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Transformation and Closure in Renaissance Lyric Poetry

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Transformation and Closure in Renaissance Lyric Poetry Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 5-9-2016 Transformation and Closure in Renaissance Lyric Poetry Lisa Ulevich Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Ulevich, Lisa, "Transformation and Closure in Renaissance Lyric Poetry." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/164 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRANSFORMATION AND CLOSURE IN RENAISSANCE LYRIC POETRY by LISA MICHELLE ULEVICH Under the Direction of Stephen B. Dobranski, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Closure is one of the most important putative goals for highly structured Renaissance verse. Elements of structure—for example, sophisticated prosody or the embedding of a poem within a web of intertextual relationships—determine how poets work toward closure. This project explores how verse forms and genre manifest poets’ attempts to create resolution, and, significantly, how often the challenges of the process instead become the object of focus. Developing a New Formalist approach that focuses on how literary forms are inherently responsive (both to the social conventions that inform various genres and to the expressive goals of individual authors), I examine texts in four important Renaissance poetic genres: epyllion (William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis [1593]), satire (Joseph Hall’s Virgidemiae [1598, 1599]), religious lyric (George Herbert’s The Temple [1633]), and pastoral elegy (John Milton’s Epitaphium Damonis [1639] and Lycidas [1637, 1645]). These works illuminate some of the most significant strategies of authors who often meditate on the appeal of definitive, resolved conclusions and also on the complex ways their works become conditioned by the hope and struggle for resolution. INDEX WORDS: Closure, Resolution, Lyric, Poetry, Prosody, Genre, Appropriation, Renaissance, Early modern, Shakespeare, Hall, Herbert, Milton TRANSFORMATION AND CLOSURE IN RENAISSANCE LYRIC POETRY by LISA MICHELLE ULEVICH A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2016 Copyright by Lisa Michelle Ulevich 2016 TRANSFORMATION AND CLOSURE IN RENAISSANCE LYRIC POETRY by LISA MICHELLE ULEVICH Committee Chair: Stephen B. Dobranski Committee: James E. Hirsh Paul J. Voss Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2016 iv DEDICATION To Mark and Cindy Ulevich, with love. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As I consider the forces that bring a dissertation, not just lyric poems, toward completion, I am honored to acknowledge the professors, colleagues, and friends who have helped me as I worked on this project. Thanks go to my gracious and supportive committee, James Hirsh and Paul Voss, and to my dissertation director, Stephen Dobranski, who read drafts with phenomenal speed and closeness of attention. His constructive, thoughtful comments challenged me and, in the process of directing my dissertation, he has taught me so much about the kind of scholar I strive to be. I am also indebted to Edward Christie and Paul Schmidt: their mentoring, guidance, and good humor have been invaluable. Very special thanks go to Sonya Freeman Loftis, dear friend and brilliant scholar. With unfailing kindness and keen insight, she nurtured this project and helped me find my way toward clarity in the murkiest stages of composition. Finally, most importantly: I owe a great debt of gratitude to my loving family. Their patience and encouragement supported me long before I undertook this project and sustained me throughout it. Without my family, this project would not have been completed—to properly express my gratitude and love, I have no words. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION.................................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. v 1. INTRODUCTION: RENAISSANCE “ACT[S] OF FORM” ................................. 3 1.1 New Formalism and Closure .............................................................................. 7 1.2 Narrative and Lyric .......................................................................................... 14 1.3 Organization and Texts .................................................................................... 16 1.4 Works Cited ....................................................................................................... 22 2. PLUCKING GREEN PLUMS: BAD TIMING AND DEATH IN VENUS AND ADONIS .................................................................................................................................... 25 2.1 Adaptation as Responsive Form ...................................................................... 27 2.2 Couplets and Conspiracy .................................................................................. 39 2.3 Growing (in)to himself: Adonis’s Maturity and Metamorphosis ................. 51 2.4 Genealogies and Adaptation ............................................................................. 64 2.5 Works Cited ....................................................................................................... 67 3. OPEN/ENDED: THE LYRIC SATIRE OF JOSEPH HALL .............................. 71 3.1 “Peeuish syllable[s]”: Hall and His Critics ..................................................... 76 3.2 Satire: Closure, Provocation, and Performance ............................................. 84 3.3 Decorum and the Prescription of Laughter in the Virgidemiae .................... 88 3.4 Echoes of “grim laughter”: Milton and Hall ................................................ 104 2 3.5 Works Cited ..................................................................................................... 109 4. DEVOTION IN THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE: CLOTHING AND LYRIC RENEWAL IN THE TEMPLE ................................................................................................ 115 4.1 The Vestiarian Controversy: Dressing the Inward Man ............................. 118 4.2 The Aftermath of the Religious Wars ........................................................... 125 4.3 “Dresse and undresse thy soul”: Readerly Vanity in “The Church-porch” .... ........................................................................................................................... 130 4.4 Coarse Stuff: Shedding Vanity in The Temple ............................................. 140 4.5 Habitually Clothed in Christ: Repetition and Spiritual Growth ................ 147 4.6 Works Cited ..................................................................................................... 156 5. POETRY TO LEAVE BEHIND: MILTON’S PASTORAL ELEGIES ........... 162 5.1 Constructing a Future Legacy: Epitaphium Damonis .................................. 167 5.2 Enabling Earthly Labor in Lycidas................................................................ 182 5.3 Pastoral Persistence......................................................................................... 201 5.4 Works Cited ..................................................................................................... 206 6. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 213 6.1 Works Cited ..................................................................................................... 218 APPENDIX: COMPARISON OF TRANSLATIONS OF FISTULA AND CICUTA ... .................................................................................................................................. 219 3 1. INTRODUCTION: RENAISSANCE “ACT[S] OF FORM” “[S]o long as there is daily progress, there cannot be perfection” (John Calvin, Commentary on Ephesians 5:27). “And in things artificiall, seldome any elegance is wrought without a superfluous wast and refuse in the transaction. No Marble statue can be politely carv’d, no fair edifice built without almost as much rubbish and sweeping” (John Milton, Reason of Church- Government 796). Even ostensibly straightforward lyric situations can spawn alarmingly plural goals. In Astrophil and Stella 1, Astrophil is very clear about his emotional state—he “Lov[es] in truth”— but his plan of action jumbles together his objective and the means he wants to pursue. “[M]y love to show” is at once a goal and, as the subordinating beginning of the following line shows, only a step in the process: “Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, / That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain” (1-2). The incremental gradatio in the rest of the octave presents necessary steps in Astrophil’s wooing agenda. This agenda seems to reach its goal with the “grace” (4) that will bloom from Stella’s pity, and the arrival of the main verb at last lends some security: in order to achieve this purpose, “I sought fit words” (5). But even this objective, to seek and find fit words, becomes in turn a means to an end. Astrophil “sought fit words” (5) from the “inventions fine” in “others’ leaves” (6, 7), but
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