But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us: Ireland, Colonialism, and Renaissance Literature
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 1999 But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us: Ireland, Colonialism, and Renaissance Literature Andrew Murphy University of St. Andrews Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Murphy, Andrew, "But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us: Ireland, Colonialism, and Renaissance Literature" (1999). Literature in English, British Isles. 16. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/16 Irish Literature, History, & Culture Jonathan Allison, General Editor Advisory Board George Bornstein, University of Michigan Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, University of Texas James S. Donnelly Jr., University of Wisconsin Marianne Elliott, University of Liverpool Roy Foster, Hertford College, Oxford David Lloyd, University of California, Berkeley Weldon Thornton, University of North Carolina This page intentionally left blank But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us Ireland, Colonialisn1, and Renaissance Literature Andrew Murphy THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 1999 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2009 The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9278-9 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses For Charonne Ruth This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments xt Introduction I 1. "White Chimpanzees": Encountering Ireland II 2. "Ad Remotissimas Occidentis Insulas": Gerald and the Irish 33 3. "They Are All Wandred Much: That Plaine Appeares": Spenser and the Old English 60 4. "The Remarkablest Story oflreland": Shakespeare and the Irish War 97 5. "The Irish Game Turned Again": Jonson and the Union I24 Conclusion: 1641 and After I5I Notes I66 Bibliography 20I Index 2I9 This page intentionally left blank But if that land be there (quoth he) as here, And is theyr heaven likewise there all one? And, if like heaven, be heavenly graces there, Like as in this same world where do we wone? -Edmund Spenser Colin Clouts Come Home Againe This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This book began life as an exercise in reinventing the wheel. As a first-year graduate student at Brandeis University in Boston, I discovered Edmund Spenser's View ofthe Present State ofIreland and promptly set about writing a long seminar paper on the inscription of colonialist discourse in The Faerie Queene. I am grateful to Billy Flesch for bearing with that paper's shortcomings and for gently prompting me to think through in more complex ways the is sues I was beginning to explore. I am also grateful for guidance and encourage ment given at this stage by Allen Grossman, Anne Janowitz, and Alan Levitan. The Ph.D. thesis that eventually arose from the original seminar paper was jointly supervised by Gary Taylor and Mary Campbell, both of whom were exemplary mentors throughout the whole process. They were prompt and thorough in responding to my work and struck a perfect balance between criticism and encouragement. Various people have read sections of the book and have helped to shape and focus it and, indeed, at times to save me from my own ignorance and folly. I would especially like to thank Eibhlln Evans, Alan Ford, Nicholas Grene, Tom Healy, Geraldine Higgins, Liz Hodgson, Margaret Rose Jaster, Arthur Kinney, Bernhard Klein, and Elizabeth Sagaser. I am also very grateful to the many people who provided me with copies of unpublished materials relevant to my topic-in particular, Alan Ford and Tom Healy (again) and also Dympna Callaghan, Chris Highley, and Willy Maley. Special thanks go to Andrew Hadfield, for sending me a set of proofs for his Spenser's Irish Experience. I am especially grateful to Kentucky's series editor, Jonathan Allison, and to his anonymous referees for the encouragement and feedback that they pro vided and for the efficient manner in which the book was handled. I also owe a great debt to the many non-Renaissance, or nonacademic friends whose support and encouragement sustained the project from its inception. My particular thanks in this regard go to Bonnie Burns, Amy Curtis-Webber, Tina Kelleher, Eileen McKeith, Nancy Nies and Andrew Roberts. Two people have done more to sustain both this book and myself than I can fully articulate here. One is Gerard Murphy, whose support has been a gift without measure. The other is the book's dedicatee, for whom this effort is a slender enough return for all that she has given. University ofSt. Andrews { xii} But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us ntroduction In the Spenser chapter of his 1984 book, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, David Norbrook is almost apologetic about his dedication to tracing the political and historical lineages of Spenser's poetic career, as he observes, ''This book is not exclusively concerned with topical issues, and it has become unfashionable to pay dose attention to Spenser's political alle gory" (1984, 125). More than a decade later, this touch of reticence on Nor brook's part may feel rather surprising. In general terms, the 1980s witnessed the phenomenal rise of a revitalized historicist criticism on both sides of the Atlantic, with the ascendancy of New Historicism in North America and of Cultural Materialism in Britain. 1 Attention to Spenser's "political allegory" formed a significant part of this new critical program-as we can see, for in stance, from the fact that one of the foundational texts of the New Histori cism-Stephen Greenblatt's 1980 study Renaissance Self-Fashioning-takes up, among other issues, the politics of Spenser's Faerie Queene. In their respective chapters on Spenser, both Greenblatt and Norbrook draw attention to the connections between the allegory of the Faerie Queene and a political tract that Spenser composed while he was working on the { 1 } poem-his View of the Present State of Ireland. Their analyses of these texts signaled what would become a steady stream of engagements with Spenser's Irish context by literary critics over the course of the next decade, 2 including a collection of essays dedicated precisely to Spenser and Ireland (Cough lan, 1989) and a special issue of the Irish University Review (fUR) (Autumn/Winter 1996) dedicated to the related topic, "Spenser in Ireland. "3 Indeed, the extent of this outpouring of material on Spenser's Irish connec tions has been such as to prompt the editor of this latter collection (Anne Fogarty) to observe that "the current urge, inspired by the vogue for material ist and contextual readings prompted by new historicist criticism, to see Spenser solely in terms of his connection with Ireland has become so com monplace that it is in danger of blinding us to the complexity of history on the one hand and of The Faerie Queene on the other. The lapidary slogan, 'Spenser and Ireland,' brandished by so many recent investigations of the poet's work, runs the risk of ushering in a new critical orthodoxy which may turn out to be just as restrictive as the interpretative approaches which it is trying to replace" (204). This great revival of literary critical interest in Spenser's Irish politics has run in parallel with a general resurgence of interest in early modern Ireland among historians. Looking back on two decades of Irish historical studies, Steven Ellis commented in 1990 that "the past twenty years have witnessed something of a renaissance in the history of Tudor Ireland" ("Economic," 239). Much of this renewal of historical interest has both intersected with and entered into dialogue with the work of literary scholars. Historian Nicholas Canny, for instance, contributed an article on Spenser to the Yearbook ofEng lish Studies in 1983 and also contributed an introduction to Coughlan's 1989 volume. Further articles on Spenser followed from historians such Ciaran Brady, Brendan Bradshaw, and Canny himself Whereas Spenser has held center stage throughout this period, the critical focus has also broadened to take in the Irish dimension of other Renaissance writers, with analyses of the Irish context of the work of Shakespeare, John son, Milton, and others also appearing in print. The broader issue of Ireland and the Renaissance has, like the issue of Spenser