--But the problem with "anticipated-but-deferred wholeness"
(_differance_) is that it is inconsistent with Spenser's aesthetic
Neoplatonism.--
Yes, that's the problem. But it isn't just our problem, it was Spenser's,
too, and he has an amazing facility for allowing such problems to play
unresolved in his verse. Whatever beliefs Spenser held, he seems to have
held them differently, or with a difference, when writing. For a poet who
manages at times to sound defensive, he wrote remarkably undefended poetry,
so permeable to contradiction that when (since you spoke of the
Epithalamion) he gives us a portrait of his bride, he compares her effect on
the beholder to Medusa's.
_____
David Lee Miller
Department of English 543 Boonesboro Ave
University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40508
Lexington, KY 40506-0027 (859) 252-3680
(859) 257-6965
FAX 323-1072
|