"So," to repeat, "the problem here, apparently, is the defining or
re-defining of -- or the constricting or enlarging of -- the scope of a
single author’s 'publishing' project, where there need not be much
difference between editing a collection, and creating one." For
'publishing' also read 'booking.' (The "single author" -- or authorship --
of the "book" is less than proven, but more than a mere convention like
"Aesop" [or perhaps "Confucius"].) That is, a sonnet series is a kind of
editorial work of bookish art, and "is itself a poem," made up of a
lyricist's separate works of sonnet-art, or demonstrations of hus/her
sonnet-virtuosity, which have then been creatively anthologized by a guiding
hand; and issued not as a miscellany, but rather as a thematically coherent
and/or story-telling whole--series or sequence or catena or "garland." (A
select grouping or sequencing of Psalms, such as the so-called Messianic
Psalms, or the Penetential Psalms, might be compared.) -- Jim N.
On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 12:15:31 -0400
Marshall Grossman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> A literary historical point could be made: although we are unlikely to
>know definitively what Shakespeare's role was in putting the sonnets into
>the shape they now have, we do know that Thorpe's 1609 quarto is the book
>that entered literary history and has, for all these years, been
>assimilated by it. With that I venture a formal argument that Q is a very
>good book, that the poems are clearly ordered in a way that yields
>narrative, that "The Lover's Complaint" makes good sense where it is (as
>Duncan-Jones and others have argued) and that the sonnets--as we might read
>them in Q--track very nicely with preoccupations we find in the plays (e.
>g. 20 and Twelfth Night, 94 and Measure for Measure, 138 and just about
>every everything he ever writ.) So, even, if we were to add, "as compiled
>by J. Thorpe" to the author line, we'd still have a book.
>
> Marshall Grossman
> Professor
> Department of English
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20895
>
> 301-405-9651
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> I don't disagree--although I do like editions that give one choices, even
>> perplexities. Luckily with Shakespeare we have a range. And then there's
>> EEBO, even though that, as has been said--and by Spenserians--isn't all
>> that solid. That is why I'm happy, even if it does seem a bit
>> intellectually wimpish, to have "The Dolefull Lay" in both Spenser's
>> shorter poems ed. Oram and Mary Sidney's poems ec. Hannay et al. But
>> Colin's warning certainly makes sense. Anne.
>>
>>
>>
>>> A brief PS: there are a couple of things on this (possibly more than this,
>>> but these are what fall to hand): A. Kent Hieatt, T. G. Bishop, E. A.
>>> Nicholson, 'Shakespeare's Rare Words: "Lover's Complaint", Cymbeline, and
>>> Sonnets', NQ 232 (1987), 219-24; MacD. P. Jackson, 'Echoes of Spenser's
>>> Prothalamion as evidence against an Early Date for Shakespeare's A Lover's
>>> Complaint', NQ 235 (1990), 180-2.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm also on the whole happier to make a fetish of a book than an author.
>>> But
>>> they might be two perversions which are most healthily indulged together,
>>> in
>>> a mildly antithetical relationship. That is, if you find yourself thinking
>>> that the 1609 volume physically is a book which looks like and follows the
>>> shape of Daniel's Delia and resembles the Amoretti and so on; and if you
>>> go
>>> on to think well then why not read it like that, as a kind of
>>> bibliographical testament to the Delian/Spenserian sequence, then I think
>>> you're in danger of neglecting the sheer messiness of the world. (Sorry,
>>> Anne; I don't mean you by those pronouns). Which is why it might be quite
>>> a
>>> good thing to wonder who might have made it like that, and to wonder
>>> whether
>>> Shakespeare went back to Spenser at around the same time he was
>>> experimenting with dramatising Lodge and Greene's prose; and that might
>>> lead
>>> you to think, well if he didn't write A Lover's Complaint, should we be
>>> quite so spellbound by the engagingly material presence of the poem in the
>>> book? Isn't that a way of cutting short rather than solving a problem? I
>>> suppose I like it best when my fetishes fight and create perplexity (don't
>>> tell my wife; she thinks I'm quite normal).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Colin Burrow
>>>
>>> Senior Research Fellow
>>>
>>> All Souls College
>>>
>>> High Street
>>>
>>> Oxford OX1 4AL
>>>
>>> 01865 279341 (direct) 01865 279379 (Lodge)
>>>
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> _____
>>>
>>> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>> On Behalf Of anne prescott
>>> Sent: 07 June 2007 16:03
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Amoretti and Sonnets
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm swamped by SCSC business at the moment and don't have time to check
>>> this, but I recall something by Kent Hieatt on verbal overlaps between the
>>> Lover's Complaint and Sonnets? In any case, two quick thoughts: first,
>>> questions of authorship aside, for those of us interested in the material
>>> history of the book (and with at least a touch of the postmodern
>>> skepticism
>>> about capital A authorship) it's interesting to see 1609 *Sonnets* follow
>>> the pattern you find in Lodge, Spenser, Fletcher, Daniel and others in
>>> which
>>> you get a sonnet sequence, often something fluffy--anacreontics, final
>>> sonnets about Cupid, whatever--and then a long poem. It's for that reason
>>> that I prefer editions that include the Complaint. If I were any more
>>> postmodern I'd say something about fetishizing authorship, but that
>>> wouldn't
>>> be, um, me.
>>>
>>> Second, and back to Spenser and sensuality, I do recommend Roger
>>> Kuin's
>>> book *Chamber Music* in this regard--unusual in form, even to the point of
>>> including "Will" as a character in one chapter, but/and wise on the matter
>>> of desire and sonnets. Anne P.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 6:56 PM, Colin Burrow wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well yes and no. There's also a growing body of work which suggests that
>>> Katherine Duncan-Jones may present rather too positive a view of Thorpe's
>>> career, and that the 1609 volume gives off a variety of bibliographical
>>> cues, not all of which suggest that it was 'authorized'. And if one gave
>>> credence to Brian Vickers's Shakespeare, 'A Lover's Complaint', and John
>>> Davies of Hereford(Cambridge, 2007) then one might end up wondering how
>>> that
>>> strange and strangely Spenserian (off topic, me?) poem came to be printed
>>> along with the Sonnets. The RSC editors take his arguments seriously
>>> enough
>>> to leave A Lover's Complaint out of their printed volume. Where does that
>>> leave our sense of the 1609 volume, or for that matter the relationship
>>> between Spenser and Shakespeare, I wonder?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Colin Burrow
>>>
>>> Senior Research Fellow
>>>
>>> All Souls College
>>>
>>> High Street
>>>
>>> Oxford OX1 4AL
>>>
>>> 01865 279341 (direct) 01865 279379 (Lodge)
>>>
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> _____
>>>
>>> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>> On Behalf Of Peter C. Herman
>>> Sent: 06 June 2007 17:35
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Amoretti and Sonnets
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> since we have no knowledge of how far Shakespeare planned or approved the
>>> form in which his poems found their way into print.
>>>
>>>
>>> This oint was mentioned earlier, but given Charlie's statement above, I
>>> thought it might bear repeating: there's now a substantial body of
>>> scholarship arguing that Shakespeare was much more involved with the
>>> publication of the Sonnets than previously assumed, and there is a
>>> corollary
>>> point: that Shakespeare wrote, or revised, the Sonnets close to their
>>> publication, and not earlier in his career. See, for example, these two
>>> articles:
>>>
>>> Duncan-Jones, Katherine. "Was the 1609 Shake-Speares Sonnets Really
>>> Unauthorized?"
>>> Review of English Studies n.s. 34 (1983): 151-71.
>>>
>>> Hieatt, A. Kent, Charles W. Hieatt, and Anne Lake Prescott." "When did
>>> Shakespeare
>>> Write Sonnets 1609?" Studies in Philology 88 (1991): 69-109.
>>>
>>> For the Sonnets generally, see also James Schiffer's 2000 anthology,
>>> Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays.
>>>
>>> pch
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> At level of the sequence, the appearance of realism may therefore be
>>> partly
>>> accidental - with the messiness (for want of a better word) of real
>>> subjective experience being 'imitated' not through any authorial intention
>>> but rather as a consequence of the real-word messiness of the
>>> circumstances
>>> of publication.
>>>
>>> Charlie
>>>
>>> --
>>> Website: <http://www.charlesbutler.co.uk> www.charlesbutler.co.uk
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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