Regarding Hercules, for those who are interested in Spenser's fork in the garden of forking paths
(it was Hercules, wasn't it, who stood at the Scheidewege?), I recommend some pages in
'Milton, Spenser, and the Epic Tradition,' by my good friend Patrick Cook -- a book well reviewed
but not enough cited. Patrick gives several pages to Ariosto's Ercole / Hercules (pp. 75-80), and
the second of his two chapters on Spenser begins with 'Herculean Displacements (98-114), in
which he argues (to oversimplify a subtle argument) that FQ contains an 'Heracleid,' contributing
to a strain of humanist opinion and erudite poetry established by Salutati, Giraldi Cinthio, Conti
and Cartari, and Jacques Peletier du Mans. At first glance I thought Patrick's argument was just
a bit over-ingenious, but now I'm having second and third thoughts, informed by the many
splendid contributions to this thread.
Cheers, Jon Quitslund (Geo. Washington U.)
> Rob, this is wonderful. It's all the more wonderful, I think, because of
> what your colleagues Joe Black and Allen Carroll published recently in
> Spenser Studies, that invaluable journal: a poem, you recall, signed 1588
> and commending the Faerie Queene in a poem that calls the author a poor
> forswonke shepherd who "Pan is Hee." I had completely forgotten about the
> Pan and Hercules bit at the end of the Sidney. Joe thinks the author is
> Thomas Watson. Anyway, something to ponder. I got one of those amazing
> messages from Jim Nohrnberg who in a reversal of the usual reminder about
> charity can receive but not give (e-mails). I can't do e-stuff very well
> but I will try to forward it to the list, so if you receive a mysterious
> message about mounts of contemplation, that is Jim Nohnrberg. Anne P.
>
> > Anne Prescott's suggestion seems neither wild nor crazy; in fact, it's a
> > wonderful point to have in mind for reading that very difficult, very
> > contentious ending to Sidney's Lady of May--a fiction almost everyone
> > agrees
> > has "something" to do with Elizabeth's proposed marriage to Alencon,
> > whatever
> > that "something" might be.
> >
> > At the end of the masque in lines of admitted defeat, Therion the forester
> > adopts the voice of Pan and takes consolation in the fact that he's been
> > defeated by Hercules:
> >
> > 'Poor Pan,' he said, 'although thou beaten be,
> > It is no shame since Hercules was he.'
> >
> > Could Pan/Therion's admission of defeat--defeat at the hands of
> > Hercules--in a
> > marriage contest decided by Elizabeth have resonated ironically with the
> > contemporary debate about the Queen's "impending" marriage to
> > Francois-Hercule, duc d'Alencon? I think so. And partly what's interesting
> > about the ironies at stake is that they work nicely whether Therion's
> > speech
> > (more likely scripted in advance of the Queen's decision for Espilus the
> > shepherd than for Therion the forester, I'd argue) wound up in his mouth
> > or
> > his rival's. In either instance, the reference to Hercule/Hercules looks
> > satirically barbed, but a reading that gives that speech by design to
> > Espilus
> > appears all the more attractive in light of the apparent allusion to
> > Alencon.
> > Sidney's story about Pan's embarrassment and shame refers to the god's
> > humiliation upon discovering that he's bed-hopped with Hercules rather
> > than
> > Omphale--poor hopes for progeny, indeed.
> >
> >>===== Original Message From Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
> > <[log in to unmask]> =====
> >>this is a wild and probably crazy and irrelevant idea, but another guy
> >>named "hercules" was Francois-Hercule, duc d'Alencon and then d'Anjou
> >>(sorry--I can't do accents). French court flatterers were to call Henri
> >>III "Hercules" and, much more often and with a damnsight more
> >> credibility,
> >>Henri IV a Hercules too--and not just a Gallic one who can chain ears but
> >>the original monster-slayer. From Sidney's point of view, as from
> >>Spenser's, the problem was the off-chance that young Francois-Hercule, if
> >>he married Elizabeth, might possibly produce offspring. Yes, a real
> >>stretch, but I did want to mention Elizabeth's very own French Hercules.
> >> I
> >>don't think Sidney could have known about Hercule Poirot, though. Anne P.
> >>
> >>>> I've been unable to find a gloss on Sidney's phrase "Herculea proles"
> >>>> at
> >>>> the end of the Defense of Poesy that explains the source of the
> >>>> phrase.
> >>>> Does anyone know where Sidney got it? I've also been unable to locate
> >>>> a
> >>>> reason for it in the Hercules myth(s). Why would a nobleman who
> >>>> supports
> >>>> poetry be described as a descendent of Hercules?
> >>>
> >>> Ariosto uses the phrase in the introductory stanzas to the Orlando
> >>> Furioso, in the dedication to his sometime patron, Ippolito de'Este,
> >>> son
> >>> of Ercole I d'Este:
> >>>
> >>> Piacciavi, generosa Erculea prole,
> >>> ornamento e splendor del secol nostro,
> >>> Ippolito, aggradir questo che vuole
> >>> e darvi sol può l'umil servo vostro.
> >>> Quel ch'io vi debbo, posso di parole
> >>> pagare in parte e d'opera d'inchiostro;
> >>> né che poco io vi dia da imputar sono,
> >>> che quanto io posso dar, tutto vi dono.
> >>>
> >>> (Generous offspring of Hercules, ornament and splendor of our age, may
> >>> it please you to accept this which your lowly servant would like to,
> >>> and
> >>> alone is able to, give you. The debt I owe you I can partially repay
> >>> with words and with a work of ink; do not think that I give you too
> >>> little, for all that I can give, I give to you.)
> >>>
> >>> Hercules is a favorite figure of courtier-poets in Ferrara because of
> >>> the pun on Ercole I and II d'Este, and he becomes a figure for the
> >>> subject both fashioned by a humanist education and fragmented by
> >>> madness
> >>> (as in Seneca's Hercules Furens, echoed by Ariosto's title). Albert
> >>> Ascoli devotes a section of his Ariosto book to the figure of Hercules:
> >>> see Ariosto's Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian
> >>> Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 46–70.
> >>>
> >>> As far as I remember, Sidney doesn't refer to Ariosto directly, so
> >>> perhaps Sidney and Ariosto are analogues from a common tradition.
> >>>
> >>> Kathryn Evans
> >>> UC Berkeley
> >>>
> >
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