I didn't mean to suggest that the irrelevance of _differance_ to Spenser's aesthetics was a problem at all; except for people who claim the relevance of _differance_ to Spenser's aesthetics.
J.D. Fleming
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 13:05:43 -0500 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> --But the problem with "anticipated-but-deferred wholeness"
> (_differance_) is that it is inconsistent with Spenser's aesthetic
> Neoplatonism.--
>
> Yes, that's the problem. But it isn't just our problem, it was Spenser's,
> too, and he has an amazing facility for allowing such problems to play
> unresolved in his verse. Whatever beliefs Spenser held, he seems to have
> held them differently, or with a difference, when writing. For a poet who
> manages at times to sound defensive, he wrote remarkably undefended poetry,
> so permeable to contradiction that when (since you spoke of the
> Epithalamion) he gives us a portrait of his bride, he compares her effect
> on the beholder to Medusa's.
>
>
> _____
>
> David Lee Miller
>
> Department of English 543 Boonesboro Ave
> University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40508
> Lexington, KY 40506-0027 (859) 252-3680
> (859) 257-6965
> FAX 323-1072
Dr. James Dougal Fleming,
Assistant Professor of English,
Simon Fraser University,
(604) 291-4713
Laissez parler les faits.
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