I never thought I'd correct Jim N (!) but it's Lodowick Bryskett who writes
plaintively "Philisides is dead" in "The Mourning Muse of Thestylis"
appended to CCCHA + Astrophel... Or is this line in a part of Sp's oeuvre as
well?
That pastoral elegy is certainly a source/inspiration for "Lycidas" as Scott
Elledge notes in his handsome edition of the poem and sources.
But I'm getting fussy. This raises the question, and perhaps Jim is right
after all: what might Spenser have co-written? His alter-ego "Colin" is
after all a character in the "Mourning Muse". Could Spenser have co-written
(or ghost-written) "The Mourning Muse" and its companion piece also by
Bryskett? Conversely, could Bryskett have co-written parts of CCCHA, esp in
the conversation of shepherds at the opening?
Cf. the authorship problems of the "Doleful Lay". What if Spenser wanted
the authorship to be seen as confused?
Sincerely, Thomas
On 2/5/2009 4:40 PM, "James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 12:06 AM, Michael Saenger wrote:
>
>>> Perhaps it would be easier to determine who, among poets in English
>>> after Spenser, was *not* influenced by him.
>
> LYRIC POETRY: The question "Who knows not Colin Clout?" can often be
> answered "Who does?" Marianne Mooreıs "Spenserıs Ireland," "the greenest
> place Iıve never been," might be construed to mean "the greatest poet Iıve
> never read," though she knows about the Vewe from a footnote in Maria
> Edgeworthıs Castle Rackrent. The lintel at the entry to the bedchamber of
> Robinson Jeffersı Tor House is carved with "Sleep after toil" and his wife
> was named Oona. The preference of my teacher Robert Lowell for Milton
> reminds us that the New Critics who taught him were much fixed on "Lycidas"
> the original draft for "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" has the same
> number of lines. (Yet Lycidas may get some of the resonance of its refrain
> "Lycidas is dead" from Spenserıs "Philisides is dead," and the memorable
> question, "What boots it with incessant care?" comes pretty directly from
> The Teares of the Muses [just as "old Damoetus" comes from Sidneyıs "old
> Languet"].) Gordon Teskeyıs version of allegory in his book on that
> putatively strained mode may revive some of Allen Tateıs strictures against
> it (and against Spenser) as evincing a will-to-power abstractionism or
> will to dominate then found soon after Spenser in Galilean Science:
> though this connection is not bruited or reported in the more recent
> critic.
>
> When, to confirm Spenserıs being out of poetical fashion--and anything but
> "a text we should be born that we might read"--we have recourse to the
> modern and modernist-influenced teaching anthologies, where the emphasis is
> fairly inevitably on lyric utterance ((Poe having said the long poem cannot
> be written at all)), and where Spenser is represented scantily, if at all.
> He appears merely as a reference for assonance in X.J. Kennedyıs
> Introduction to Poetry; in Hugh Kennerıs Art of Poetry two pieces are given,
> one to illustrate that Spenserıs Rose Song (FQ II.xii) is hardly sing-able,
> and the other to illustrate that Willy and Perigotıs roundelay is not
> genuine folk poetry, or authentically naïve. John Frederick Nimsı Western
> Wind: An Introduction to Poetry gives Spenser a single sonnet (LXXV). Brooks
> & Warrenıs Understanding Poetry, my text in high school, ends with Keatsı
> "Ode on a Grecian Urn," which itself ends with "all ye need to know," but
> Spenser is not included. Huntington Cairnsı ambitious Limits of Art
> (another of my books from back then) offers no Spenser, presumably on the
> grounds that nobody was found who had said anything sufficiently laudatory
> or over-the-top about him for that volumeıs critical quotations feature.
> Exceptions: Louis Simpsonıs An Introduction to Poetry gives the entire
> Epithalamion. The 2nd edn. of The Norton Introduction to Poetry, ed. J. Paul
> Hunter (1981), gives five sonnets as well as the "Prothalamion."
>
> Spenser appears as the colonialist in/from the Vewe in Seamus Heaneyıs "Bog
> Oak," and Louis MacNeiceıs admiration of -- and indebtedness to Spenser for
> -- the poetical technique of particularized abstraction has been elegantly
> set forth by Richard Danson Brownıs "MacNeice in Fairy Land" in J.B.
> Lethbridge, Edmund Spenser: New and Renewed Directions. Just as Colin
> Cloutıs musical instrument may well be present in MacNeiceıs poemıs title
> "Bagpipe Music," (a favorite poem of mine in high school) so Colinıs poem
> "January" may be part of the inspiration for the wintery first piece in John
> Crowe Ransomıs The Manliness of Men, with a Rosalind-type representing the
> femininity and abiding memory of the other sex. But as these two examples
> show, the question of who knew Spenser after 1930 is only partly answerable
> by academic Spenserians, (Spenser having become the professorsı poet from
> having been the poetıs poet) because the professors bring to the seminar
> table their own knowledge of what a given text surely ought to have known.
> An example that comes to my mind is the opening of the 3rd section of
> Wallace Stevensı "Credences of Summer" (1946), which must sound to us like a
> Dante-inflected gloss on Mt. Acidale and the line quoted from Marianne
> Moore:
>
> It is the natural tower of all the world,
> The point of survey, greenıs green apogee,
> But a tower more precious than the view beyond,
> A point of survey squatting like a throne,
> Axis of everything, greenıs green apogee
>
> And happiest folk-land, mostly marriage-hymns.
> It is the mountain on which the tower stands,
> It is the final mountain.
>
> This is the refuge that the end creates.
>
> (Similarly, "The Plot against the Giant" the giant I think being a florist
> coming into his cutting garden seems to me to be hatched by the charming
> and blooming Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia, who hale from the same Ficinian
> locus amoenus; they are three flowers.) The poetry of my learned offspring
> Peter is not obviously Spenserian, and yet I know he had to write verses a
> decade ago in Spenserıs style for John Hollanderıs course; I believe his
> concerned the three "Re" brothers Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.
>
> PROSE FICTION (& CINEMA): The first Star Wars film has Obi-Ben-Kenobi (is
> that right?) disappear in combat like Orgoglio, and features a dwarfish
> Droid whose appellation is short for android, as Spenserıs Dony is short for
> Adonis. I.e., Lukas ought to have read Spenser, but the secular scripture in
> general has probably done it for him (and the Japanese movie that was his
> actual inspiration). Ditto Talus and Robocop. George Grella, with whom I
> was in seminar in Gambier in 1959, wrote an early article for The Nation (I
> think) identifying James Bond as a dragon-slayer in the line of Spenserıs
> hero; Parkerıs detective story pedigree must surely include Ian Flemingıs
> spy stories? The second chapter of Dr. No, "Choice of Weapons," needs to be
> read with Erich Auerbachıs chapter in Mimesis, "The Knight Sets Forth," and
> at one point rather later we hear Bond thus: "Itıs like this. Iım sort of
> a policeman. They send me out from London when thereıs something odd going
> on somewhere in the world that isnıt anybody elseıs businessı Bond told
> the story in simple terms, with good men and bad men, like an adventure
> story of a book." And see this from the chapter called "The Thing," which
> is swamp-thing: "Half a mile away, coming across the lake, was a shapeless
> thing with two glaring orange eyes with black pupils. From between these,
> where the mouth might be, fluttered a yard of blue flame. The grey
> luminescence of the stars showed some kind of a domed head above two short
> batlike wings. The thing was making a low moaning roar that overlaid
> another noise, a deep rhythmic thud. It was coming towards them at about
> ten miles an hour, throwing up a creamy wake." Bond reassures his
> associate, "you can forget about dragons," but thinks "Have to fight it
> here. Whatıll its weak spots be? The drivers. Iıll go for its headlights
> Must have some kind of giant tyres Iıll go for them too." Elsewhere we
> learn that Bond is a member of the Order of St. George. (Cp. U. A.
> Fanthorpe, "Not My Best Side," on Paolo Uccelloıs S. George and the Dragon,
> National Gallery: "I have diplomas in Dragon / Management and Virgin
> Reclamation. Donıt you want to carry out the roles / That sociology and
> myth have designed for you?" [= III: voice of the young hero, whom the lady
> and the dragon have to go along with].) C.S. Lewisı Mr. Tumnus gets his
> name from a comparison of Miltonıs Satan with Eve to Vertumnus with Pomona
> in PL IX, but The Silver Chairıs title surely partly refers to that same
> enchanted object in the "underland" recesses of Mammonıs Cave, since it too
> is chair of remembering and forgetting and underworld bondage ("Ah,ı he
> groaned. Enchantments, enchantments the heavy, tangled, cold, clammy web
> of evil magic. Buried alive. Dragged down under the earth, down into the
> sooty blackness how many years is it? Have I lived ten years, or a
> thousand years, in the pit?ı" The speaker is bound to the chair.) The
> title of Michael Moorcockıs Gloriana, or The Unfulfillıd Queen (1978) tells
> us that it is the work of a frustrated pro-romance anti-Spenserian (in the
> line of Mervyn Peake and his Gormenghast trilogy). The Gloriana in question
> is actually an Acrasian type, and her Capt. Arturo (Quire as in Squire?)
> is into espionage and assassination (cp. Sp's Arthur in bad company). --
> Jim N.
>
> [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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