From: "Katherine Eggert" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, 13 February, 2014 14:53:51
Subject: Re: Complaints about envy in Elizabethan dedications

The coupling of detraction with envy seems to me to be the signal thing here.  It's not just detraction alone that comes up.  As the situation is posed in these kinds of prefaces, people don't utter detract from you unless they are envious; their envy shows that you are doing something well, indeed, better than they are.  Of course, noting their envy and detraction is the publicly acceptable face of bragging (the modesty topos).  But it's more than that: their envy and detraction prove to you -- and ought to prove to everyone else -- that you're good enough to write.  You don't know you're any good unless someone is envious enough to snipe and snark.

In case anyone's interested, here's Milton in Areopagitica, elaborately building up his own qualifications for writing from the grounds that the Italians envy the English.  No detraction in this passage, but it comes up elsewhere in the essay when Milton notes that some find him "new" and "insolent."

"And lest som should perswade ye, Lords and Commons, that these arguments of lerned mens discouragement at this your order, are meer flourishes, and not reall, I could recount what I have seen and heard in other Countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat among their lerned men, for that honor I had, and bin counted happy to be born in such a place of Philosophic freedom, as they suppos'd England was, while themselvs did nothing but bemoan the servil condition into which lerning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had dampt the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had bin there writt'n now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisner to the Inquisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the Prelaticall yoak, neverthelesse I took it as a pledge of future happines, that other Nations were so perswaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that those Worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgott'n by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish. When that was once begun, it was as little in my fear, that what words of complaint I heard among lerned men of other parts utter'd against the Inquisition, the same I should hear by as lerned men at home utterd in time of Parlament against an order of licencing; and that so generally, that when I had disclos'd my self a companion of their discontent, I might say, if without envy, that he whom an honest quæstorship had indear'd to the Sicilians, was not more by them importun'd against Verres, then the favourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and perswasions, that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind, toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon lerning."

Looking forward to reading your essay, Brad.

Katherine

Katherine Eggert
Associate Professor of English
University of Colorado, Boulder
226 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0226
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________________________________________
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bradley Irish [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 1:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Complaints about envy in Elizabethan dedications

This is a fascinating conversation, on a fascinating topic. My sense
is that envy in the period is an affective category of enormous
flexibility, with both positive and negative valence(s).  The
ambivalence, I think, partly owes to its vexed relationship to
emulation/imitation.  (There's a similar thing going on with
jealousy/zeal.)  So sometimes writers clearly distinguish "coutentious
enuies" from "honest emulations" -- but Elyot, for example, praises
those who inflame "an honest enuy, eyther to excede hym in vertue, or
at the leste to be iudged equall vnto hym," while Palsgrave hopes that
one of his texts will inspire "some lyttell grayne of honeste and
vertuous enuye" in the emulous reader.  Despite the professed anxiety
surrounding it, part of the pleasure of being envied (perhaps for
Spenser) may not just be the fantasy of recognition, but the fantasy
of being thought worthy of imitation.  (At least implicitly.)  I think
early moderns probably enjoyed being envied just as much as we do --
though the stakes for them, as everyone's noted, were probably more
dicey.

Incidentally, I have an article about envy and jealousy in Surrey's
"So Crewell Prison" coming in the new issue of SEL (out next Friday,
I'm told); there I discuss Renaissance notions of envy alongside
theories from modern psychology.  I'll be happy to share with anyone
interested.

All best,
Brad

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Anne Prescott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks, Ken. This is a good association, of course. And I'd add that when
> profit and fame come from a government that kills people not by unmanned
> drones but in public and in a grisly manner or merely puts them in stir that
> fear may be in order. I think esp. although it's a bit late for Spenser, of
> Donne's satires, not least of the (Horatian, yes) hanger on who may be a spy
> and a fear of giant statues that may "ope" their mouths. The government as
> an evil Gargantua? After all, we think that Spenser did indeed offend, so he
> had a point. I keep trying to think of modern parallels--well, there's
> McCarthy, but he's good and dead.
>     I know I've been babbling on the list. I'll stop.
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Kenneth Gross <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> One thought -- at least in Spenser's letter to Ralegh (not quite a
>> preface, of course) the fear of envy & jealousy seems to be directed not
>> just to general attacks on the poem, but at those readers who would find,
>> I'm supposing, dangerous topical meanings in the larger allegory:
>>
>> SIR, knowing how doubtfully all allegories may be construed, and this
>> booke of mine, which I have entituled the Faery Queene, being a continued
>> allegory, or darke conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoyding of
>> gealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in
>> reading thereof, (being so by you commanded,) to discover unto you the
>> general intention and meaning, which in the whole course thereof I have
>> fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes or by accidents
>> therein occasioned.
>>
>> There there's Jonson's great prologue of "Envy" for Poetaster....
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Anne Prescott <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Right. And Alberti was digging Lucian like nobody's business. I love him
>>> too--and thanks for the reminder, James. Then there's Momus' Renaissance
>>> stone but curiously mobile buddy Pasquin/Pasquil, a reminder that snarls and
>>> snark and doubtless envy were everywhere. I agree that court culture
>>> encourages it--as do our own current media, as cause or symptom. Anne.
>>>
>>> On Feb 13, 2014, at 1:03 PM, JD Fleming wrote:
>>>
>>> They are all digging Alberti's *Momus* (Rome, 1520)?
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: "David Wilson-Okamura" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Sent: Thursday, 13 February, 2014 08:40:52
>>> Subject: Complaints about envy in Elizabethan dedications
>>>
>>> I am reading Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall
>>> Musicke (1597), which is dedicated to his teacher, the great William Byrd.
>>> Like so many dedications from this period (including that of the Shepheardes
>>> Calender), this one anticipates detraction (seeing we live in those days
>>> wherein envy reigneth) and tells the "Momists" to go fig themselves before
>>> they actually read his book.
>>>
>>> We have all seen this before. So I ask you, sane friends, were our guys
>>> all paranoid? Or was Envy really stalking the cobbled streets of Europe,
>>> romping like a Blatant Beast or a roaring lion, seeking whom it might
>>> devour? Yes, Cassio, I know how important reputation is, and how vulnerable.
>>> But Envy is not just slander; it's also criticism, which our guys seem to
>>> shrink from. Cf. "Haters gonna hate," which I hate.
>>>
>>> Confused, but in all love and entire affection to YOU most addicted,
>>> David WO
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. David Wilson-Okamura    http://virgil.org          [log in to unmask]
>>> English Department              Virgil reception, discussion, documents,
>>> &c
>>> East Carolina University        Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude
>>> Fauchet
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> James Dougal Fleming
>>> Associate Professor
>>> Department of English
>>> Simon Fraser University
>>> 778-782-4713
>>>
>>> "Upstairs was a room for travelers. 'You know, I shall take it for the
>>> rest of my life,' Vasili Ivanovich is reported to have said as soon as he
>>> had entered it."
>>> -- Vladimir Nabokov, Cloud, Castle, Lake
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>