A Theatre for Spenserians

[britomart]

Dear Petrarch's Love,
I will now progress with the academic rigour of a gin sodden harlot: Indeed, if Mr Spenser could see down the centuries he might take a very dim view of my cavortings under the name Britomart. I take the name for ironic reasons to do with higher ideas of gender identity, available quips about armouring and the erotic sense that Spenser gave to some of his writing. Were me and Spenser to meet for a cup of tea we probably wouldn't get on - the destruction of the Bower of Bliss I see as the action of a spoilsport. I love illusion to the hilt, it looks like Spenser distrusted it.

A similar sense of narky reader response arises in me from the end of "Pilgrim's Progress". Bunyan's writing stirs great feeling in me, but I'd have been a lot happier if Christian had gained access to the Emerald City.

The full horror of my imaginings might be shown by attempted afternoon tea with Milton - if I ever got across the threshold he would surely have had me escorted off the premises as an intellectual stain on his presence.

More seriously, if time machines were available, I find it an interesting mental game to try and imagine what it would be like to actually meet the people behind the writing. Would Laurie Lee be as delightful as his writing or a grumpy misanthropist? How sensitive was Byron the man? Would George Orwell be an insufferable puritan to know?

I recall that Hardy addressed this idea somewhere in "Jude the Obscure" (?) (memories of novels have all become a blur) by having Jude meet a writer that he admired to find something far far different from what the man's text had led him to believe.

The material you are studying was glimpsed as if far off headlands in my M.A. study - my work was to stick more locally to FQ and decipher what I could, an endless yet very rewarding task.

See you tomorrow, I'm just about to think up a few tips for readers of more modern poetry who encounter Spenser for the first time. My key concept is that the Spenserian text is a playful thing.

[britomart]

Thinking up tips for others on reading Spenser is in itself proving difficult. We are in danger of me producing a piece that could easily be entitled "How to Read Like Me and Why You Should".

Within the next week or so I'll come up with rhetorical questions about FQ designed to prompt thought in readers new to it.

A useful prompt given to me once was to ask where Redcrosse's armour comes from - it isn't his.

It seemed initially odd to me that Book 1 ends in the Garden of Eden.

Little snippets of the poem might be usefully presented for pondering - to modernise the English of part of 1 / 1 / 2, we read: dead as living ever him adored. One might ask oneself who's described as dead and who's described as living here?

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Diving off as is my Romantic want (I might be described critically as a Post Post Modern Old New Oldicist), a second dip into the opening of Byron's "Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage" has been done. As Spenser's work has now become obscure, it intrigues me that Byron's early nineteenth century commercial success drips with Spenserianisms at the outset (it is also written in Spenserian stanzas). That's interesting.

Spenser was Shelley's favourite poet, and that's interesting too.

So dear audience, as this computer is in someone else's house and we are on borrowed time, let us quit ye upstart neurons of ye yron box that burnes ye tinn and set saile through pleasaunt shyre to trayler parke of eternall yryning, whereyn lieth copy of FQ edit. A.C. Hamilton wych eie lufingely fondle.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Britomart,

Were me and Spenser to meet for a cup of tea we probably wouldn't get on - the destruction of the Bower of Bliss I see as the action of a spoilsport. I love illusion to the hilt, it looks like Spenser distrusted it.

Yes, he was a good Protestant, uncertain about illusion and imagery and profoundly distrustful of it. He was also a good poet and profoundly attracted to it. I think this simultaneous distrust and attraction creates some great and productive tensions in his work. I've always liked Carol Kaske's reading of FQ as a work that constantly presents two of everything, in bono et in malo (in good and in bad), and her suggestion that the Garden of Adonis is a response to the destruction of the Bower at the end of book two. I like the notion of the Garden of Adonis as the reconstruction of a pleasure ground in a positive light in answer to the earlier clearly sinful pleasure ground of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss. All the same, the end of book two is doubtless one of the more arresting and unsettling moments of FQ.

More seriously, if time machines were available, I find it an interesting mental game to try and imagine what it would be like to actually meet the people behind the writing. Would Laurie Lee be as delightful as his writing or a grumpy misanthropist? How sensitive was Byron the man? Would George Orwell be an insufferable puritan to know?

I think about that sometimes too. What would I say to Milton if he suddenly walked through the door? Didn't Ray Bradbury have a short story on the subject of meeting authors from the past?

[Petrarch's Love]

Figured I'd better start a new post for this.

Thinking up tips for others on reading Spenser is in itself proving difficult. We are in danger of me producing a piece that could easily be entitled "How to Read Like Me and Why You Should".

Within the next week or so I'll come up with rhetorical questions about FQ designed to prompt thought in readers new to it.

A useful prompt given to me once was to ask where Redcrosse's armour comes from - it isn't his.

It seemed initially odd to me that Book 1 ends in the Garden of Eden.

Little snippets of the poem might be usefully presented for pondering - to modernise the English of part of 1 / 1 / 2, we read: dead as living ever him adored. One might ask oneself who's described as dead and who's described as living here?

How to introduce students to Spenser is a question that's always running about somewhere in the back of my mind, since I'll be teaching his poetry within the next few years. I've found that what usually stops people right up front is the archaic language. It's hard enough getting students past Shakespeare's language (which your average undergrad terms "old english" while rolling his/her eyes in despair), but when it comes to Spenser it can be reallly an uphill battle since the language is more archaic than Shakespeare's and they have to deal with all that allegory too! The less archaic language is probably the biggest reason that people still read the romantics, while Spenser, who was such a great influence on them, has suffered greater obscurity.

The best solution I ever saw to this problem was in the class that introduced me to Spenser. The prof started the first day reading Old English (real Old English, not what undergrads think Shakespeare writes in) from Beowulf. We then went on to do the first half of the class in Chaucer's Middle English. By the time everyone had overcome Middle English and found out that Chaucer was really funny, Spenser's language didn't look so scary and they could move into actually enjoying what he was conveying with that language.

The other thing that seems to help is to give people a little preview of what goes on in Spenser on the most basic level in perfectly plain English. If you tell people they're going to read a fascinating religious allegory and set them down to read "Lo I the man whose muse whilome did maske," it's going to look pretty dull, but if you tell people that book one starts off with the killing of a monster and the detailed description of a wet dream, and ends with an action packed dragon fight, there's suddenly some interest.

I've also found that reading aloud helps. It's easily done with Shakespeare of course, where the class can act it out, but I've noticed students really respond to a nice spirited reading of a passage from FQ. It helps people pick up on the drama and emotion, not to mention the sound of the poetry itself. Unfortunate that we can't do a recitation online. It's the easiest way to get people hooked.

Anyway, I'll look forward to seeing what kind of questions you come up with (I would find it of great practical interest as a teacher), and I'll see if I can come up with some myself. Maybe we can tempt some hapless vistor to this thread to begin wandering through the Spenserian wood.

[britomart]

To quote Petrach's Love:

"Yes, he was a good Protestant, uncertain about illusion and imagery and profoundly distrustful of it. He was also a good poet and profoundly attracted to it. I think this simultaneous distrust and attraction creates some great and productive tensions in his work."

I agree to the hilt with this.

It is very interesting that writing itself often seems to be propagandised against by the beautiful writing of FQ (1 / 1 / 20 features book and paper filled vomit, and otherwise the presence of books or writing is often associated with evil as in 1 / 1 / 29 ln. 4 and in many other places through to 3 / 12, for instance 3 / 12 / 31 ln. 3) (You'll have spotted this all ready, I'm writing here for the benefit of eavesdroppers).

The reader may feel prompted to sense they are being naughty in reading at all, though otherwise my estimation is that Spenser injects a sense of creepiness with this.

Ways of presenting FQ to beginners are difficult to come up with, perhaps the text's fate is sealed into obscurity.

Anyway, must dash.

Eclecticism:

Shelley's "Ode to The West Wind" has been recently read. I must dip over to the Shelley section.

My fascination with Rock n Roll has to be confessed to. Quote or misquote of the day from "Sea Cruise" - "I gotta get to rock and get my hat off the rack, I got the boogie woogie like a knife in the back . . . " - a startling simile.

To sum up with my present cure all critical stance, these things are interesting.

[britomart]

Dear Petrarch's Love,
The method you described of introducing under grads to Spenser looks sound. It is a shame that parallel texts of FQ are unavailable (?), but they are for Chaucer, and as you described, encountering Spenser's language through Chaucer's is useful.

One thing that irks me is that once behind the mask of the archaic language, Spenser is actually easier to read than Shakespeare, and people in general don't know this.

I have seen reading aloud have almost magical affects on students.

Finding willing sailors for Spenser's crew (Spensernauts?) is still a difficult task, so I'll map out a little section for eavesdroppers on why reading Spenser is a good idea. We have 250 eavesdroppers I notice, so fit audience may we find and perhaps tease out a few into eavesdroopers.

[Petrarch's Love]

Dear Petrarch's Love,
The method you described of introducing under grads to Spenser looks sound. It is a shame that parallel texts of FQ are unavailable (?), but they are for Chaucer, and as you described, encountering Spenser's language through Chaucer's is useful.

One thing that irks me is that once behind the mask of the archaic language, Spenser is actually easier to read than Shakespeare, and people in general don't know this.

I have seen reading aloud have almost magical affects on students.

Finding willing sailors for Spenser's crew (Spensernauts?) is still a difficult task, so I'll map out a little section for eavesdroppers on why reading Spenser is a good idea. We have 250 eavesdroppers I notice, so fit audience may we find and perhaps tease out a few into eavesdroopers.

Hi Britomart,

Glad you think my teaching plans sound feasible. I guess the only thing to do will be to test it on real undergrads at the soonest possible date (I probably won't get a chance to teach Spenser for a few years though, since most of the teaching positions for Grad. students are compositional writing courses with the occasional opportunity to teach Shakespeare).

As for the recruitment of Spensernauts, I had no idea we had 250 eavesdroppers. Hello out there you unknown 250. We'll certainly have to see if we can devise a way to lure them into the discussion. Anyone who's out there reading this, feel free to drop in and ask questions or comment or something.

Just now I'm dreadfully busy getting a presentation on The Tempest together for tomorrow. I've also just finished going over a paper I'm supposed to present Monday on Spenser and emblematics, so I've been spending a lot of time in book one recently looking at the significance of religious imagery.

Anyway, got to run for now. I'll post more whenever I get the chance.

P.S. Hope you're having fun in the Shelley section. I'll have to check it out if I have the time.

[Hyacinth Girl]

Greetings Britomart and PL-
Finally, I have found my people! I actually had intended to write my thesis on FQ, but was forced to opt out due to a lack of profs to chair it (they all went on sabbaticals - must have heard I was coming!) Since then no one has dared mention the Bower of Bliss to me, let alone Tasso's influence upon it. Am going to open up my copy and start reading again right away, plus dig out all my old notes from my summer at Bread Loaf over the weekend.
In response to parts of your thread - I do think that moving from Chaucer to Spenser is a great idea. I actually studied both at the same time, and Spenser was such a relief to read after dear old Geoff, at least from a language standpoint.
Britomart - Love the thought:"We are in danger of me producing a piece that could easily be entitled "How to Read Like Me and Why You Should". - sounds like a prospective chapter title for Nietzsche's Ecce Homo

[Petrarch's Love]

Hazah! A third knight has wandered into our Spenserian wood. Welcome Noble Hyacinth Girl. We're glad to have you along on the Spenserian quest. What a terrible shame that your faculty all went off on sabbatical and left you Spenserless. What did your thesis turn out to be on? Oh, and where were you doing your MA work (you don't have to answer, just curious)? Britomart seems to have been off for awhile (he has limited computer access I believe), but I'm sure he'll greet you himself when he appears again in the manner of a true Spenserian knight who disappears mysteriously only to pop up again at random intervals much to the delight of the reader.

Glad you approve of the Chaucer to Spenser pedagogical approach. It seems to me the only way to get people to stop thinking 16th century language is scary is to give them a taste of even scarier 14th century language. Maybe I'll be really cruel and recite Beowulf in O.E. to them (though I'm afraid that might leave me without any students at all). By the way you're more than welcome to discuss Tasso's influence on the Bower of Bliss to your heart's content. Singing parrots and swimming nymphs welcome here.

[kilted exile]

Ok, I took a look at the link to Spenser's work that PL posted earlier, and I think it is needless to say I understood little of it. Is there a companion site which helps with deciphering meaning and pronunciation?

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Kilted. Glad you tried a little Spenser, but sorry it was less than comprehensible to you. Spenser's language is basically contemporary with Shakespeare, but he used some intentionally archaic words and phrases (i.e. things that were archaic even for his own time) in an attempt to imitate the great medieval Middle English poets, Chaucer in particular. If you're at all interested in Middle English, this is a pretty good site on Chaucer's vocabulary and grammer. The vocabulary (click on the book on the upper left hand corner that says vocabulary in red) may help you with some of the words Spenser uses, and the other links will let you in on the grammer and pronunciation of Chaucer's language if you're curious (this is not, however, the same as Spenser's language, though it did inspire Spenser).

I poked around the web a bit, but couldn't find any useful guides to Spenser's language online. The pronunciation isn't really any different than modern English, in fact if anything, at least from what I've heard, a modern Scottish accent is probably a little closer to the original, so you should be in good shape there. If the spellings are throwing you off you might take this into account:

Replace u with v (giue = give)
Replace i with j (obiect = object)
Replace y with i (Englyshe = English)
Remove the final e (Englyshe = English)

My first piece of advice would be to not start with The Shepheardes Calender, which is highly archaized. His sonnet sequence, The Amoretti is very charming, and not as difficult language-wise as some of the other stuff (I don't think they're much more challenging than say, Shakespeare's sonnets in terms of language, and less complex in other ways), so you might want to start there, just to get used to Spenser's voice. If you want to tackle the Faerie Queene (which is really a great read once you get the hang of it), I would really recommend just grabbing a well annotated copy at the local library that will gloss the strange words for you. Actually, once you get the hang of certain key words and turns of phrase, the reading gets much easier. I also came across a site with a turn of the century summary of the narrative of the Faerie Queene (sort of a Victorian style Cliffs Notes--complete with pictures). It might be helpful in terms of just keeping track of what's going on, making it easier for you to then read the original, but I would caution anyone to use it as an aide, not a substitute for the real thing, since you loose all of the poetry and much of the fun in an abbreviated plot summary like this (the site also hardly seems like a good scholarly source, since it refers to Spenser as writing in Middle English). Best of luck.

[Hyacinth Girl]

Good morning! I didn't have time to grab my Spenser this morning (I access this site mainly while at work), but I think I will browse through the Epithalamion online this morning and see what I see. So excited to be talking about fun stuff again - I think my brain has slowly atrophied since 2002! Please, be gentle.
[QUOTE=Petrarch's Love] What did your thesis turn out to be on? Oh, and where were you doing your MA work (you don't have to answer, just curious)?] Actually, I am mortified by my thesis. I basically did it to make the chair of it happy. My disclaimer: the chair of my thesis was unwilling to move beyond psychoanalytic criticism in the vein of Freud. So, my thesis was on the forest as a forum for sexual aggression in Shakespeare's comedy. *sigh* I really wanted to write on Spenser's inadvertent deconstruction of the epic, but oh well. I received my MA from the University of Montana, but I attended the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, VT during the summer as well. I was planning on doing my PhD, but life and love intervened .

[Virgil]

Good Actually, I am mortified by my thesis. I basically did it to make the chair of it happy. My disclaimer: the chair of my thesis was unwilling to move beyond psychoanalytic criticism in the vein of Freud. So, my thesis was on the forest as a forum for sexual aggression in Shakespeare's comedy. *sigh*

Sigh is right. Do people still take this psychoanlytic crap seriously? I'm sorry for criticising, but my distaste for grad schools continuous to grow.

[Hyacinth Girl]

Sigh is right. Do people still take this psychoanlytic crap seriously? I'm sorry for criticising, but my distaste for grad schools continuous to grow.

Thank you, Virgil, I feel so much better now! Actually, I don't think many people take it seriously anymore, or they mix it with other approaches if they do - the quintessential "tool box" of Foucault.

[Petrarch's Love]

Actually, I am mortified by my thesis. I basically did it to make the chair of it happy. My disclaimer: the chair of my thesis was unwilling to move beyond psychoanalytic criticism in the vein of Freud. So, my thesis was on the forest as a forum for sexual aggression in Shakespeare's comedy. *sigh*

Ack! Not the dreaded pit of psychoanalytic criticism! You have my sympathy, and Virgil has a point:

Sigh is right. Do people still take this psychoanlytic crap seriously? I'm sorry for criticising, but my distaste for grad schools continuous to grow.

I think psychoanalytic stuff (especially the deeply Freudian) is dying out as the "in thing", but there are still people around who are devoted to it (luckily no one I'll probably end up working with in my department). Sorry that you have a growing distaste for grad. schools Virg. We're not all certifiably insane, just about 99% of us. I know what you mean though. An overdose of certain strains of literary theory can definately leave a bad taste in the mouth.

I really wanted to write on Spenser's inadvertent deconstruction of the epic, but oh well.

Sounds interesting. Where were you going with that? Since Spenser is really writting Romance in the tradition of say, Ariosto, were you interested in looking at the relationship between epic and romance as genres as a part of the project?

I received my MA from the University of Montana, but I attended the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, VT during the summer as well. I was planning on doing my PhD, but life and love intervened

Well, life and love are well worth it. University of Montana sounds like a good place. I've always thought Bread Loaf sounded like fun. It's a really interesting idea, doing grad. school in the summer.