At 11:18 AM -0500 2/24/04, dmiller wrote:
>For the record, Heninger is my own source for the observation as well. It
>was at the Huntington that he tested me on my memory of Spenser's verse, as
>in the description Andrew quotes.
>
>I don't draw the same conclusions Heninger does from the observation, but
>I've never forgotten it--and judging from the number of people who were at
>the Yale conference and have repeated it since, it must strike home with
>many readers.
It struck home with me then and now, but only as a surprise since
it's so different from my own experience. Spenser has never been
part of my day job and I regrettably haven't cracked the covers of a
Spenser text since before the Cambridge conference, but just now I
was able to sit down and type out a few whole stanzas and parts of
others from here and there in the FQ before I decided I was getting
carried away and ought to stop. I missed a few words and a couple
of lines got mangled or went missing entirely. (I couldn't reproduce
the orthography or punctuation the same way twice, but I doubt
Spenser could have either.) Generally speaking, though, if I've spent
enough time with a passage to quote it in a paper or article,
substantial chunks of it stay with me and with some accuracy. I know
a few scattered lines from the SC but not longer passages. I think I
know a couple of the Amoretti as well, but those I intentionally
memorized some years ago.
It seems unlikely to me that my experience is exceptional, and there
are enough things that pass through from one of my ears to the other
without leaving a mark that I'm quite sure I have no particular gift
for remembering. I had always thought (at least before David's
comments at Yale) that there was something that made Spenser's verse
particularly easy to remember: the regularity of the meter, the
density of the rhyme, the sheer verbal chewiness. I can certainly
quote more Spenser than I can any of the other poets Heninger
mentions in the passage Andrew has reproduced for us with the
possible exception of Shakespeare. At the very least there must be
considerable variation in how people experience and remember verse;
perhaps different ears and brains are just wired differently. But I
do wonder, how are "All the worthies liggen wrapt in lead" and "O
cursed Elde, the cankerworme of writs" less memorable than anything
from Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, etc.?
--
________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:[log in to unmask]
"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
difficult than getting in."
Brad Leithauser
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