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Time, Death, and Mutability : a Study of Themes in Some Poetry of The

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TIME, DEATH, and MUTABILITY: A Study of Themes in Some Poetry of the Renaissance - Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne Jean Miriam Gerber B.A., Pennsylvania State University, 1961 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFUHE3T OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English Jean Miriam Gerber, 1968 Simon Fraser University J~Y,1968 EXA XINIMG COK4ITTEX APPROVAL (name) Senior Supervisor \ ( name) Examining Cormittoe " - ( name ) Examining Conunittee PARTTAL COPYRIGIIT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis or dissertation (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Sttldies. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of Thesis/~issertation: Author: (signature ) (name ) (date) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to thank Mr. Clark Cook for his many suggestions and close attention. Special thanks are also due to Mr. James Sandison who read this study in manuscript. Above all I wish to thank Dr. F. B. Candelaria, who supervised the thesis. ABSTRACT This study was undertaken in order to exanine some examples of Renaissance poe+zy in the light of the themes of love, death, time, and mutability. The scope of the thesis has been restricted to the Mutabilltie Cantos and the Fowre Iiymnes of &und Spenser; the Sonnets and Ovidian poems of Shakespeare; and the Sonas and Sonets and Mvine Poems of John Donne. The emphasis of the thesis rests on the poetry of John Donne; but to appreciate better the power of his synthesis of the sacred and profane, the author first examines the Christian idealism of Spenser and the "realismn of Shakespeare. Spenser is seen as the poet of ideals. He looks beyond the world of decay and time to a "Sabaoth of the Soulm, His H-ymnes, while not denying the possibility of love in time, see no way for romantic love to transcend death. Nor is earthly love of the same nature as man's love for God. Shakespeare, while recognizing the sway that Time holds over man, asserts the ability of love in friendship-and its expression in verse-to triumph over change and decay. Unlike Spenser, he is not interested in ideal or eternal existences. Both poets have affinities with Donne. Like Spenser, Donne speaks in terms of eternity. Like Shakespeare, he affirms man's ability to over- come time and change in this world of mutability, His argumentative style and his synthesis of sacred and profane love set him apart. This study examines the varieties of experience found in his love poetry, culminating in his statement in such poems as The Canonization, The Anniversarie, and The Exstasie, that romantic love assumes the eternal stature of sacred love, yet never loses its attachment to physical experience. In his religious verse also love varies; man can be an inconstant lover of God as well as of women. But always bnne stresses the continuity of experience from love of women to love of God, and the ability of both kinds of love to withstand time and change. The thesis has tried to avoid identification of life with art, the poet with the poem. Sources and antecedents have been used only where they illuminate the themes under scrutiny. Throughout the study, the ordering used for the poems is not intended to be chronological. The study is a triptych, examining the individual poets without drawing conclusions as to the superiority of one statement over another. TABLE OF CONTEXTS Introduction ................1 I The Ideal World of Edmund Spenser ........3 Notes to Spenser ............27 11 Shakespeare and Time's Rages .........30 Notes to Shakespeare ...........57 111 Donne's Golden Compass ............ Part I: Songs and Sonets ..........60 Part 11: The Anniversaries .........94 Part III: The Divine Poems ..........102 PartIV: Conclusion............ 121 Notes to Donne .............124 INTROWCTION Love and death are universal preoccupations of art: they are the central and universal elements of all men's lives. Time threatens the short span of life in which man can try to find love, preserve it in verse, and pass it on to posterity. Renaissance poets zealously explored the implications of time's ruthless destruction. In their treatment of love they were faced with a choice of several major directions. In dealing with the tangle of emotions called nlovew, these poets tried to resolve the conflict between the spiritual and the carnal. Renaissance poets never forgot that man's highest love should be directed towards God. On the other hand, as C. S. Lewis shows in his Allegory of Love, since the advent of courtly love in the eleventh century, European literature had made heterosexual love a major theme of its poetry. Poets of the Renaissance, in dealing with love in time, had to reckon with both spiritual and carnal love. This essay will study the way three Renaissance poets contemplate love, time, death and mutability. The major emphasis here is on the lyric poems and The Anniversaries of John Donne. To appreciate fully the extent of \ his poetic treatment, however, it will be necessary to look first at Edmund Spenser's variations on mutability and time in The Mutabilitie Cantos and the Fowre Hymnes, and to consider Shakespeare's sonnets and Ovidian poems. This essay is limited by several factors. Within the scope of the 'thesis it is possible to give only a brief account of philosophies and sources. No attempt is made to deal with the whole range of any writer's work. The study is strictly limited to consideration of short lyrics and sonnets, the familiar vehicles for love poetry, or occasionally longer love lyrics. It is \ undesirable to veer into historical, bibliographical, or biographical by-paths in trying to explain various poems or attitudes. The identity of the Dark Lady or the dates and sources of Donne's Songs and Sonnets are not at stake here. Spenser's blend of Petrarchan and Nee,-Platonic conventions I treat as an artistic attempt to free the soul from the bodily limitations of time and change; he appeals to eternel constants. His vision of mutability in the -Cantos is a classic one for the Renaissance. Time had many faces, but all of them promised change; Do not I tyme/cause nature to augment Do not I tyme/cause nature to decay Do not I -tyme/cause man to be present Do not I tyme/ take his lyse away Do not I tyme/cause dethe take his say Do not I tyme/passe his youth and age Do not I tyme/euery thynge aswagell This is the world Spenser seeks to escape: he seeks permanence behind change, or a world which changes no more, Shakespeare's work rejects the conventions of both Petrarchism and Neo-Platonism. Rather than escaping he chooses artistically to come to terns with the very sphere of mutability which threatens love and life, 'The poet- narrator of the sonnets evokes the processes of time and decay; then he defies them to destroy his love and his art. Both, he is assured, will overcome death. His assurance is a forerunner of that attitude toward time and death found in the poetry of John Donne, the major figure of this study. Ibnne was a poet who made physical love a means of conquering time and death by fusing the spiritual and carnal aspects of love. He never denies the validity of passion. Instead he tries to harmonize what he feels in the 4 flesh with what he feels in the spirit, finding the one as able as the other to transcend the world of time, mutability, and death. I Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconolo~(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 19611, pp. 91-92, CHAPTER ONE THE IDEAL KORLD OF EDMUND SPENSER Petrarchism and Nao-Platonism Petrarch's work was an important catalytic force in Renaissance literature. His poetry significantly contributed to the foundations of Renais- sance love poetry by its revitalization of the courtly tradition. The Petrar- chan lover suffered because his lady was virtuously chaste and unattainable. Petrarch also endowed his mistress with the ability to raise her lover's eyes to the sphere of the divine. In thought I raised me to the place where she Whom still on earth I seek and find not, shines; There 'mid the souls whoa the third sphere confines, More fair I found her and less proud to me. She took my hand and said: Here shalt thou be With me ensphered, unless desires mislead; Lo! I am she who made thy bosom bleed, Whose day ere eve was ended utterly: 1% bliss no mortal heart can understand; Thee only do I lack, and that which thou So loved, now left on earth, roy beauteous veil. Ah! wherefore did she cease and loose my hand? For at the sound of that celestial tale I all but stayed in Paradise till mu. (Sonnet 261.) 2 Unfortunately the conventions of "Petrarchism" became a stultifying in~fluence. English poets of the sixteenth century reiterated the same stock praises and phrases Petrarch had used until all interest and emotional impact were de- stroyed. Shakespearels mock praise of his mistress satirizes these poems1 excesses. In spite of misuses,.however, Petrarch's formulation of an idealized and chaste love between man and woman was vital.
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