[forwarded from Jim Nohrnberg]
Re forgettable Spenser:
Andrew Zurcher is of course right, and my numbers are
wrong -- and more or less backwards. My posting about the
allegedly memorable lines should have read, at this point:
The dronken lampe down in the oyle did steepe (FQ 3.2.47)
-- [which I am partial to] partly because it deliberately
remembers something earlier and equally nocturnal in
Latin, but especially because it can be taken with this
favorite [passage], from the same narration, 57 stanzas
previous, with its laborious last line:
By this th' eternall lampes, wherewith high Iove
Doth light the lower world, were half yspent,
And the moist daughters of huge Atlas strove
Into the Ocean deepe to drive their weary drove. (3.1.57)
I do not suppose the numeration (57...) is significant
here, but numerological considerations do call one's
attention to the more general point of my posting, which
is like that of C.S. Lewis in regard to Spenser's laden
and "artificial" (in the good sense) kind of style:
namely, that the best fruit ripens on espaliers. This
comparison might apply to the mythographic programs for
Botticelli's most famous paintings, of course, but also to
the elaborate rhetorical-lexical schemes and the
co-ordinated phonetic patterning so apparent in Spenser's
diction. -- Jim Nohrnberg
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 20:25:04 +0000
Andrew Zurcher <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
aking us almost smell the oil. (Transl. and ed.
>
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English
Univ. of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
|