way for me to appreciate Spenser is to ignore the Protestant allegory (One – I’m not at all sympathetic to exclusively Protestant Christianity and Two – with its stress on sola scriptura, Protestantism tends to underestimate or ignore symbolism and allegory in any case).

So I’ll try to appreciate the poem as a poem and fantasy like Ariosto.

One obvious difference is that Milton proceeds in his narrative in blank verse, which allows his sentences and paragraphs of whatever length is needed. Spenser adopts a verse form that should be a terrible constriction –not only in stanzas, but stanzas he himself invented with an additional ninth line two syllables longer than the other lines. This should hold up the narrative flow dreadfully, but as far as I can make out, Spenser’s (complicated) narrative flows and the ninth line often makes a point.

I still think Milton is telling a better story, theologically suspect though I think it is.

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Exactly, I think Byron used it in the same way - a sort of conclusion or comment on the rest of the stanza.

However I do find the narrative occasionly held up or even trivialised by the form (I admit I've only read the Redcrossed Knight recently) in both Byron and Spenser. The allogorical content is kind of interesting, but you do have to keep turning to the index

I hadn’t thought of the comparison with Don Juan, but Byron could well be intending to parody Spenser. Mind you, the stanzas are different: Byron (copying Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso) has stanzas of 8 ten syllable lines rhyming abababcc. And he uses the rhymes themselves to comic effect as the opening dedication:

Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate,
And representative of all the race.
Although ‘tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours has been a common case.

Spenser’s stanza of 9 lines rhymes ababbcbcc. In each stanza he has to has to write at least four lines with the same rhyme without sounding forced or funny, which as far as I can tell (given the deliberately archaic diction) doesn’t happen. Quite a technical achievement.

I agree Milton is the more culturally significant at present, but I’ll write about that later.

Byron's Childe Harold is in Spenserian sonnet form (I'm reading it at the moment) He reverts to something else when Harold himself composes - for comic effect I would say.

I can't see how even with aristocratic Regency pronunciatioin you can read "laureate" and "Tory at" and make both the rhyme and the sense clear.

W S Gilbert was much better at outrageous rhymes:

It seems that she's a fairy
From Andersen's library.
And I took her for
The proprietor
Of a ladies' seminary.

Just browzed Childe Harold thanks to Gutenberg. It is in the same stanza as The Faerie Queene.

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Originally Posted by ajvenigalla

I'd say Milton may have been the grander figure

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Actually I’d agree with this, without giving in to the silly idea that there is some objective and ontological quality in a writer for all time.

By a whole number of criteria, Milton is the more significant and important of the two. He was and is far better known, more quoted and more widely read. Historically in Britain he brought an element of high culture which was embraced and admired by an evangelical, aspirational working class, when their aspirations were for social justice for all rather than becoming a home owner. I can imagine Paradise Lost on the bookshelf of D H Lawrence’s mother and thousands like her, alongside the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress and Sacred Songs and Solos.

Dr Johnson said of Paradise Lost “But original deficiencie cannot be supplied. The want of human interest is always felt”. In my view that applies better to The Faerie Queene. None of the figures seem to have any inner life or personality: Knights fight monsters, ladies bewail, villains call up wicked spirits and all good fun it is. But Satan, Adam, Eve and even the devils and angels have an inner life.

I wish some knowledgeable enthusiast for Spenser would come along and I'd be very interested to learn from them.

As far I can say, Spencer is too british, insular if you quote the nobel heads. While he may have used themes that are quoted indirectly such as fae there and there, knights (but then, so does Chaucer), editions of Spencer are extremelly rare in Portuguese, if any complete at all. The length of work may have something to do about it (but this never stopped Ariosto or Chaucer translations). Meanwhile, Paradise Lost is never out of shelves (the other poems of Milton are quite less know). This presence certainly adds up in Milton's favor over Spencer.

Has anyone who has posted to date actually read The Faerie Queene from beginning to end? I have never even begun it, keeping the principle of finishing any book I start and having been assured years ago that it was essentially unreadable. If no one else has really read Spenser, then maybe we should drop the (rather silly) inquiry about relative greatness and simply talk about Milton. Just a thought.

We can talk about books writers haven't finished, but not about books readers haven't. Now, now, that does not seem to be a fair critery.

Heh heh. Maybe not, JC. I just get the feeling there's been an element of pretending on this thread. I'm not directing that at anyone in particular. But I would like to know who here has read any of The Faerie Queene (and how much). Call me curious.

Pompey Bum: none

Next?

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Heh heh. Maybe not, JC. I just get the feeling there's been an element of pretending on this thread. I'm not directing that at anyone in particular. But I would like to know who here has read any of The Faerie Queene (and how much). Call me curious.

Pompey Bum: none

Next?

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I read it during my undergrad studies for an upper level course on Spenser, along with the Shepherd's Calendar, Prothalamion and Epithalamion (and probably some other minor poems too).

I later took a graduate course on the Faerie Queene as well, I think I still have back problems from having to lug around the giant edition I had. My tutors in university also forced me to read Clarissa. I think I got my education at a rather cruel and old fashioned institution.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

I read it during my undergrad studies for an upper level course on Spenser, along with the Shepherd's Calendar, Prothalamion and Epithalamion (and probably some other minor poems too).

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Yay Orphan Pip! aj would really like you to help him with his latest essay. :)

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

My tutors in university also forced me to read Clarissa. I think I got my education at a rather cruel and old fashioned institution.

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If they made you read Clarissa it was. I'm just kidding. Where Clarissa (and Pamela) are concerned, I am an innocent.

Next?

I've reached Book 2 Canto 1 today. As everyone has implied, it is nothing like as influential as Paradise Lost

I thought Canto 9 included a good bit (although the archaic spelling is another reason probably why Spenser is more admired than read). The wicked wight is Despair.

XXXIII

Ere long they come, where that same wicked wight
His dwelling has, low in an hollow cave,
Farre underneath a craggie clift ypight,
Darke, dolefull, drearie, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcases doth crave:
On top whereof aye dwelt the ghastly Owle,
Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other chearefull fowle;
And all about it wandring ghostes did waile and howle.

XXXIV

And all about old stockes and stubs of trees,
Whereon nor fruit nor leafe was ever seene,
Did hang upon the ragged rocky knees;
On which had many wretches hanged beene,
Whose carcases were scattered on the greene,
And throwne about the clifts. Arrived there,
That bare-head knight for dread and dolefull teene,
Would faine have fled, ne durst approchen neare,
But th' other forst him stay, and comforted in feare.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Has anyone who has posted to date actually read The Faerie Queene from beginning to end?

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Even Spenser only got half way through it...

I'm reading it at the moment and was interested to share my thoughts in case someone more informed than I would care to comment.

Most of my posts have been about Milton. It can probably be said of The Fairie Queenewhat Dr Johnson said of Milton:

"Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure."

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

I thought Canto 9 included a good bit (although the archaic spelling is another reason probably why Spenser is more admired than read). The wicked wight is Despair.

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"More admired than read" is an amusing way of putting it. Conformity of opinion (and the alleged duty thereof) is something of a wicked wight itself, methinks.

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

Even Spenser only got half way through it...

I'm reading it at the moment and was interested to share my thoughts in case someone more informed than I would care to comment.

Most of my posts have been about Milton. It can probably be said of The Fairie Queenewhat Dr Johnson said of Milton:

"Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure."

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Cool. I will read Faerie Queene soon, after reading several epic poems. I do think that despite the difficulty I will be able to handle it. Many have loved it, like Coleridge, Hazlitt, Keats, Milton, Shakespeare, and many others.

Camille Paglia's essay "Spenser and Apollo" in her book Sexual Personae, has written about the sexual Apollonian power of the poem, and she ranks it as one of the finest works of sexual interest in Western literature.

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

Even Spenser only got half way through it...

I'm reading it at the moment and was interested to share my thoughts in case someone more informed than I would care to comment.

Most of my posts have been about Milton. It can probably be said of The Fairie Queenewhat Dr Johnson said of Milton:

"Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure."

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Perhaps mortal will agree with me, those long poems, or the epic poems, demand action. (not just battle). Paradise Lost is an drama that accidentally is epic. People read because of the character (and a character that is present early in the book, lucifer is more interesting than satan), while Aeneas or Ulisses, despite being interesting, are so well know characters that we mind about what they do, rather how they think. Maybe that that was beyond Johnson take on Paradise Lost, a matter of style.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Perhaps mortal will agree with me, those long poems, or the epic poems, demand action. (not just battle). Paradise Lost is an drama that accidentally is epic. People read because of the character (and a character that is present early in the book, lucifer is more interesting than satan), while Aeneas or Ulisses, despite being interesting, are so well know characters that we mind about what they do, rather how they think. Maybe that that was beyond Johnson take on Paradise Lost, a matter of style.

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That is one of the things I tend to admire about epics, sagas, romances, and comicbooks. They tend to be the great action stories of their time. But I disagree that Paradise Lost doesn't have enough action to compete with The Iliad or The Aeneid. Just look at Book 6 and the war in heaven. First the army of angels fight with swords, then guns, then they start throwing mountains around paralleling the Greek myth of the Titanomachy. Then Jesus rolls in on a flaming chariot driving the rebel angels out of heaven single handed like Achilles. There's a lot more action in Paradise Lost than in say Dante's The Divine Comedy which is so full of philosophy that it's almost akin to something like Lucretius' On the Nature of Things.

As for The Faerie Queene by Spenser, I never finished that one. But it wasn't for lack of action. I seem to recall knights fighting witches and monsters, the same kind of fare you'd expect from the contemporary heroic fiction of the day (Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, The Death of King Arthur by Malory, etc). No, if I can recall what I didn't like about The Faerie Queene, and it's been a few years, it would have to be how long winded Spenser is. He took an awful long time telling rather simple tales and his story may have benefited from the kind of brevity that the Norse sagas exhibit.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

That is one of the things I tend to admire about epics, sagas, romances, and comicbooks. They tend to be the great action stories of their time. But I disagree that Paradise Lost doesn't have enough action to compete with The Iliad or The Aeneid. Just look at Book 6 and the war in heaven. First the army of angels fight with swords, then guns, then they start throwing mountains around paralleling the Greek myth of the Titanomachy. Then Jesus rolls in on a flaming chariot driving the rebel angels out of heaven single handed like Achilles. There's a lot more action in Paradise Lost than in say Dante's The Divine Comedy which is so full of philosophy that it's almost akin to something like Lucretius' On the Nature of Things.

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I didnt intend to imply there is no action in Paradise Lost, only how it is read, how the presence of Lucifer and his development is the great "postcard" for Paradise Lost. Sure, there is action, like most epics, but it is a bit like Shakespeare. We care for the characters, but there is fights... Or Moby Dick... There is a lot of action there, but we want Ahab. While Achilles and Ulysses are interesting, they really work more like comic book characters or King Artur, their dynamic is the dynamic of an action hero, Lucifer dynamic is different (of course, I know Jesus was supposed to be there hero, but such is life).

I wouldnt say the Comedy is an epic, it is something quite different. You mention Lucretius, I think of Ovid. Of course, despite Virgil being the guide, Ovid is everywhere because he was the wikipedia of classical mythology, but also, Ovid capacity to entangle histories... Dante is a bit like this, more an Altman or Tarantino than a Spielberg or Leone. No action except walking like a hobbit.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I didnt intend to imply there is no action in Paradise Lost, only how it is read, how the presence of Lucifer and his development is the great "postcard" for Paradise Lost. Sure, there is action, like most epics, but it is a bit like Shakespeare. We care for the characters, but there is fights... Or Moby Dick... There is a lot of action there, but we want Ahab. While Achilles and Ulysses are interesting, they really work more like comic book characters or King Artur, their dynamic is the dynamic of an action hero, Lucifer dynamic is different (of course, I know Jesus was supposed to be there hero, but such is life).

I wouldnt say the Comedy is an epic, it is something quite different. You mention Lucretius, I think of Ovid. Of course, despite Virgil being the guide, Ovid is everywhere because he was the wikipedia of classical mythology, but also, Ovid capacity to entangle histories... Dante is a bit like this, more an Altman or Tarantino than a Spielberg or Leone. No action except walking like a hobbit.

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Are you saying that you think Paradise Lost is driven by the interior psychology of the character Lucifer? I don't know that he's any more psychologically complex than Achilles or Odysseus. You could say that the drama of the Iliad is the action between the Greeks and the Trojans, but there's just as much conflict and drama in the battle of wills between Achilles and Agamemnon. Achilles is a man of action but he's got a strongly written interior life, where you see that his soul is in turmoil, struggling between the desire for life and glory. Then besides the battles there are all the beautiful quiet moments in the story such as when Hector is holding his child Astyanax and the boy recoils in fear at his father's helmet, or when Priam goes to the Greek camp to beg for the body of Hector and he reminds Achilles of his own father and they both break down crying. Then there are the court intrigues on mount Olympus when Hera seduces Zeus. Those quiet intervals and character studies probably drive the narrative as much as the action.

Not driven, no. More like from the overall perspective of the reader, Lucifer is the main atraction of Paradise Lost. Of Course, I am not claimming the Iliad is only action (that would make it a Silvester Stallone movie, in a single beat, boring) or that the characters are not complex. Nothing that radical. But when you think characters such as Achilles or Ulisses, we can buy their presence with the acts. You understand Achilles pain when he goes rampage after Hector. Lucifer does not behave like this, he behaves more like a Drama Character (as he some sort of Prometheus, it makes more sense). Maybe because Homer build his work over oral tradition, Milton over a literary tradition. We can compare Achilles with Priam, as Priam speech is a show of rethoric, just like most of Lucifer speech, but Priam is a secundary character than never steals the show from Achilles, Diomeds or Hector, while Lucifer steals from everyone else.