Hannibal,
Now that scholarship on English metrical psalms has achieved some kind of
critical mass, I agree that it's time to consider the relationship between
metrical psalms and sonnet collections/sequences. The two traditions seem to
have been thoroughly intertwined in the minds of poets; our need for scholarly
categories has drawn lines of separation that were probably much more blurred
in the period.
I have been thinking about how problems of order and form (including but not
limited to sequencing issues) resonate between the two traditions. So far I've
found the ironies of the love lyric even more biting and funny in light of the
Psalms, and the earnestness of the Psalms more vexed in light of sonnets.
Great fun. For me, this all leads to a reconsideration of theoretical issues
inherent in devotional lyric, particularly The Temple.
In any case, there seems to be plenty of room for interesting exploration
here. If Heather Dubrow is "listening," I (and perhaps others) would be
pleased to hear what she is working on.
Debra Rienstra
Associate Professor of English
Calvin College
1795 Knollcrest Circle SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49546
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>>> Hannibal Hamlin <[log in to unmask]> 6/13/2007 1:23 PM >>>
I'm very late in joining this rich discussion, which I regret (I'm in chaos,
having to at once move out of office and house, change computers, transfer
campuses, and prepare for an extended leave elsewhere). Still, I can't help
chiming in on the Psalms. In the pitch Margaret Hannay, Michael Brennan, Noel
Kinnamon and I made for our edition of the Sidney Psalter (forthcoming
eventually from Oxford World's Classics), we argued, and rightly I think, that
the two predominant lyric traditions in the English Renaissance were the
Petrarchan sonnet and the metrical Psalm. The former has obviously been paid
much more attention than the latter, and the relationship between the two
traditions less still. My Psalms book looks at some instances of
cross-pollination between metrical Psalms and secular traditions (like pastoral
or classical imitations), but has little on matters Petrarchan. I think
Heather Dubrow is currently doing something with this, however, and Jamie
Ferguson (newly of the University of Huston) works on the broader (or
differently broad) relationship between Petrarchan poetics and the translation
of the English Bible. Certainly, David is always lurking in the background of
Renaissance lyric, as Anne has shown in so many marvellous essays. I suspect
too that the sonnet sequence as a form is in some sense based on the Psalms.
It's always struck me as at least an intriguing coincidence that the number of
Psalms and the number of Shakespeare's sonnets are nearly the same. The
Amoretti is also biblical informed and the Psalms are certainly part of this
(see Carol Kaske's essay in Doerksen and Hodgkins' Centred on the Word).
Finally, on Jim Nohrnberg's latest, I think the Penitential Psalms had a huge
influence. There are numerous poetic groups of seven kicking around. Some of
these are actual paraphrases of the seven Penitentials (like those by William
Hunnis and John Davies of Hereford), some of different groupings of seven
Psalms (like Francis Bacon's, dedicated to Herbert), some of seven "Psalms"
that aren't actually Psalms (like those of George Chapman, which are actually
translated from Petrarch -- an interesting link), and some that make no overt
reference to the Psalms at all (like Campion's Songs of Mourning for Prince
Henry). The tradition even spills over into music. John Dowland's Lachrimae
consists of seven songs, and his model must be the Penitential Psalms, even
though there are no texts.
Wish I could join in more! This list has become exciting.
Hannibal
At 02:59 PM 6/7/2007, you wrote:
"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 authors
'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
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[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)
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_____
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
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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)
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From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
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)]
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 ( http://www.charlesbutler.co.uk/ )>
www.charlesbutler.co.uk ( http://www.charlesbutler.co.uk/ )
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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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