Thanks, Dan. To what Dan Moss says so intriguingly, I'd add only that  
1) his distinction between verse and prose works even better for good  
verse . . .  and 2) on maps--I wonder if Spenser (or Sir Henry  
Sidney) ever saw the mid-century map of the British Isles I used to  
have before I stupidly gave it to Arthur Kinney for his Center that  
locates Purgatory in northern Ireland (yes, there was an old legend  
that Purgatory had an entrance there, and yes it does seem  
appropriate). Yet Protestants claim it isn't real! And 3) wild  
thought: I very much like Dan's idea of a family vine rather than a  
family tree, but I wonder if anyone has pointed out that you turn a  
genealogical vine/tree on its side and it looks weirdly like a Ramist  
summary of an argument with his branching "method" at work. A middle- 
class professor's literally overturning of an aristocratic (OK, and  
biblical) image?
     I just got my copy of the newest Spenser Studies, ed. Terry  
Krier and David Galbraith. I hope you and your library buy lots. It's  
a selection of the talks at the 2006 conference in Toronto, but of  
course converted into real essays. Anne P.

On Jan 20, 2008, at 6:43 PM, Daniel D Moss ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>    Very much enjoying the recent thread on stylometrics, and  
> whether it's possible to decide anything about the authorship of
> the Veue based on Spenser's poetic language. Craig's fascinating e- 
> mail, especially, reassures me that it's okay not to know--
> with my mere human capabilities in the library--the kind of thing  
> Deep Blue can't figure out in the Department of Defense
> (probably not so okay for them!). But even with just the scholar's  
> dusty old tools, I'm wondering if we could keep following that
> fork in the road toward questions of genealogy? Anne Prescott and  
> Brad Tuggle have already shown us some very worthwhile
> scenic overlooks, and they got me thinking up more questions I  
> can't answer but I'd like to keep worrying about:
>
>    I wonder how genealogy translates from prose to poetry, from  
> (ostensible) history to allegory and vice versa? I like Mr.
> Tuggle's implication (if I'm reading him right), that moments like  
> the Molanna stuff in Mutabilitie might show us the
> mythographic anthropologist of the View's Ireland at work. But for  
> me the more interesting step is from View to FQ, not from
> FQ to View. Just as Book V is not just the View in verse (or  
> perhaps according to better chronology, just as the View is not
> Book V in prose), so genealogy must be distorted in multiple ways  
> between prose and poetry. The question is (maybe),
> whether that distortion is at all predictable, whether we can read  
> poetry for particular patterns of genealogical distortion?
>    Intertext provides some preliminary help: Spenser digested all  
> that Ariosto, so certainly he must've noticed how Ariosto
> recobbles his patron's genealogy for the better. Or perhaps he just  
> noticed how virtually all poets do this, nevermind Ariosto.
> Can't we thereby (tentatively) propose some of the likely moves  
> Spenser would have made in the lost Stemmata Dudleiana?
> Still, ordinarily there's probably no way to tell when genealogy  
> stops being for the patron and starts being for the poem. Are
> things are a bit easier with a prose text like View? Slanderous  
> claims about national origins--those Scythian Irish--those we can
> trace and interpret more readily, no? Though I'm fascinated by Mr.  
> Tuggle's idea that most of the genealogy is troped in the
> prose too (I'd like to read the thesis). Can we tell, I wonder,  
> when it is and when it isn't? When Spenser's going for accuracy in
> the View and when he's putting English on the ball?
>    Because, at least in the poetry, Spenser's so good at applying  
> that spin on genealogy and related discourses... I'm thinking
> for the moment of how carefully he organizes the marriage of rivers  
> in IV.xi--producing a strange new hierarchy for bodies of
> water in the midst of their literal flux, a hierarchy not only  
> based on Hesiod et al, but also adapting geography on a vast scale
> and yet in some detail (Drayton would excel at the detail, but  
> despite the length of Polyolbion he can't include all the rivers
> Spenser covers in just one canto). I think of Spenser as writing  
> IV.xi with maps of England, Ireland, Wales, etc., open on his
> desk, as I imagine he (like Ariosto before him) wrote with his  
> patron's genealogical chart open on his desk while composing the
> Stemmata D. For Spenser, genealogy is translatable to poetry, and  
> can be translated in productive combination with other
> forms of discourse. So in the Daphnaida, for instance, Alcyon's sob  
> story of the doomed lioness--"White as the natiue Rose
> before the chaunge, / Which Venus blood did in her leaves  
> impresse"-- simultaneously draws from English heraldry and classical
> mythology in order to allegorize a (somewhat) current event--the  
> death of Douglas Howard.
>    So we can use the genealogical elements as part of a map to  
> Spenser's poetics, but they aren't really "evidence" of anything.
> Genealogy becomes instead one of the rhetorics of poetry--as far as  
> I can tell, the very oldest rhetoric of poetry. One of the
> reasons Spenser likes to use that rhetoric, likes to incorporate  
> genealogies into his poetics, is the surprising malleability of
> genealogies. We think of genealogical trees, but for poets maybe  
> it's more like genealogical vines... So are the genealogies
> poets craft good for anything other than reading poetic occasions?  
> We can read the allegories within the Daphnaida better if we
> follow genealogical lines and the heraldry they support, but now  
> that I've written all this I'm not sure I feel like I've acquired
> more purchase on, say, the genealogical elements of a different  
> poem, like the Ruines of Time (whence those cities and
> Sidneys?). Or, for that matter, whether it's Spenser or someone  
> else who's telling us the origins of the Irish in the View...
>    Rambling a bit; I'm sure I've made five mistakes and forgotten  
> or not read ten excellent studies of this very question (and I
> would like to know what they are!). Still, I'm enjoying the thread  
> and wanted to contribute.
>
> -Dan
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: william godshalk <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Saturday, January 19, 2008 12:59 pm
> Subject: Re: Jean Brink's Veue authorship theory -- and computers
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>>> Craig says, regarding computer analyses of literary texts: "I just
>>> don't think it would offer definite proof of anything." Ward
>> Elliott
>>> insists as much in his articles. He claims only varying
>> percentages
>>> of likelihood. He runs a series of different analyses, each of
>> which
>>> usually indicates a different percentage of likelihood. There are
>>> other analysists, of course, e.g. MacDonald Jackson and Brian
>>> Vickers. It's comforting (though not conclusive) when they all  
>>> agree.
>>
>> Bill Godshalk
>>
>> ***************************************
>> W. L. Godshalk        	*
>> Department of English         *
>> University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
>> Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
>> 513-281-5927
>> ***************************************
>>