Dr. Shirley Sharon-Zisser wrote:
> hopelessly yours,
No, it's not hopeless. All our "hero's", and "heroines", had read Plotinus,
and certainly Plato's Symposium. Whatever one's sexual orientation - it
doesn't matter. Marlowe may have been "gay" (which is a term I object to,
since it degrades our very language) - but so what? That he may sensually
describe the lower vertebrae of a male - I expect nothing less of any poet!
We don't accuse Keats of having sex with nightingales do we?
Poetry is about what one sees "through" the beloved. Isn't it? And we all
agree don't we?
Shirley, I think I love you. But you're going to have to start writing in
plain language.
Renaissance Lute Tablature, Robert Fludd, Theocritus (even Ps.Theocritus for
the eighth), are all on topic for me!
Prof. Prescott has, wisely, raised the memory of D.P. Walker and Frances
Yates, and their territory of the "prisca theologia". Not only their
territory, I think.
I'm old enough to have been brought up with Tillyard!
Frances Yates showed, perhaps, a more valid Elizabethan "world picture".
But, D.P. Walker went much more deeply into the original material - and
even, perhaps, became entranced! For D.P. Walker the real, authentic,
"prisca theologia" were Orpheus, Pythagoras, and, through them, Plato. And
guess what! For Theocritus, Bion, Virgil, Ovid - through to E.K. - it
remained the same. For even Ficino had abandoned Hermes Trismegistus in the
end.
For Orpheus/Pythagoras (I can't distinguish the two) Poetry, Music, and
Science, were all the same thing. For Spenser too, I think. Since then,
they seem to have moved in quite separate directions.
If we are to continue the conversation, must we not reunite them?
Spenser, I would guess, was familiar with Ficino and Pico della Mirandola
(both). Spenser, and here I'm certain, had not read Lacan.
Maybe that should give us a clue.
Andy
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