Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age

University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 2014 Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age Patrick Cheney Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus Lauren Silberman Baruch College-CUNY 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 Cheney, Patrick and Silberman, Lauren, "Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age" (2014). Literature in English, British Isles. 105. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/105 Studies in the English Renaissance John T. Shawcross, General Editor This page intentionally left blank WoRLDMAKING SPENSER Explorations in the Early Modern Age Edited by Patrick Cheney and Lauren Silberman THE UNIVERSITY PREss OF KENTUcKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York Research Foundation. Copyright © 2000 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club 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 04 03 02 01 00 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Worldmaking Spenser: explorations in the early modem age I edited by Patrick Cheney and Lauren Silberman. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-8131-6006-1 1. Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Literature and society-England-History-16th century. 3. Literature and society-History-16th century. I. Cheney, Patrick Gerard, 1949- II. Silberman, Lauren. PR2364.W67 1999 821'.3-dc21 99-13690 This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. § CONTENTS Acknowledgments vu Introduction 1 I. SPENSER AND THE WORLD A Primer of Spenser's Worldmaking: Alterity in the Bower of Bliss Roland Greene 9 Archimago and Amoret: The Poem and Its Doubles David ~int 32 II. SPENSER AND THE CoNTINENTAL OTHER Spenser's Squire's Literary History William]. Kennedy 45 The Laurel and the Myrtle: Spenser and Ronsard Anne Lake Prescott 63 III. SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH OTHER Gloriana, Acrasia, and the House of Busirane: Gendered Fictions in The Faerie Queene as Fairy Tale Mary Ellen Lamb 81 Women at the Margins in Spenser and Lanyer Susanne Woods 101 Lady Mary Wroth in the House ofBusirane Jacqueline T. Miller 115 "Mirrours More Then One": Edmund Spenser and Female Authority in the Seventec:!_lth Century Shannon Miller 125 Milton's Cave of Error: A Rewriting of Spenserian Satire John N. King 148 "And yet the end was not": Apocalyptic Deferral and Spenser's Literary Afterlife John Watkins 156 IV. PoLICING SELF AND OTHER: SPENSER, THE COLONIAL, AND THE CRIMINAL Spenser's Faeryland and "The Curious Genealogy ofindia" Elizabeth Jane Bellamy 177 Spenser and the Uses ofBritish History David J. Baker 193 "A doubtfull sense of things": Thievery in The Faerie Queene 6.10 and 6.11 Heather Dubrow 204 V. CONSTRUING SELF: LANGUAGE AND DIGESTION "Better a Mischief than an Inconvenience": "The saiyng self" in Spenser's View; or, How Many Meanings Can Stand on the Head of a Proverb? Judith H. Anderson 219 The Construction oflnwardness in The Faerie Queene, Book 2 Michael Schoenfeldt 234 Mterword: The Otherness of Spenser's Language David Lee Miller 244 Works Cited 249 Contributors 273 Index 277 AcKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume originated in papers presented at "The Faerie Queene in the World, 1596-1996: Spenser among the Disciplines," an international conference dedicated to the memory ofA. Bartlett Giamatti and held at Yale University between September 26-28, 1996. We would like to thank the Yale University organizers, Elizabeth Fowler, Jennifer Klein Morrison, and Matthew Greenfield, for making our volume possible. We are also grateful to the many patrons who contributed funding: the James M. and Marie Louise Osborn Collection, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Center for British Art, Richard C. Levin (president ofYale University), Major League Baseball, Inc., the International Spenser Society, the Elizabethan Club of Yale University, the Jeffrey White family, the Department of English at Yale University, and the Pennsylvania State University. Individuals from Penn State who helped with the conference include Don Bialostosky, Beth Catherman, Donna Harpster, Robert A. Secor, and Wilma Stern. Special gratitude for the volume goes to Robert R. Edwards, director and fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at Penn State, who kindly contributed encouragement and scholarly advice. Also at Penn State, Amy Barber and Todd Preston served as enthusiastic and expert research assistants, helping with the computer assembly of the manuscript, initial copyediting, compiling of the works cited list, and correspondence with the contributors. Chad Hayton provided valuable computer support, and Sandra Stelts of the rare books room helped with the volume jacket. Thanks also go to Laura Lunger Knoppers and Garrett Sullivan for their collegial conversation. Some of the work on this volume was facilitated by course remissions granted by Baruch College. For this, thanks go to Alexandra Logue, dean of the Baruch School of Arts and Science, and Professor John Todd, chairman of the Baruch College English department. At the University Press of Kentucky, we would like to thank Professor John Shawcross, who is the ostensive definition of collegiality, for his support and advice from the early stages of this project. We are also grateful Vlll I Acknowledgments to Professor Noel J. Kinnamon of Mars Hill College for copyediting the manuscript with a superb scholarly eye and to Grant Hackett for compiling an excellent index. Special thanks go to Roland Greene, who directed us to the illustration appearing on the volume jacket. Finally, we would like to thank the colleagues who contributed essays to this collection: for their superb professional expertise, their personal patience, and their general good will. For James A. Carcallen and in memory of Millar MacLure and Northrop Frye Victoria College, University ofToronto P.C. For Harold L. Skulsky and in memory of Richard B. Young L.S. lNTRODUCrfiON Recent literary criticism has usefully directed our attention to what we have known all along: that works ofliterature exist in the world, that they respond to social and political forces operant at the time of their writing, that they take part in forming the systems of beliefs upon which people act, individually and collectively, and that those belief systems continue to have an effect long after the time of their initial construction. In keeping with the focus of much recent literary criticism, many Spenser scholars have been undertaking to remind those in Spenser studies, as well as a much wider scholarly community, of what has been nominally acknowledged but never fully registered: that the writings of Edmund Spenser occupy a substantial place in a crucially important era of English history and European culture. The essays in this collection attest not only to the important place of Spenser's works in English history and European culture but also to the richness and complexity of the notion ofplace through which Spenser's work may be located. Although the historical itinerary of belief systems and the genealogical unfolding of literary history are mutually influential, each proceeds according to a logic or to logics of its own. Literary works, especially those as eclectic and allusive as The Faerie Queene, need to be understood in relationship to a variety of cultural phenomena and to multiple traditions, the preeminently literary as well as the political, economic, or ideological. Spenser's writings reflect the preoccupations and disseminate the beliefs of his time, but, as times change, his work has been appropriated by writers with very different concerns, sometimes for purposes antithetical to those of their Spenserian source. In the opening essay of this volume, Roland Greene reflects on the place of The Faerie Queene in the world. By giving full scope to the global and geographic ramifications of the term "place," he attempts to lead The Faerie Queene out of a nationally oriented, if not nationalist, scholarship to a broader interdisciplinary one that includes such fields as human geography. Complementing Greene, David Qyint demonstrates the extent to which the place Spenser's text assumes in the world is determined by and mediated through its function as literature. Qyint shows how the image-making of 2 I Introduction Spenser's major figure and dark double Archimago allegorizes

Load more