16th Century Romantic Poetry: Not Very Good

[cuppajoe_9]

Edmund Spenser, in his epic wedding poem The Epithalamion, compared his fiance's breasts to "a bowle of creame uncrudded", and thereby set the english language back upwards of seven hundred years. If it wasn't for William Shakespeare, we would still be talking about "The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wrought". Seriously, just stay away from it.

[stlukesguild]

Aaack!!! Stay away from the Epithalamion???!!! Aaaack!!! Aaaack!!! Where are Petrarch's Love, Hyacinth Girl, Britomart, and the other "Spencerians" when you need 'em? Personally, I found the Amoretti and the concluding Epithalamion to be an exquisite body of some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language. True... there are phrases which strike the modern ear as odd... but then again, I can't remember the last time I spoke of a "bare bodkin" or "farddles". neither do I doubt that much of what we think of as the most exqusite poetic language of our time would have struck Spencer's era as crude or comic... and may be thought of by future generations (without some concept of the context) as the same.

[Nightwalk]

Actually I like the Spenser quote on breasts. One of the interesting attributes of reading vintage archaic works are theire wordal glimpses into another time.

[Petrarch's Love]

Aaack!!! Stay away from the Epithalamion???!!! Aaaack!!! Aaaack!!! Where are Petrarch's Love, Hyacinth Girl, Britomart, and the other "Spencerians" when you need 'em?

Where indeed!!! I'm glad to see Spenser's not been without his defenders in my absence.

cuppajoe--Are you really going to judge the entire corpus of Elizabethan verse on the basis of a few bad lines? Yes, you're right that Spenser had a penchant for archaic language, which he was criticized for at times even in his own day. He also has reams of absolutely exquisite lines which employ both archaic and more "modern" language. As nightwalker suggests, the archaisms can sometimes be quite charming, pleasurable and effective and as SLG suggests, they might have sounded quite different to the 16th century ear. I'll give you that I too have personally always thought the line about the "cream uncrudded" is something of a clunker, but then the immortal Shakespeare penned things like this:

So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar
Made out of her impatience, which not wanted
Shrewdness of policy too, I grieving grant
Did you too much disquiet:

I wouldn't say "garboils" did much to advance the English language toward the at the pinnacle of perfection we speak today. Perhaps we should warn everyone to stay away from Antony and Cleopatra too, and I'm sure I could find a few lines that would get Shakespeare's sonnets banned from the curriculum. Would you also like to get rid of Chaucer while we're at it? That Middle English stuff is hardly up to date.

Lest anyone read this thread and go away with the impression that "cream uncrudded" is a fair representation of the poetry in the Epithalamion I'll quote the final stanza in which he describes the way his poem is a wedding gift to his wife since circumstances kept them from having a fancy wedding and he couldn't afford any rich "ornaments" (I've modernized some of the spelling):

Song made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my love should duly have been deckt
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your due time to expect,
But promised both to recompense
Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endless moniment.

In my opinion that final line is sublime, and certainly as good as anything in Shakespeare. Of course, you really need to read the whole poem to get its beautiful refrain, and the exquisite way he sets up the twenty-four stanzas so that each one represents an hour of his wedding day.

[stlukesguild]

A weakness of many similar sonnet cycles (dare I say Petrarch's, Dante's?) is nature of the courtly love concept... the poet who continually pines over a woman who he will never have. Dante and Petrarch somewhat escape our desire to exclaim, "Oh come on! Get over her already!" when their true loves die. Spencer's Amoretti, however, presents us with something of a view of the poet's courtship of his wife. He begins, as is standard, bewitched by a ravishing beauty who spurns him... but as time passes, the relationship evolves until it blooms into something far deeper than a mere sexual conquest. I especially admire the following sonnet:

Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it,
For that your selfe ye dayly such doe see:
But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit
And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me.
For all the rest, how ever fayre it be,
Shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew:
But onely that is permanent, and free
From frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew.
That is trew beautie: that doth argue you
To be divine, and borne of heavenly seed,
Deriv'd from that fayre Spirit from whom al true
And perfect beauty did at first proceed.
He onely fayre, and what he fayre hath made;
All other fayre, lyke flowres, untymely fade.

The Epithalamion presents a marvelous conclusion to this cycle... rather like that beautiful wedding march at the end of Mendelssohn's music to Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream.

[Petrarch's Love]

A weakness of many similar sonnet cycles (dare I say Petrarch's, Dante's?) is nature of the courtly love concept... the poet who continually pines over a woman who he will never have. Dante and Petrarch somewhat escape our desire to exclaim, "Oh come on! Get over her already!" when their true loves die. Spencer's Amoretti, however, presents us with something of a view of the poet's courtship of his wife. He begins, as is standard, bewitched by a ravishing beauty who spurns him... but as time passes, the relationship evolves until it blooms into something far deeper than a mere sexual conquest. I especially admire the following sonnet:

Yes, the deeper relationship between the two people in the Amoretti is one of the reasons it's probably my favorite sonnet sequence (and certainly the one that, as a woman, I'd most like to receive ). The one you quote is lovely. Other favorites are the two in which the lady gets to reply to the poet and there's a little banter between them, which I quoted here on the Spenser Thread http://www.online-literature.com/for...8&postcount=37

The Epithalamion presents a marvelous conclusion to this cycle... rather like that beautiful wedding march at the end of Mendelssohn's music to Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream.

Great connection. I should play Mendelssohn in my class when I teach the Epithalamion.

[Shannanigan]

"a bowle of creame uncrudded"

well, it made me smile

I'm just finishing a Brit Lit course...and I found Romantic Poetry to be at the very least survivable...at least I wasn't gagging in class.

[bluevictim]

Edmund Spenser, in his epic wedding poem The Epithalamion, compared his fiance's breasts to "a bowle of creame uncrudded", and thereby set the english language back upwards of seven hundred years.

Ha ha! I'd like to use that the next time I'm trying to impress (repulse?) a girl.

I can't think of any right now, but there has to be some similar infelicities in Shakespeare, too.