At the Spenser Millennium conference in Ireland, a figure dressed as
Spenser announced a contest. We were all to quote some lines from the
FQ. Then he came around and graded our papers. Most everyone had the
beginning of Book I -- I had something different (I forget what now), so I
got an A. Interesting, though -- not many Spenserians could quote much.
But -- despite that -- I love the language of the FQ and love to read it
aloud. Am I weird?
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> 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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