Arcadians---
Having just recently re-subscribed to the List, I missed the tense exchanges.
No need to renew such, but I find merit both in the suggestion that the
blind-seeing boy is not Marlowe but Cupid, and in the other, more important
observation, that Spenser belongs solidly in the group of poets mentioned.
How is that group of men to be imagined, with ref. to our own conventional sex
and gender categories? Careful, careful. The term 'homosexual' is unhelpful,
as it indicates a specific sexual orientation. It seems to me that Sp. treats
homoerotic emotions and the rivalries and attachments of male bonding with as
much fascination and insight as he brings to heterosexuality and the emergent
ideals of companionate marriage.
Cheers, Jon Quitslund
==== Original Message From Edmund Spenser Discussion List
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>Not to reignite the embers of the tense exchanges we all suffered through
last fall, but isn't it possible that the less complicated/conspiratorial
explanation of these lines is at work? Could the blind-seeing boy just be
Cupid, conventionally
>depicted as a blind archer, whose arrows/love inspiration cost Collin his
liberty, Astrophel his joy, caused Amyntas to weep, and annoyed Rowland?
>
>---Original Message----
>Bill Godshalk wrote:-
>>Was this a club for gay poets? Marlowe, Greville, and Sidney have been
>>seen as homosexuals. How about Ed Spenser?
>
>But of course -- please don't tell Bert Hamilton.
>
>'Richard Barnfield' wrote --
>
>By thee great Collin lost his liberty,
>By thee sweet Astrophel forwent his joy;
>By thee Amyntas wept incessantly,
>By thee Rowland liv'd in great annoy;
>O cruel, peevish, viled, blind-seeing Boy,
>How canst thou hit their hearts, and yet not see?
>(If thou be blind, as thou art feigned to be.)
>
>After 1593, Marlowe, aka Barnfield, was blind in one eye (a wound
>from a twelvepenny dagger). He was the "blindseeing Boy" who had
>been a "catamite" to all of them!
>
>Peter Zenner
>
>Phone/fax (0) 1246 271726
>Visit my web site 'Zenigmas' at
>http://www.pzenner.freeserve.co.uk
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