See John Gower:
And of this Pallas some ek seide
That sche was Martes wif;
The god whom that thei clepen Mart
Pallas, which is the goddesse
And wif to Marte
(Conf. Am. V, 1214-15, 1477, 1649-50)
And as planet:
The mone of Selver hath his part,
And Iren that stant upon Mart,
The led after Satorne groweth (Conf.
Am. IV, 2469-71)
In using Mart Spenser seems to me to
be anticipating, mythograpically,
Britomart, the martial maid, and
[M]Artegall (with his iron man),
insofar as Pallas+Mart =
Britomart/Palladine+Artegall
-- Jim N.
On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:49:54 -0500
william oram <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I'm about to start a discussion of
>the language of the proem to book I,
>and
> I wondered if anyone else has come
>across a writer who refers to Mars as
> "Mart." It's easy enough to see how
>Spenser might have created that form
>of
> the name, but is he playfully
>coining it for himself, or is there a
> tradition of calling Mars "Mart"
>that I don't know of? Elsewhere in
>the
> poetry he calls Mars "Mars." 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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