Edmund Spenser: Difference between revisions
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[[File:EdmundSpenser.jpg|thumb|right|I [[learned]] have, not to despise, <br /> What ever thing seemes small in common [[eyes]].]]
[[File:Fowre Hymnes by Edmund Spenser 1596.jpg|thumb|right|230px|Title page, ''Fowre Hymnes'', by Edmund Spenser, published by William Ponsonby, [[London]], 1596]]
'''[[w:Edmund Spenser|Edmund Spenser]]''' (c. [[1552]] – [[13 January]] [[1599]]) was an English poet, who wrote such pastorals as ''The Shepheardes Calendar'', ''Astrophell'' and ''Colin Clouts Come Home Againe'', but is most famous for the multi-layered allegorical romance, ''[[w:The Faerie Queene|The Faerie Queene]]''.
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** ''Visions of the Worlds Vanitie'' (1591), line 69
* For deeds do die, however nobly done,<br />And thoughts of men do as themselves decay;<br />But wise words, taught in [[w:Metre (poetry)|numbers]] for to run,<br />Recorded by the Muses, live for aye;<br />Nor may with storming showers be washed away;<br />Nor bitter-breathing winds, with harmful blast,<br />Nor age, nor envy, shall them ever waste.
* The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,<br />The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;<br />And drizzling drops, that often do redound,<br />The firmest flint doth in continuance wear:<br />Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,<br />And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,<br />That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,<br />Or look with pity on my painful smart:<br />But when I plead, she bids me play my part;<br />And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water";<br />And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art";<br />And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;<br />So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,<br />Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.▼
** "The Ruins of Time" (1591)
** ''Amoretti'' (1595), [https://www.bartleby.com/358/784.html Sonnet XVIII]▼
* So every [[spirit]], as it is most pure,<br />And hath in it the more of [[heavenly]] [[light]],<br />So it the fairer [[Body|bodie]] doth procure<br />To habit in, and it more fairely dight<br />With cheerful [[grace]] and amiable sight:<br />For of the [[Soul|soule]] the bodie forme doth take; <br /> For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
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* I hate the day, because it lendeth light <br /> To see all things, but not my love to see.
** ''Daphnaida'', v. 407; reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th ed. (1919)
* Tell her the joyous Time will not be staid, <br /> Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.▼
** ''Amoretti'', lxx; reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th ed. (1919)▼
* I was promised on a time <br /> To have reason for my rhyme; <br /> From that time unto this season, <br /> I received nor rhyme nor reason.
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* Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, <br /> Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes, <br /> And blesseth her with his two happy hands.
** ''Epithalamion'', line 223; reported in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'', 10th ed. (1919)
=== ''Amoretti'' (1595) ===
▲* The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,<br />The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;<br />And drizzling drops, that often do redound,<br />The firmest flint doth in continuance wear:<br />Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,<br />And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,<br />That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,<br />Or look with pity on my painful smart:<br />But when I plead, she bids me play my part;<br />And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water";<br />And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art";<br />And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;<br />So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,<br />Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.
▲* Tell her the joyous Time will not be staid, <br /> Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.
=== ''[[w:Prothalamion|Prothalamion]]'' (1596) ===
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* I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet.
** [[Abraham Cowley]], essay "Of Myself", in ''The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley'', Vol. II (1710), p. 782
*[T]hat matchlesse Poem, ''The Faery Queen'', written by our English ''[[Virgil]]''.
**[[w:Kenelm Digby|Kenelm Digby]], ''Observations on the 22. Stanza in the 9th Canto of the 2d. Book of Spencers Faery Queen'' (1644), quoted in ''The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition. The Faerie Qveene: Book Two'', ed. Edwin Greenlaw (1933), p. 472
*For us Anishinaabe, Biskaabiiyang is a specific term that means “returning to the woods,” because we’re woodland peoples. For example, I grew up growing my “three sisters”—that is, corn, beans, and squash—along the edge of the forest, using what people now call sylvan culture or permaculture. It’s curious how this counters the perspective of classical authors like Dante in early modern Europe or, later, Edmund Spenser, an important Renaissance poet, who view the woods as this terrifying presence. Why is this decolonizing? Because through boarding schools and many other colonial experiences, that fear of the woods creeps in.
**[[Grace Dillon]] [https://www.e-flux.com/journal/120/417043/taking-the-fiction-out-of-science-fiction-a-conversation-about-indigenous-futurisms/ "Taking the Fiction Out of Science Fiction: A Conversation about Indigenous Futurisms"] (2021)
* I must acknowledge that [[Virgil]] in Latin, and Spenser in English, have been my masters.
** [[John Dryden]], Dedication to the ''Aeneid'' (1697)
* No man was ever born with a greater genius, or had more knowledge to support it.
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* I have at last come to the end of the ''Faerie Queene'': and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do — so much have I enjoyed it.
** [[C. S. Lewis]], in a letter to Arthur Greeves (7 March 1916), published in ''The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis : Family Letters, 1905-1931'' (2004) edited by Walter Hooper, p. 170
*[[Elizabeth I of England|Elizabeth]]'s arse-kissing poet.
**[[Karl Marx]], quoted in ''The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx'', ed Lawrence Krader (2nd ed. 1974), p. 305 and S. S. Prawer, ''Karl Marx and World Literature'' (1976), p. 362
[[File:John Milton - Project Gutenberg eText 13619.jpg|thumb|A better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas. ~ [[John Milton]]]]
* Our sage and serious poet Spencer, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than [[Duns Scotus|Scotus]] or [[Thomas Aquinas|Aquinas]].
** [[John Milton]], ''[[Areopagitica]]'' (1644)
* ''The Fairie Queene'' makes cinema out of the west's primary principle: to see is to know; to know is to control. The Spenserian eye cuts, wounds, rapes.
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* ''The Faerie Queene'' is the most extended and extensive meditation on sex in the history of poetry. It charts the entire erotic spectrum, a great chain of being rising from matter to spirit, from the coarsest lust to chastity and romantic idealism. The poem’s themes of sex and politics are parallel: the psyche, like society, must be disciplined by good government. Spenser agrees with the classical and Christian philosophers on the primacy of reason over animal appetites. He looks forward to the Romantic poets, however, in the way that he shows the sex impulse as ultimately daemonic and barbaric, breeding witches and sorcerers of evil allure. Like the [[Homer|Odyssey]], ''The Faerie Queene'' is a heroic epic in which the masculine must evade female traps or delays.
** [[Camille Paglia]], ''Sexual Personae'' (1990), p. 188
* It is easy to mark out the general course of our poetry. [[Chaucer]], Spenser, [[Milton]], and [[Dryden]], are the great landmarks for it.
** [[Alexander Pope]], as quoted in [[w:Joseph Spence (author)|Joseph Spence]]'s ''Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men'' (1820), p. 171
* Spenser, I think, may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets. He had a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for heroic poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil. But our misfortune is, he wanted a true idea, and lost himself by following an unfaithful guide. Though besides Homer and Virgil he had read [[Tasso]], yet he rather suffered himself to be misled by [[Ariosto]], with whom blindly rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of probability; all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity, or without any foundation in truth; his poem is perfect fairy land.
** [[w:Thomas Rymer|Thomas Rymer]], 'The Preface of the Translator' to Rapin's ''Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie'' (1674)
* The great master of English versification, incomparably the greatest master in our language.
** [[Robert Southey]], letter to [[Walter Savage Landor]] (11 January 1811), in ''The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey'', Vol. III (1850), p. 295
* No poet borrows so much from learned languages as Spencer.
** [[w:John Upton (Spenser editor)|John Upton]], ''Spenser's Faerie Queene'', Vol. II (1758), p. 354
* Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven<br />With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,<br />I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend!
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Spenser, Edmund}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Critics of religion]]
[[Category:Anglicans from the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:1550s births]]
[[Category:1599 deaths]]
[[Category:Epic poets]]
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