Spenser and Milton

[ajvenigalla]

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?

[prendrelemick]

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.

[Jackson Richardson]

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.

[Red Terror]

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.

[Jackson Richardson]

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.

[Pompey Bum]

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."

[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.

Incidentally the fall of the rebel angels is not scriptural.

[Pompey Bum]

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.

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.

Incidentally the fall of the rebel angels is not scriptural.

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?

[ajvenigalla]

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

Paging stlukesguild

[Pompey Bum]

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

Paging stlukesguild

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.

[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.

[Pompey Bum]

And the tartan?

[Jackson Richardson]

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.

[Pompey Bum]

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

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

[ajvenigalla]

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

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."