Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Spanish Chivalric Romance
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: FEIGNED HISTORIES: PHILIP SIDNEY AND THE POETICS OF SPANISH CHIVALRIC ROMANCE Timothy D. Crowley, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Dissertation directed by: Professor Donna B. Hamilton Department of English This study re-evaluates Sidney’s method and purpose for inventing Arcadia , through analyzing his fiction in tandem with the Spanish genre of chivalric “feigned history.” It introduces the new perspective that Arcadia exploits structural and thematic focus on clandestine marriage in Feliciano de Silva’s feigned Chronicle of Florisel de Niquea, Part Three (1535), as rendered in translation by Jacques Gohory as “Book” Eleven in the French Amadis cycle (1554). Old Arcadia follows that chivalric paradigm in Books One through Three; then it employs motifs from ancient prose fiction by Apuleius and Heliodorus in Books Four and Five to amplify plot conflict tied to the protagonist lovers’ secret marriages. Imitation of Spanish pastoral romances by Montemayor and Gil Polo in Old Arcadia ’s Eclogues supplements the work’s primary narrative plane and also facilitates Protestant aesthetic impressions of marriage and affective individual piety. Shifts in literary source material occur as means to extend and enrich thematic focus and narrative poetics of those first three Books. Sidney’s narrative establishes admiratio for its protagonist lovers and reader complicity with them, while imposing comic and tragic distance from other main characters. These observations revise dominant critical assumptions about Old Arcadia . Building upon its chivalric source material, Sidney’s fiction increases verisimilitude and invents its own rhetorical focus on dynastic union through clandestine marriage. This study observes for the first time that political tension and legal debate in Old Arcadia ’s conclusion revolve around that issue. Sidney’s fiction figures forth a succession crisis contingent upon legal complications with the issue of clandestine marriage in Arcadia, in a manner congruous with Genevan, French, and Tridentine legal reform on that matter, as well as with England’s unique legal situation regarding secret marriage. The story’s intellectual focus on justice and equity complements its author’s concern with the case of his uncle Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. While Sidney composed Arcadia , his own political and economic prospects remained largely contingent upon Leicester’s secret marriage. This study opens new avenues for research on continuity in Sidney’s oeuvre and on New Arcadia ’s influence in English prose fiction and drama of the 1590s and the seventeenth century. FEIGNED HISTORIES: PHILIP SIDNEY AND THE POETICS OF SPANISH CHIVALRIC ROMANCE by Timothy D. Crowley Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Advisory Committee: Professor Donna B. Hamilton, Chair Professor Ralph Bauer Professor Elizabeth Bearden Professor Carmen Benito-Vessels Professor Kent Cartwright Professor Theodore Leinwand ©Copyright by Timothy D. Crowley 2009 para Lara, Oriana mía ii Acknowledgements Special thanks to my dissertation director Donna Hamilton, without whose steady support this project would not have progressed as it has. I am indebted to her encouragement that I take the research where it led me and to her shared passion for the material, which also energized my efforts. For further attention and helpful comments on this work, I thank my advisory committee: Ralph Bauer, Elizabeth Bearden, Carmen Benito-Vessels, Kent Cartwright, and Theodore Leinwand. Additional thanks to William H. Sherman and Robert C. Evans for professional guidance and support during my graduate studies. This project’s scope would not have been possible without the support of various libraries and fellowships. Interlibrary Loan staff members at the University of Maryland and at Texas Tech University performed heroically in attending to my many requests. Kind librarians at those institutions and at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, the Bodleian Library, and the British Library also facilitated my research. I thank Arthur Kinney for inviting me to visit the Center for Renaissance Studies in Amherst, fully availing me of its resources, and serving as a gracious host all the while. For funding coursework, conference travel, and unique research opportunities, I am indebted to the University of Maryland’s English department and College of Arts and Humanities, to the Dolores Zohrab Leibman fellowship endowment, and to the Folger Institute. iii For their love and support, I thank my family. I dedicate this study to Lara, companion par excellence in this profession and in life. Marriage to you has been the most delightful plot development in my own romance narrative. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents v Notes on the Text vi Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Old Arcadia ’s Topical and Rhetorical Poetics, Reconsidered 18 Chapter 2: Foundations for the Narrative Poetics of Feliciano de Silva and 53 Philip Sidney Chapter 3: Feliciano de Silva’s Fiction in French Translation and the 126 Exemplary Poetics of Old Arcadia , Books One to Three Chapter 4: Blending Ancient Prose Fiction with Spanish Chivalric Romance: 187 Poetics of Legal Debate about Clandestine Marriage in Old Arcadia , Books Four and Five Chapter 5: Pastoral Persona and Structural Poetics: 227 Sidney’s Use of Spanish Pastoral Romance in Old Arcadia ’s Eclogues Conclusions 271 Bibliography of Manuscripts Cited 290 Bibliography of Early Printed Sources Cited 291 Bibliography of Modern Editions and Translations Cited for Early Sources 294 Bibliography of Modern Studies Cited 297 v Notes on the Text Translations without attribution are my own. Notes recognize when I have altered attributed English translations. Citation with the year in brackets indicates an unpublished study. vi Abbreviations AG Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís de Gaula AGS Archivo General de Simancas (Simancas, Spain) Am.Gr. Feliciano de Silva, Amadís de Grecia BHR Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance BHS Bulletin of Hispanic Studies BL British Library (London, England) BNM Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid (Spain) BRAE Boletín de la Real Academía Española Correspondence The Correspondence of Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet , trans. William Aspenwall Bradley (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1912) DP Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poesie EHR English Historical Review ELH English Literary History ELR English Literary Renaissance EMS English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 FN1-2 Feliciano de Silva, The Chronicle of Florisel de Niquea, Parts 1-2 FN3 Feliciano de Silva, The Chronicle of Florisel de Niquea, Part 3 FN4 Feliciano de Silva, The Chronicle of Florisel de Niquea, Part 4 Folger Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC, USA) Fr. Am. French Amadis cycle HJ The Historical Journal vii HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly: A Journal for the History and Interpretation of English and American Civilization HMC, Report MSS De L’Isle & Dudley Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de L’Isle & Dudley preserved at Penshurst Place , ed. C. L. Kingsford, 6 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925-1966) JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology JHI Journal of the History of Ideas JMRS Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Letras Letras: Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina Santa María de los Buenos Aires LMS-Sidney Letters and Memorials of State...By Sir Henry Sydney,...The famous Sir Philip Sydney, and his Brother Sir Robert Sydney,...Philip Lord Viscount Lisle ,...and of his Brother Colonel Algernon Sydney,...Together with Letters of the other Ministers of State, with whom they held a Correspondence. ... , ed. Arthur Collins, 2 vols. (London: T. Osborne, 1746) [facsimile edition (New York: AMS Press, 1973)] ms. manuscript MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology N&Q Notes and Queries NA Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The “New” Arcadia) n(n). note(s) n.s. new series OA Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The “Old” Arcadia) viii ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Society of America PQ Philological Quarterly PSWB Sir Philip Sidney, World Bibliography [1554-2004], ed. Donald V. Stump, C. Stuart Hunter, and Jerome S. Dees (http://bibs.slu.edu/sidney/search.html ) PRO Public Record Office (The National Archives) (London, England) RES Review of English Studies RFE Revista de Filología Española RH Revue Hispanique RLM Revista de Literatura Medieval RQ Renaissance Quarterly SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal SE Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Las Sergas de Esplandián SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 SP State Papers SP Studies in Philology STC A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, first compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave , 2 nd Edition, 3 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976-1991) TBICC Thesavrvs: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo TBS Transactions of the Bibliographical Society [London] TLS Times Literary Supplement ix TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society VL Voz y Letra: Revista de Literatura