Dear List Members,
I'm forwarding this at the request of Thomas Herron, who's having trouble
posting directly.
Hello -- at odds with the emphasis on hobgoblin as a childish figment of
the imagination is the political and poetical... Willy Maley follows the
respected Roland Smith in offering a remotely Irish contextualization of
Harvey's "hobgoblin." cf. Maley, A Spenser Chronology… 11; Maley, “’To
Weet to Work Irenaes Franchisement”: Ireland in The Faerie Queene.” Irish
University Review 26.2 (Autumn/Winter 1996), 342-53: 350; Roland Smith,
“Irish Names in the Faerie Queene.” Modern Language Notes 61 (January
1946), 27-38: 27-8n.
Their argument gains some support from Sp's late use of the word in "Epith"
among Munster things that "sing" with "drery accents" (351):
Ne let hob goblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not. (343-4)
It would be interesting to think of these lines as a rejoinder to Harvey's
earlier criticism of Sp's own poetry... for as Sp makes clear, his is the
type that, like Apollo and Orpheus, can shine light on his love and make
the woods ring in Co. Cork. Might we therefore interpret the above line,
"names whose sense we see not," as a criticism of language ("names") that
has no worthwhile metaphorical or allegorical meaning (to be "see[n]"); or
that is hollow criticism, the shallow babble of a hobgoblin who, like
Harvey (in that long-ago instance) or a croaking frog needing choking,
slanders the purpose of his Faerie Queene?
Reading back fifteen years (a silly thing to do), did Harvey's comment
perhaps imply that Sp. couldn't write a proper allegory, or that its
subject was wrong, being too focused on Irish allegories ("hobgoblins") to
make a whit of difference to sophisticated Londoners; that as far as the
court was concerned, Sp. may as well have been writing children's stories,
all rhyme and no serious reason? By contrast, fifteen years later, Spenser
may have re-used this term in order to defend his own poetry as allegorical
in a mature and meaningful way, exactly because it used Ireland as a basis
of Apollonian reveries and marital revelries that should interest the
London court, whatever its former prejudices:
"O fayrest Phoebus, father of the Muse,
If ever I did honour thee aright,
Or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight,
Do not thy servants simple boone refuse,
But let this day, let this one day be mine" (Epth 121-5)
--Tom H.
Hannibal Hamlin
Assistant Professor of English
The Ohio State University
1680 University Drive
Mansfield, OH 44906
419-755-4277
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