> But I should try to stick to examples from the first part
> of Book II, that is, for Andrew Zurcher's sake. Here,
Truly, I am suffering after the Petrarchan style: bone-ache, freezing in
fires, burning in ice, and all for a virus.
But what I really wanted to say was:
> point. In my own case I expect I shall continue to
> remember, or at least want to:
>
> The dronken lampe down in the oyle did steepe (FQ 3.1.47)
This detail (in FQ 3.2.47, not 3.1) does set up an interesting resonance
with the earlier passage from canto 1 of Book III, as Jim noted. I just
wonder about what is probably a fortuitous comment in Tasso's Discorsi
del Poema Eroico, Book 4:
The poet has therefore to select metaphors that are close to the usual
terms and not brought in from afar. He must also choose them from things
delightful to sight and the other senses, and avoid the repugnant, as
Dante ought to have done when he called the sun the 'oil-lamp of the
world', making us almost smell the oil. (Transl. and ed. Cavalchini and
Samuel, p. 120)
Sorry, I don't have the Italian to hand.
I don't think this kind of joke would be beyond Spenser, especially given
the way he plays so constantly with the re-casting of the same material in
allegorical/metaphorical and narrative (i.e. psychological) terms; but of
course this would suppose that he had read Tasso's Discorsi in ms, or at
any rate shortly after 1587; and like I said, it's certainly just
fortuitous that Tasso should take Dante to task, in his most direct
comment on the craft of metaphor, with just such an example.
az
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