I second that re Ulysses (and Sp) and find "the Dead" one of the most
precisely written and beautiful stories in English... I don't think I'm
alone there. The Wake is no language but then again it buried itself long
ago. --Tom
On 10/21/05 12:03 PM, "Michael Saenger" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Kevin,
>
> Well, for what it's worth, I'd disagree on Spenser and Joyce. I think
> one of the most interesting aspects of FQ is how the virtue is genuinely
> stretched and examined through a peripatetic and episodic romance, thus
> putting narrative and dogma in tension. Not, I think, putting them in
> conflict. In fact, such tension is precisely the reason why we read (to
> correlate and "fill in the gaps", sorry, out of fashion). And on Joyce,
> I don't think him a failure at all. Ulysses, for example, is very
> challenging, but it's also the most beautiful book I've read. Also, I
> think it's worth noting that names are, in fact, just another sort of
> code, since they never precisely correspond to the people whom they
> supposedly identify....
>
> Michael
>
> Kevin Farnham wrote:
>
>> My original "novice" assessment -- that Spenser's writing is
>> less excellent when he is more actively seeking favor with the
>> Queen -- appears indeed to be an oversimplification. The
>> consensus among critics seems to be that nearly every detail of
>> the Faerie Queene may be a political commentary of some type. If
>> this is true, then there is no separation of the work into
>> sections that are primarily allegoric political commentary (the
>> parts I felt are inferior) and sections that represent pure,
>> unfettered artistic vision. The latter does not exist.
>>
>> Is Spenser, then, like Dante? Surely it is a huge risk to weave
>> political details that for the most part are irrelevant for
>> future readers into a work the author hopes will be read
>> centuries later. Dante, working from a safe distance, named
>> names. Spenser, being paid by the Queen, writes in code.
>>
>> Joyce too wrote in code / "no language", and used his prodigious
>> talent to write something almost no one will ever look at in
>> future centuries -- which to me means he failed. I had
>> previously considered Spencer to be of the same class. And
>> before people here kindly educated me, I considered Spenser's
>> and Joyce's failures to be of the same kind: caused by a
>> non-artistic ambition (Spenser to win a place in the Queen's
>> court in London, Joyce to out-write Shakespeare and be
>> recognized as the Master Artist of the English language) that
>> shadowed and in ways disfigured their art.
>>
>> Now I begin to wonder what Spenser's objective was. Or if he
>> himself even had a firmly-formed artistic objective. The Faerie
>> Queene is hardly about a "faerie queene" artistically. The books
>> don't always focus on the individual virtues we're told each
>> book will address. It's like he just wrote whatever came into
>> his mind each day. Here Spenser reminds me of Joyce again: there
>> is a broad conceptual plan for the work, but the words are
>> spewed out in fits and spurts, such that the actual text isn't
>> always tightly bonded to the work's overall concept. Totally
>> unlike Dante, where each canto is rigidly fixed into place
>> within a highly defined conceptual structure for the entire
>> work, just as the stars are fixed in place in the heavenly
>> sphere...
>>
>> Enough from a Spenser novice...
>>
>>
|