Semester Poetry

UNIT 10 SPENSER'S POETRY - I
Structure
10.0 10.1 10.2 Objectives Introductioil 10.1.1 The Sonnet 10.1.2 The Courtly Love Tradition and Poetry The Alnoretti Sonnets 10.2.1 Sonnet 34 10.2.2 Sonnet 67 10.2.3 Sonnet 77 Let's Sum Up Questions for Review Additional Reading

10.3 10.4 10.5

10.0 OBJECTIVES
The intent of this unit is to:
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Provide the student with a brief idea about the Amoretti sonnets in general. Familiarize the student with a select few of Spenser's sonnets, specifically from the Amoretti sonnets. Indicate seine ways of analysing the sonnets that the student may want to take further, through a combination of formal and substantial elements. Explore the relations between the formal and the substantial elements in a poem.

Read in conjunction with the poems, this unit should provide the student with some ways of opening them out analytically, and with a sense of the importance of the formal dimensions of a poem to the overall meanings it generates.

1 0 . INTRODUCTION
This unit will attempt to offer an overview of Spenser's well known sonnet sequence, the Alnoretti sonnets, Gcusing primarily on formal elements and literary influences. It will offer analyses of three sonnets fiom the Amoretti. The influence in particular of Italian court poets like Petrarch, and the reworking of the sonnet will be explored. The earlier mentioned conflict between the Christian and Platonic visions especially of love and eroticism will be touched upon. To begin with, in what follows immediately, we will examine some aspects of the sonnet and of the courtly love tradition, which Spenser was part of.

10.1.1 The Sonnet
An important point to remember while reading the poems and the following notes is that the sonnet is fundamentally a short lyric, a stylised fourteen line poem that developed in Italy in the Middle Ages. There are broadly three styles of sonnets: the -Petrarchan, which is the most common, consisting of an octave and a sestet; the Spenserian, which has four quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee; and the Shakespearian, which follows the Spenserian line scheme of four quatrains and a couplet, but differs in its rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef gg). The sonnet became

popular in Italian poetry primarily as a vehicle for the expression of love and sensuality, a heritage that it canied with it into its English versions. Petrarch was the Italian poet most well-known for'this practice, and his Conzoniere - a collection of love sonnets - is a sort of literary c o ~ n ~ e n d i u nthe passions of the lover. The of ~ sonnet is in many ways the most appropriate foim forthe articulation and expression ofthe ltind of sentiments that came to be characterised as courtly love. Its brevity prevents excessive sentiment from becoining sententious,,and forcing such sentiment to be articulated through intense imagery and condensed rhytllin. At the same time its internal organisation allows the poet a degree of flexibility and innovativeness in terms of constructing the poem as a dramatic movement or series of movements that mirrored the inovements of his own passions and feelings. One of the ittlpoi-tant vii-tues of any courtier (as we earlier noted in Unit 8), according to the influential Italian writer Castiglione in Tlze Roolc of TIE Courtier (which served as a conduct Book of sorts for many Elizabethan courtiers) was iuoderation (or sprezzatura). We can see how iinportant the sonnet was as a fonn of the lyric that held in moderation even as it IGnted at - the ovenvl~elining passions of the courtly lover. Perhaps inost significantly, it allowed the poet to represent love as an intense yet elusive, allnost ephemeral and trans-worldly feeling - an ideology of love that characterised the poetry of the courtly love tradition. In this sense, the sonnet was the ideal f o i ~ n the for articulation ofthis doininant conception of love in the Renaissance. Let us briefly exanline this phenomenon.

Spenser's Poetry-I

10.1.2 The Courtly Love Tradition and Poetry
When Sir Thoinas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey translated Petrarch's work into English in the 16"'century, it was to prove tremendously influential. The sonnets initiated a way oPthinking and wi-iting about love in English poetry that was fundamentally chivalric, based on feudal theines and ideas, and centred on the figure of the beloved as mistress of the poet. This way of thinking about love, or ideology of in love, was first formed in the troubadour poetry of Aquitaine and ~ r o v e n c e southern France toward the end of the 1lth century, fiom where its influence spread to Iialy and the rest of Europe. One may describe its basic tenets as the following: the celebration of adulieiy; the near-deification of the mistress; the lover as very often llnrequited in his love; and somewhat paradoxically, the celebration of faithfill service to the beloved. There were several reasons for the emergence of this particular . ideology of love. Medieval Europe in the early part of the last nlillenniuiil was controlled by feuding war-lords, protected and s u ~ ~ o u n d e d aimlies of knigl~ts by who owed allegiance entirely to their respective barons. One means of fonning alliances anlongst these lords was througl~ nlarriages between their houses. These ma~riages of convcnience meant that the lady of the castle was oiten not very close to the lord, and even neglected by her husband. Since the castle populations were predominantly male, with few women, the lady inevitably came to be the recipient of the amorous attention of the many knights and courtiers. The passions thus evoked were tllus often tom by the opposite demands of fidelity to the lord and desire for the beloved. Equally iinportant were the roles of the Catholic imagination ofthe Virgin Mary on the one hand and the pre-Christian tribal conception of woinen as powerful beings, on the other: they Ied to the beloved, because of her social inaccessibility, often being represented as quasi-divine, especially in poetry. It is from this peculiar conjunction of social and historical factors that the poetry of courtly love carries the paradoxical discourses of adultery and fidelity, intense physical passion celebrated in an idealized, almost spiritualized fashion. Poets in particular had few predecessors to tum to, to chart this new mixture df emotions, altllougll the Latin' poet Ovid, in his Ars Alnatoria (which pictured the lover as the slave of his passion and therefore of his beloved), was to prove singularly influential. Tlle poetry that emerged fiom this context spread swiftly through medieval Europe; C S Lewis' old but classic study, The Allegory o f l o v e , is w ~ r t h exploring for a more detailed understanding of this phenomenon. However, by tile time it reached England in the I 61h century, several other factors came to play a decisive role in changing its characteristic features.

Poets like Sidney and Surrey continued in the veil1 of the old courtly love poetry, porlicularly with the ai~ival Elizabeth to the throne of England. She epitomised the of type of the inaccessible inistress even more sllaq~ly than the iigures ofthe beloveds in earlier poetry, and inspired the same kind of mixed and paradoxical fervour. The beloveti in the courtier poetry of tlle time was thus frequently comparcd in her inaccessibility to the queen herself. The inlpoi-taut difference was that Elizabeth, as unattainable, was also fi~nctionally bolh 'lord' and lady: queen, besides being t n ~ l y tile courtier owed allegiance as well as fidelity. This resulted in an intensiiication of poets. It is only in Spenser's \ erse that a the language of deification in the Ei~glish new language is forged, fbsing tlie amorous with the divine ill a way that liberated both from the contradictory pull of the other. We have noted ill the earlier units soine of the reasons for the eillergence of Spenser as a new lcind of poet. What we need to note here is that spread of a strict Protestant inoral code'contributed substantially to the malting of Spenser's poetry. This code broke with the deification of the beloved in the inould of the Virgin Maiy, rendered her more this-worldly, thereby enhancing her desirability while simultaneously insisting on the iinportance of maintaining sexuality and desire within conjugal bounds. It must be noted here that such a langnage of restraint was already available in the inore Platonic conception of love to be found in Petrarch; but Spenser's genius lay in aligning that language with a inore Protest:lnt stress on the iinportance of inail*iagefor sexuality. hl this sense, the language of love that we will see in the Allioretli sonnets and in the Epithalarnio~i later, display the shift from the earlier codes of courtly love to a inore celebratory, this-worldly, and therefore realizable love, that nevertheless einphasises the sanctity of the love itself. Let LIS now examine the three sonnets of the Amoretti chosen for study, in this light,

10.2 THE AMORETTI SONNETS
'The An101,ettisonnets sharc inany of the typical characteristics of the court poetry of sixteenth century Renaissance England. Apart from its use of the soilllet forin, which was veiy fashionable by the time Spenser was writing, it also shares for instance the fashion of incorporating classical and Biblical allusions and nlythology. Another veiy popular idea that these sorlnets share will1 their contemporaries is that of the avowed intent of inunortalisiilg their subjects - in this instance, Elizabeth Boyle. While Spenser owes some of his imagery in particular to continental writers like the Italian 11oct Tasso and the Frencll poet Ronsard, these sonnets are essentially variations on the Petrarchan sonnet, which Spenser was familiar with given the popularity of Pctrarchan poetry in Elizabethan England, and through his own translations of Petrarch. The Petrarchan sonnet, like all sonnets, has fourteen lines and is usually divisible illto two parts, the octave (eight lines) with the rhyme schen~e abbaabba, and sestet (six lines) with the rhyme cdecde, or its variants like cdccdc. Typically the Petrarchan sonnet also einploys the Petrarchan conceit of the beautiful, yet unresponding, cruel and distant inistress/beloved, the object of the sonnet's address. This figure was picked up and reworked by Elizabethan sonneteers, in translations of Petrarch and in original poems, till it became almost hackneyed. But the Petrarch of the Elizabethan imagination is the early Petrarcll, obsessed by the instability of his passions, manifested in his poetry tllrough the common device of the oxymoron. The later Petrarch, who seeks absolution %om such mutability, is picked up oilly by Spenser among the Elizabethans. In Spenser's versions therefore, the mistress is a illuch more accessible and responsive figure than the Elizabethan type or the early Petrarch. The entire sonnet sequence may be split rougllly into three movements, or phases of passion. The first section (sonnets 1-36) is largely in h e mode of coinplaint, and sees the illistress as tyrailnical and his own love as oppressive. The second section (sonnets 37-69) refigures the lover and his mistress in more exploratory, and therefore more

cc;:,ciliatory terms, with the lover appearing more aware of his mistress as 11e1.self a feeling, thinliing and speaking sub-ject of passion. The last section (sonnets 70-87) is ij reversal of the first phase: it sees the poet-lover as successful in his amorous enterprise, and thc terllls of relation change, to~vard subordination of the ~nistress the to thc" clesire and will of the lover. It must be noted that, like a finely composed pizcc of nlusic, tlic thrce ~ ~ ~ o v e m e n t s cannot, in actuality, be so easily separated: there are overlaps and seepages in the themes identified above, between the different pliases, and the schcme suggested here is arguably not waterlight. I-Iowever, it has the advantage of providing us with a convenient ha~idle the complex srntimcnts ancl on attitudes expressed in this sonnet sequence. The three sonnets chosen for study in this unit may be seen as belonging respectively, one to each of the three movenlents identified above. Spcnser also experiments with the line and rhyme schemes ul'll~e sonnet, splitting it into three linked quatrains and a couplet. We shall study the effects of this in our analyses of tlie poems.

Spe~~ser's Poetry-l

10.2.1 Soniict 34
This sonnet, as you Inay have noticed, is inclicativc of'several of the p~~coccupations of the first movement --. ill its tone 'of complaint, its sense of confi~sion and despondency. its depiction ol'thc belovcd as a remote, allnost inaccessible 1igu1-e ancl in its overall scnsc ol'subjugation. It essentially follows the Petrarcha~l trope, first popularized by Wyatt in liis trnnslation of the Italian poet, of Ihe lovcr a:; a stos111tossed ship, cauglit in the grip of his passions. I lowever, Spenser introduces thc itlea of the beloved :IS a star that gi~iclcs Iiim througli thc seas oi'liTe. In storm (or tlle troubles of' life) huwcver, her ligllt is hidden froin him by clouds, leaving him to 'wander now in darlcnessc and dismay' (11. 5-7). Further, unlike the other Elizahctl~nn versions of this trope, Spcnscr does not attribute the storm to his belovecl, implying desires; contrarily, he hopes 'Lhat whcn this thereby that it is a storm ofi~ncluencl~ed stot.me is past', she will shine again as his guiding star (11. 9-12). The sonnet, though apparently diverging from thc Pctrar~han form in its organization into Lliree quatrailis and a couplet, may nevertheless still be split into an octave of two quatrains, and a a sestet with a quatrain a ~ l d couplet, thematically: the first eight lines present thc poet's cu~rent situation of feeling lost in a sea of trouble, without pidance or solace. The first quatrain I.ierc lays out the analogy while the second applies it to the speoliing subject himsell'. 'T'lie next six lines reverse this downward mood, to anticipate releilse from the 'perils' and a renewed access to his beloved. The sestet in turn may be split and into the quatl~lin the couplet, with the latter returning to touch upon the poet's closes. sense of grief and anxiety, with which the poe~iithen The sonnet employs tlic typical Spenserian sonnet form, with the rhyne schemc abab bcbc cdcd ee. The interesting effect this achieves is the continuity between the different quatrains but a discontinuity with the couplet. In tenns of reading the poem, this has one possible effect: the three quatrains reflect a total experience (of trouble and care), in which the hope and anticipation of relief from the experience becomes a part of it, ratlier tlla~i distinct from it; thc final couplet then functions as a rellectivc colmnentary, distinct fiom the experience, and in fact almost objectively rendering thc experience as a total and continuing one.

i0.2.2 Sonnet 67
This sonnet too picks up a trope common to both Pelrarchan sonnets and to other Elizabethan versions of them: the setting ofthe Iiunt, with the beloved as a deer bei~ig hunted by the poet as huntsman. Again, unlike its typical treatment in Elizabethan sonnets, in Spenser's version the huntsman catches his prey. In filct, Spenser's is a radical exception to this convention, for hc not only wins the chase but presents the victory over the beloved, or the concluest of the prey, as being by hcr own will, i.e., as of her own desire (11. 11-12). The ambiguity of line 9, "There she beholding me with mylder looke', maltes it unclear who makes l l ~ e concluest possible by becoming milder, the huntcr or the hunted, but line 11 suggests that the beloved remains nervous about the prospects of marriage, belying the last lines of the poem. It would

U~ldertaking n Stridy o Spenser f

be very insh-uctive for the student to compare this poelll with Sir Tho~nas Wyatt's ' poem 'Whoso list to hunt...', a sonnet with similar themes and imagery, but .in the traditional Petrarchan mould In Wyatt's poem the deer, or beloved, is ultimately unattainable, and the poem ends with the line 'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am' (the Latin phrase meailing 'do not touch me'), which are the words inscribed on the collar around the deer's neck. In contrast, there is no Caesar, or competing lord, to whom the beloved is bound in Spenser's poem. In her veiy availability she thus becomes the site of a transfomling discourse of love and desire in Spenser's poetry a discourse'in which the beloved is not just transfonned fiom a remote and unrealisable object of desire, but, with a new mutuality and reciprocity h a t probably originates in Protestant thougllf, is hinted at as being herself a desiring subject. This sonnet too uses the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee, using the same three quatrains plus a couplet scheme, but unlike sonnet 34, it resists a thematic split into an octave and a sestet. Instead, being a poem less about a condition than an event, it lays out the movements of the event in three steps - the three quatrains - followed by a coinnlenting couplet. The reversal typical to the Spenseiian sonnet happens in the second quatrain itself, with the retuin of the 'deer', and her eventual willingness to be captured.

10.2.3 Sonnet 77
This sonnet bol-rows not from Petrarch but froin another ~laliali poet who was also inspired by Petrarch, Torquato Tasso (1544-95), specifically his sonnet 'Non son si fiuits belli'. Tasso describes his beloved's breasts through two analogles - aub~nmal and tl~e legendary golden apples - but Spenser piclcs on oilly one of these In this sonnet, devoting another sonnet entirely (solmet 76) to the other. In both 76 and 77, Spenser's intelltioils are not to describe physical beauty for its own sake, or as sexually stimulating and erotic, but to forge a connection between physlcal beauty and spiritual virtue, linking the erotic with the spiritual and tlle sacred. That is, he wishes to suggest that the beloved is so fill1 of virtue and religious and inoral purity, that even the sight of her breasts can only arouse in lliin an appreciation oi' these qualities in her, rather than simple physical deslre. Hence the description o r her breasts as Exceeding sweet, yet voyd of sinfull vice, That many sought yet none could euer taste, sweet fruit of pleasure brought from paradice: By loue l~iinselfe in his garden plaste. [tl. 9-12] and The reference to 'paradicel.is multi-leveled, referring to the original sin and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (of sexuality), as well as suggesting that his beloved is Paradise itself embodied, with the understanding of Paradise here as that original state of 'man' when the sensual and the spiritual were not separate but fused. In this Spenser is deliberately attempting a fusion of the Platonic ideal (of ultimate beauty as lying beyond sensual perception), and Christian inyths and values (such that the Platonic Ideal of beauty may be perceived in the physical worlcl by one sufficiently spiritual to not be ovenvhellned by its sensual seductions). Spcnser seems to be applying Refonnation celebrations of conjugal sexuality as superior to celibacy, to the less strictly marriage-oriented Petrarchan frame of sensuality. The reference in the final couplet to the thoughts as guests at the table of his.beloved is intended to co~nmunicate detachlnent from the vagaries or an uilcontrolled sensuality. this Like the other two sonnets, this.soimet too follows the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee. There is a false rhyme between lines 4 and 5, for 'yvory' and 'roialty' are not true rhymes for 'ly' and 'by'. This may suggest a dissonance between the quatrains, but it would not be true. Firstly, the overwhelming theme of the sonnet pre-empts any such dissonance, holding the poem together on [he unlikely conlparison of t l ~ e beloved's remember that such rhyme breasts to a table laden with delicacies. Secondly, we n~ust

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patleks were intended to provide a totality of linked and related experiences. As on such, false rhymes were a permitted poetic liberty, basing the rl~yine spelling rather than sound. We may therefore treat the rhymes as true oiies and regard the t]ree quatrains as part of a single experience, fusing the sensual and the spiritual or religious, rather than as discrete and disconnected paits of one event. Like sonnet 34, this one too describes a condition rather tl~an event (as in sonnet 67). However, an more like sonnet 67, this sonnet too cannot therefore be split into an octave and a sestet.

Spenser's Poetry-I

10.3 LET'S

SUM UP

In this unit we have looked at some important aspects of the sonnet forin and the. traditions of courtly love poetiy that influenced Spenser. We noted how the sonnet was in many ways the aptest literary vehicle for the articulation of a new conception of love that owed much to the Italian courtly love poets. Some of the important aspects of the couitly love tradition and their transforination in Spenser's poetiy, along with the historical reasons for this, were also touched upon. We then examined some of Spenser's shorter poems in this light. We saw how they draw upon and yet diverge substantially from, earlier traditions of love poetry, especially the Petrarchan. We saw how they serve to illustrate not just the poet's unusual poetic skills and originality, but also the peculiar movement in the quality of passion in ihe soilnet sequence, fiom despair to coinprel~ension celebration. The fomlal analyses of the to sonnets also revealed the ways in which Spenser inanaged to forge a new kind of English lyrical folm. In the next unit we will examine two longer poeins by Spenser, the Epithalamion and the Prothalarnio~z. -

10.4 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW
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3. The courtly love tradition was in many' ways formative of the poetry that was to follow the Renaissance poets, even ifjt was substantially modified by them. Do you agree? In the three sonnets fiom the Anzoretti by Spenser that you hav; read, what do you consider are the specifically Petrarchan elements? How does Spenser rework them, if at all? The Amoretfi sonnets by Spenser are replete with images of sensuality, What, in your opinion, do these coinnlunicatk about (a) the poet; (b) his beloved; and (c) the age? In sonnets 34, 67 and 77 of the Amoretti, Spenser explores a vision of love that is at odds with both the Christian ind the Classical. Do you agree?

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10.5 ADDITIONAL READING
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Burrow, Colih, Edmund Spenser (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996) Coopet, Helen, Pastoral: Medieval into Renaissance (Ipswich; D.S. Brewer, 1977) Dasenbrock, Reed Why, 'The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti'.

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PMLA 1 0 0 , l (1985)
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5.
Ellrodt, Robert, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (Geneva: Droz, 1960) Lewis, C S , The Allegoly of Love. Johnson, William C., SJ~enser$ Amoretti: Analogies ofLove (Lewisbyrg: Bbcknell University Press, 1990). .