Bethany's latest message prompts me to put together some thoughts, stimulated
first by earlier postings by Anne Prescott, Harry Berger, and several others.
I had forgotten that J W Lever describes several sonnets as extraneous to
Spenser's courtship of Elizabeth B. As ALP quite accurately recalls, #8 was
certainly written earlier, circa 1580, on the evidence of its appearance in
several MS. Miscellanies. Also relevant is its elaborately intertextual
character, which I discussed some years back in a JWCI article (see the
bibliog. in the Maclean/Prescott Norton Critical text, 3rd ed.). Spenser's
source text is a sonnet by Petrarch addressed to Laura's eyes; I also find
similarities to Greville's ‘Caelica' 3 and Sidney's ‘A & S' 42; if that's not
enough I think there's a poem by Ronsard that harks back to Petrarch's
‘original.'
Things get even more interesting if you compare Amoretti 8 with the stanza
devoted to ‘her faire eyes' in the first blazon of Belphoebe (FQ II iii 23).
Was this topical episode, perhaps, among the parts of FQ composed circa 1580,
seen by Harvey, and maybe by Sidney and Greville?
Amoretti 74, about the three Elizabeths, has also been mentioned. Has it also
been noted that what comes next concerns ‘her name upon the strand' and
subsequently ‘in the hevens.' Whose name? Since the name is wiped out twice
before the sestet where Spenser claims eternity for it through his verse, we
might follow the sequence seen in 74 and say that the person being eternized
is Elizabeth Boyle and ‘our love' is limited to the domestic couple. Except
that line 13 in 74 declares (or wishes?), ‘Ye three Elizabeths for ever live.'
Terry Krier may wish to make her own comment on #74: I believe it and other
parts of the ‘Amoretti / Epith.' sequence are discussed in her forthcoming
book.
So what's in a name? And what's in a person? Maybe in the 3 E's there's some
resonance with Telamond/ Triamond in FQ IV, an episode I won't pretend to
understand. I will say, though, that in many ways Spenser's poetry suggests,
and sometimes insists, that personal identity, as designated by the proper
names that insert individual natures in culture, is (whatever we moderns try
to make of it) not really all that important. The ‘quiddity' that survives
poetic representation is very important (hence the question for discussion at
Kalamazoo) but remains mysterious.
Two other thoughts about ES's second wife and/or the beloved in the
‘Amoretti'. First, I think it would be worth studying the activities of the
lady in several sonnets: looking in her mirror, plying her needle, etc.
Second, I have a suggestion about the fragmentary sentence appended to the
number of sonnet 58: ‘By her that is most assured to her selfe.' Does this
cryptic note become too clear if we pause, as if for a comma, after ‘assured,'
then read the sonnet as written ‘by' the lady ‘to her selfe'? If that makes
sense, 59 would be the poet's response, justifying by its praise his reading
of the lady's reflections and his appropriation of them for his purposes in
the sequence. Other ways of reading this mirroring pair of sonnets are
possible: see not only the notes in Maclean & Prescott, but those in the Yale
ed. and McCabe's Penguin.
Cheers, Jon Quitslund (Prof. Emeritus, Geo. Washington Univ.)
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> I have been reading J.W. Lever's crticism of the _Amoretti_ which
>seems, among other things, unduly cynical. He claims that at least eighteen
>of Spenser's sonnets (Sonnet 10 and 54 are the only of the eighteen that my
>edition names) were written at different times for different reasons and were
>simply inserted in the sequence for make it seem chronologically complete.
>These are the sonnets that speak of Elizabeth refusing his love, etc. While I
>am somewhat willing to believe that not *every* sonnet was written
>specifically to Elizabeth Boyle, these two (and I would assume the other
>sixteen are similar) seem the be the ones that reveal the most specific and
>unique things about Elizabeth's character..... any thoughts?
>
>Bethany Matheny
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