Yes, the article sounds like a howler.   In its current status as purloined 

letter, what sounds silly (to me, anyway) is less its connection between the 

study of literature and capitalism (I accept what Guillory says about that) 

than its confidence that “bourgeois” and “monopoly capitalists” refer to 

specific groups and are secure terms.  That certainty might be one origin of 

the conspiracy theory of Spenserians that Spenserians themselves find 

bewildering.  



I guess what I’m getting at is that Spenser’s class analysis, so to speak, is 

more subtle and less decisive.  What is historically interesting about terms 

like "aristocratic" or "noble" for me is not how they *are* defined but how 

they fall apart periodically for Spenser (or how he makes them fall apart—I 

can never decide).  In contrast, one problem with the “bourgeois paradigm” 

is it assumes a secure opposition between bourgeois and aristocratic, and 

assumes a secure definition of each (warrior vs banker, feudalism vs 

capitalism). (Brenner, by the way, has two totally brilliant analyses of this – 

one is Bourgeois Revolution and Transition to Capitalism, in The First 

Modern Society [I think that’s the title] a festschrift for Lawrence Stone; and 

an article in New Left Review in 1977 where he takes Dobb’s side and goes 

after Sweezy and Braudel) .  I don’t think there is any simple opposition 

between labor and capital, or between nobles and bourgeoisie, in the 

Mammon episode, though there is clearly some sort of social opposition 

starting to appear that doesn’t exist until the 16th century.  The Mammon 

episode doesn’t describe some perennial problem of aristocracy, but 

instead struggles with a pretty specific definition—and struggles, I think, 

with making this specific problem look like a perennial one.  Similarly, is 

Red Cross a noble, or a social climber who becomes, or is made into, a 

noble by the end of the book?  I don’t think Spenser can answer that 

question.  



Spenser’s concern with the “origin of wealth” in Mammon reminds me of 

Shakespeare’s sonnet 144, where in the last line “angel” means both the 

theological thing and a coin. Shakespeare spends (so to speak) a lot of 

energy struggling to figure out what exactly angel means (what the origin 

of its value is), but can’t pin it down – his speaker has to “live in doubt.”  Is 

this a religious problem or a money problem?  the question is the historical 

problem--it's the speaker's question, and as a question it defines his social 

position.



A very short way of saying all this, I guess, is that class oppositions should 

be deconstructed, and that Spenser, unlike the purloined version of 

Kogan’s article, seems to deconstruct them all the time.  



Sorry for the long post –  I’m avoiding writing my syllabus...



cw

---- Original message ----

>Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:54:57 -0700

>From: Jean Goodrich <[log in to unmask]>  

>Subject: Re: article review  

>To: [log in to unmask]

>

>True, though I think Marx was a little less polite.

>

>But that last sentence, "The recent revival of his poetry is part of the 

efforts

>of the monopoly capitalists to mobilize all their cultural despotism in

>self-defence," seems more of a disparagment of the people who pulled 

Spenser

>out of the mothballs, as it were, than of Spenser himself. It is probably 

true

>that we are all to some extent complicit in a capitalist system, but there 

are

>far better ways to succeed as a capitalist than going into academia. I'm

>assuming of course that the people who revived Spenser were academics. 

I just

>can't see the Enron execs of the late 60s reading Spenser.

>

>Besides, given the context of the article, written in 1970, look what 

Spenser's

>work has allowed us to do in terms of critique of culture and the 

establishment

>since the poststructuralist "revolution." There isn't one category that sets

>the "us" apart from the "them" where Spenser hasn't given us something 

to work

>with. There are too many cracks in the facade, too many hooks to grab 

onto. If

>Spenser's work were all bread and roses, it wouldn't tell us anything 

about the

>rise of capitalism, the deployment and exercise of power, anxiety about 

the

>female Other, fear about the racial and ethnic Other, the inherently 

human

>imperfection of religious systems, etc. And it would be deadly dull, too.

>

>Still, if we fall back to the criticism that Spenser is just another dead white

>male in the canon of other dead white males -- well, what's that 

ubiquitous old

>saying? "Know thine enemy?" We can teach Spenser paired with Lanyer or 

Mary

>Wroth, or Books 4-5 with the Tain Bo (especially the fall of Radigund). Or 

how

>about some literature translated from Arabic where the Saracen is the 

good guy,

>and the Christian and westerner are demonized? Wow, not that would be 

a great

>syllabus to teach right about now.

>

>

>Jean Goodrich

>English Department

>University of Arizona

>

>

>Quoting "Peter C. Herman" <[log in to unmask]>:

>

>> At  And I tried to think of just one Spenserian that I've met, just

>> >one, that I'd put in league with the "monopoly capitalists to mobilize 

all

>> >their cultural despotism." I mean, Spenserians?!  The author is not a

>> >Renaissance scholar, perhaps she has mistaken Milton for Spenser?

>>

>>

>> Didn't Marx say something to the effect of Spenser being a bootlicker 

for

>> capitalists? Is that perhaps what the article's author had in mind? 

Maybe?

>>

>> Peter C. Herman

>> Dept. of English

>> SDSU

>>

Christopher Warley

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Oakland University

248-370-2256