I think I should clarify that, in my opinion, criticism of FQ and FW is entirely
fair game, and it's something that I encounter as a teacher all the time.  In
my survey course, I assign only the first few and last few cantos of FQ Book 3,
mainly because they invite themselves to the sort of "surface" reading which we
all know is only a very basic starting point.  And I teach Dubliners for the
same reason.  I'd love to depart from this, but I have to meet undergraduate
demand.  Anyway, I'd be a hypocrite to criticize writers of rarified text
because I think I qualify.  But I suppose the heart of my feeling on the
subject is that some conversations happen in large groups and some in small
ones.  I don't think that either is especially valid, and here I differ from
Bloom.

Michael

Quoting Willett Steven <[log in to unmask]>:

> On Oct 21, 2005, at 11:57 PM, Kevin Farnham wrote:
> 
> > My original "novice" assessment -- that Spenser's writing is
> > less excellent when he is more actively seeking favor with the
> > Queen -- appears indeed to be an oversimplification. The
> > consensus among critics seems to be that nearly every detail of
> > the Faerie Queene may be a political commentary of some type. If
> > this is true, then there is no separation of the work into
> > sections that are primarily allegoric political commentary (the
> > parts I felt are inferior) and sections that represent pure,
> > unfettered artistic vision. The latter does not exist.
> 
> The "consensus" above seems to me as highly exaggerated as the claim  
> that every detail of the FQ "may be a political commentary of some  
> type," and I'm surprised that no one on the list has addressed the  
> assertion.  Unless we are dealing with a transvaluation of the term  
> 'politics,' the FQ is not simpliciter a versified political tract.   
> We all are gifted with aesthetic freedom, so if Mr. Farnham wants to  
> believe his claim, then "unfettered artistic vision" in Spenser does  
> not exist for him.  Personally I am not interested in unfettered  
> artistic vision if it means isolating poetry from the manifold  
> concerns of life.  I know of few major works whose artistic vision is  
> not "fettered" by some local political, historical or social issues,  
> but that does not mean they are extraneous or destructive of art.   
> The living proof is Chinese lyric poetry.  From the Han to the Sung,  
> the greatest lyric poets dealt with political issues--taken in the  
> widest possible range--without compromising their artistic vision.   
> More recently I could point to the Russian poets Osip Mandelstam and  
> Anna Akhmatova, particularly the latter's "Requiem" and "Poem without  
> a Hero."  The closest thing to unfettered artistic vision that I know  
> is Japanese haiku, though modernist Japanese poets like Nishiwaki  
> Junzaburo deal with the realities of pre- and post-war Japan.  As a  
> general proposition, then, I think any fair assessment of the world's  
> best poetry over the past 2,500 years--especially Greek and Roman-- 
> will attest to the comfortable if occasionally antagonistic relations  
> between the political and the aesthetic.  The desire for pure,  
> unalloyed aesthetic vision conveyed in verbal music untouched by  
> grating reality is a romantic dream and, in the end, a dead end, as  
> the Symbolists quickly discovered.
> 
> Spenser's artistic vision, however, is quite intact.  Vast stretches  
> of Books I, III-IV and VI in particular deal with religious,  
> spiritual, ethical, amatory, social and historical issues that are  
> not presented through a specifically political perspective.  More  
> than politics, Christian and Classical motifs dominate the narrative  
> landscape where errors in perception, with their immediate  
> consequences, are the rule.  If I had to encapsulate the power of the  
> FQ into a single expression, it would run something like this:  
> Spenser presents us with a highly complex but deceptively-obvious  
> world where the slightest mistake in self-understanding can  
> precipitate a descent into confusion, corruption and decay.  He is  
> unrelenting in his portrayal of the deceptions we use against  
> ourselves in our failure to see the inner and outer rightly.  The  
> world we've conveniently interpreted for ourselves is always  
> dangerous in Spenser despite its intoxicating beauty, and we're never  
> very comfortable in it, as the fallen shouldn't be.  Rilke comes  
> close to the same view: whom can humans use to help them in this  
> existence?  Not angels and not other men,
> 
> und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
> daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
> in der gedeuteten Welt.
> 
> We are here in one sense absolutely alone as we negotiate every step  
> in life with our own spiritual, rational and ethical resources.   
> Whatever religion or education has given us, we must make the final  
> decisions.  Spenser shows, more than any other writer I know, the  
> subtle traps that wait to snare our presumptions.  For me this makes  
> the FQ the essential poem, far more important than anything else in  
> the English canon.
> 
> Turning now to a separate topic, we meet the following from Mr.  
> Farnham in another post:
> 
> "I truly believe the assigned mission for every artist is to
> light the world, to let the world feel the warmth of, and if
> possible, actually experience the light the artist finds shining
> into her/his soul and imagination. With FW, that light is not
> effectively transmitted/shared with the world at large..."
> 
> I don't know where Mr. Farnham got this vaguely immense and warming-- 
> if empty--idea of the artist's mission, but as stated it's  
> meaningless.  Artists create for a variety of reasons, not always  
> conscious, and there is no requirement that their products be easily  
> or widely accessible.  We do not measure the stature of art by the  
> size of its audience.  Dante is certainly not more accessible than  
> Spenser if one is going to read him with full understanding of his  
> worldview.  Anyone who sits down to read the Commedia without a very  
> thorough commentary like Singleton's is going to miss nearly  
> everything that mattered to Dante.  I should say that more will be  
> missed with him than with Spenser, who is much closer to our cultural  
> milieu and far less involved in factional politics of the sort that  
> exiled Dante from Florence.  We must also be extremely careful about  
> prejudging a work's inaccessibility.  Poets that were once thought to  
> be opaque can, with continual reading and interpretation, become a  
> familiar part of our poetic domain.  A good example is Paul Celan's  
> work after "Todesfuge."  To take the case of prose, I personally  
> consider Thomas Bernhard the greatest European novelist of the post- 
> World War II period, but it took a long time for him to find an  
> audience as readers confronted his vast paragraphless,  
> punctuationless prose structures based on musical theme and  
> variations.  Great artists, however, have a way of educating their  
> readers how to read them, and he has succeeded in attracting quite a  
> large readership that continues to grow, if not in Austria.  Joyce  
> has done the same, and I think Mr. Farnham underestimates the number  
> of readers willing to undergo the semantic discipline necessary to  
> read FW with enjoyment.  I meet them every time I go to lecture in  
> the US.  Consider the parallel case of Greek and Latin literature.   
> If one wishes to read it in the original languages, which is the only  
> way to read it with deep understanding, then one must put oneself  
> through a disciplined course of study that dwarfs anything required  
> to read FW.  Very few now read Greek and Latin, but that does not  
> lessen the import of their poets.  They are waiting in temporary  
> eclipse.  The time will come again when the languages are studied to  
> gain direct access to their cultural heritage, which has never ceased  
> since the renaissance to inseminate the West.  Indeed, Latin is  
> already experiencing an efflorescence in the US.
> 
> I would hate to think that Mr. Farnham's despairing view of Spenser  
> is the product of his teachers.  If so, they seem to have fatally  
> muddled his ability to experience the FQ.  The formal and  
> professional study of English literature probably does as much harm  
> as good to students by giving them too much of a guided tour.   
> Excessive hermeneutics can take away the mystery that entices us into  
> the work on our own.
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Steven J. Willett
> Shizuoka University of Art and Culture
> Department of International Culture Studies
> 1794-1 Noguchi-cho, Shizuoka Pref.
> Hamamatsu City, Japan 430-8533
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Phone: 53-457-6142
> 




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