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David Roy the Unity of Edmund Spenser's Complaints.Pdf UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title The unity of Edmund Spenser's Complaints Author(s) Roy, David Karl Publication date 2017 Original citation Roy, D. K. 2017. The unity of Edmund Spenser's Complaints. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Rights © 2017, David Karl Roy. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Embargo information No embargo required Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/3915 from Downloaded on 2021-09-23T10:19:23Z The Unity of Edmund Spenser’s Complaints David Karl Roy Student Number: 107804202 Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University College Cork School of English April 2017 Head of School: Professor Lee Jenkins Supervisors: Dr Andrew King and Dr Kenneth Rooney Table of Contents Declaration.................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements....................................................................................................iv List of Illustrations.....................................................................................................vi Introduction.................................................................................................................1 Complaints and Criticism..................................................................................3 Contexts, Texts, and Paratexts.........................................................................13 Complaints’ Frontispiece and List of Poems...................................................18 ‘The Printer to the Gentle Reader’...................................................................27 Dedicatory Material.........................................................................................34 Part 1: The Unity of the Complaints Volume Chapter I: The Ruines of Time: Introducing the Complaints.....................................38 The Fiction of The Ruines of Time...................................................................39 Ruines as an Introduction to Complaints: Links between Poems....................51 The Ruines of Time ll. 1-175, The Teares of the Muses and Virgils Gnat.......53 The Ruines of Time ll. 176-343, Mother Hubberds Tale, and The Ruines of Rome.................................................................................................................64 The Ruines of Time ll. 344-686, Muiopotmos, and the Visions........................68 Chapter II: The Teares of the Muses: Structuring the Complaints............................72 Part 2: Links Within Sections Chapter III: Patronage in The Teares of the Muses and Virgils Gnat.......................94 Poet-Patron Dynamics.....................................................................................96 Alternative Sources of Patronage..................................................................112 Invasion of Bowers........................................................................................118 i Chapter IV: Social Reform in Prosopopoia: Or Mother Hubberds Tale and Ruines of Rome by Bellay........................................................................................................132 The Military...................................................................................................136 The Clergy......................................................................................................143 The Court.......................................................................................................148 The Monarch..................................................................................................154 Chapter V: Contemplating the Supercelestial in Muiopotmos: Or The Fate of the Butterflie and the Visions.........................................................................................159 Ecphrasis and Narrative Progression.............................................................165 Sleep, Death and Dream Visions...................................................................167 Creation, Fall, and Apocalypse......................................................................177 Conclusions.............................................................................................................188 Appendix 1: Current Locations for Complaints......................................................198 Appendix 2: Watermark Distribution......................................................................203 Works Cited.............................................................................................................205 ii I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted for another degree, either at University College Cork or elsewhere. David Roy ________________________________ iii Acknowledgements At some point around the middle of 2011 I met with Dr Andrew King to discuss some of the ideas that I had in relation to my MA thesis. At that stage I was trying to decide whether to write about patronage in the later works of Ben Jonson, or something to do with Spenser. When I went into the meeting I had studied The Shepheardes Calender and Book III of The Faerie Queene, but I found both to be quite intimidating and was not sure if I was up to the task of writing on them. As I expressed some of those anxieties, Dr King handed me a copy of Edmund Spenser’s Complaints, and invited me to try that instead. It is safe to say that this project would not have ever happened if it were not for the guidance of Dr King. I wish to sincerely thank him for that guidance and the wonderful help and support he continued to give me well into this current project. I would also like to thank Dr Kenneth Rooney, who took over as my supervisor in November 2013. Dr Rooney has been so encouraging throughout; his kind words and advice have made this project what it is at this moment. I would like to thank Professor Claire Connolly for her help in making sure that my transition between supervisors was as smooth as it could be, as well as for always having an open door when I have needed to chat. I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the School of English in University College Cork, for their support and encouragement. I also wish to thank the School of English for awarding me the PhD Studentship for two consecutive years (2012-14), which provided wonderful financial assistance. I would particularly like to thank Anne Fitzgerald for her help with all things relating to administration throughout my time in the School. iv I am also grateful for all my colleagues in 1.64 that helped keep me sane. I wish to thank the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences at University College Cork for awarding me a travel bursary that allowed me to visit both the Huntington Library and the Clark Memorial Library in California. I would like to thank the Irish Research Council for their award of funding under the Postgraduate Scholarship Scheme for the 2014-15 academic year. I would also like to thank Dr Mark Chu for his guidance with my application. Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank Jenna, Robert, Evelynn, Rachael, and Jessica for their never-ending patience, love and support. v List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Watermark (pot with one handle) courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Mal. 617 (p. 17) Fig. 2: Watermark (pot with no handle) courtesy of the Bodleian Library, T. 217 (p. 17) Fig. 3: Composite image of Mother Hubberds Tale and Muiopotmos frontispieces from Stein (p. 25) Fig. 4: Emblimatical title courtesy of EEBO (p. 37) Fig. 5: Franchini Gafori’s Practica Musice (p. 76) Fig. 6: Frontispiece to John Dee’s General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Nauigation courtesy of EEBO (p. 91) vi Abstract Edmund Spenser's Complaints (1591) is a collection of nine poems; these poems are compartmentalized into four sections, each of which begins with its own frontispiece and contains a dedication to a lady. Complaints is an extremely problematic volume which prompts urgent questions, not hitherto adequately addressed, such as: How can Complaints be defined in terms of form, genre and structure? Is Complaints simply a collection of four separate pamphlets? Why does the volume not fit into any of the career trajectories proposed for Spenser? Why is fixing a date on the poems so difficult? Why is the authorship of the preface, entitled ‘The Printer the Gentle Reader’, so hard to define? Complaints has been regarded as a haphazard collection, thrown together by the publisher to capitalize on the success of the first part of The Faerie Queene (1590). The aims of this thesis are to address the above questions, while also arguing for the thematic, bibliographic, structural, numerological, cosmological and contextual unity found in the volume, and teasing out the implications of these various unities. vii Introduction The aim of this thesis is to argue that Edmund Spenser’s Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie is a unified volume of poetry; that the poems that make up Complaints are placed purposefully in a specific order; are purposefully separated out into four distinct sections; and thematically linked with each other overall and within the four discrete sections. As studies into the unity of The Faerie Queene – which are as far reaching and diverse as Alastair Fowler’s Spenser and the Numbers of Time, David Lee Miller’s The Poem’s Two Bodies,
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