Would Dante's Beatrice count (since the poet early vowed to dedicate his
life's work to the deceased's glorification)? (For SOME of the
complexities, see "The Autobiographical Imperative and the Necessity of
'Dante' in Purgatorio 30.55," Modern Philology, Vol. 111, No. 1 (Autumn,
2003), 1-47. Also one might want to consider, on the far side of the
citation of Sidney/Greville, things like Jonson's poem in effect dedicating
Shakespeare's works to either Shakespeare or the continuing audience for
those works: "To the memory of my beloued, The AVTHOR MR. WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE: AND what he hath left vs." -- Which famous verses end with
Shakespeare's stellification. (Or L. Digges: "TO THE MEMORIE of the
deceased Author Maister W. Shakespeare.") These verses are merely
supplements of the dedication to the two dedicatees -- the Earls of Pembroke
and Montgomery -- for the opening pages of the First Folio -- but they do
seeem to make the book (as posthumously edited by Shakespeare's friends) a
homage to the late departed. Which brings me to the point in reference to
the present case" that although The Faerie Queene's somewhat fulsome
panoply of dedications do not include one to the deceased Sidney, they
almost do, in the "Remembraunce of the most Heroicke spirit ... Who first
[Spenser's] Muse did lift out of flore, / To sing his sweet delights in
lowlie laies;" i.e., the dead Sidney who is crerdited with having encouraged
the pastoral poet of the Calendar, as he appears in the dedication of the
later, epic poem to, among the many others, Sidney's survivor, "the right
honoruable and most vertuous Lady, the Countess oe Penbroke": the proof is
in the last line, "Vourchsafe from him this token in good worth to take." =
Receive it in his place. This may not be a dedication to the dead Sidney,
yet it offers to do duty for one. -- jcn
On Thu, 7 Sep 2006 11:15:51 -0400
William Oram <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Does anyone know of a writer dedicating a work or works to a dead person
> before Greville's dedication of his works to Sir Philip Sidney? It's my
> sense that dedications in the sixteenth century were normally concerned
> to connect the writer with the living, rather than with honoring the
> dead. Am I missing a tradition upon which Greville was drawing, or is
> he really doing something new?
> Bill Oram
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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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