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Deposit guide Contact: email 1 ‘Turning others’ leaves’: imitatio and intertextuality in sixteenth-century English receptions of classical Latin love elegy Linda Grant PhD Thesis Birkbeck, University of London 2014 2 Statement of originality I declare that this thesis is the product of my own work, and that any work used from other authors has been properly acknowledged. ------------------------------------------------------ Linda Grant, April 2014 3 Abstract This thesis situates itself within the field of classical reception, and explores the appropriation and imitation of Latin erotic elegy (Catullus, Propertius, Ovid, Sulpicia) in the love poetry of sixteenth-century England. It shows imitatio to be a dynamic, rich and sophisticated practice, one which may be productively read as both a form of intertextuality and reception, terms which capture its contingent and active nature. The readings here re-calibrate Petrarch’s canzoniere suggesting that this influential sequence of love sonnets is itself a moralised re- writing of Roman erotic elegy. By re-framing the ‘Petrarchan’ love poetry of Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, John Donne and Mary Sidney as elegiac receptions, the readings here re-open these familiar texts and offer fresh interpretations of how they can be made to mean. The introduction traces the presence of Latin love elegy in the early modern period, and shows that a modern scholarly over-reliance on Petrarch and Ovid has obscured the way Renaissance love poetry is also shaped by and through its relationships to the texts of Catullus, Propertius and Sulpicia. The four chapters which follow trace these intertextual relationships in detail through readings of a small number of poems: those of Catullus and Wyatt, Propertius and Sidney, Ovid and Donne, and Sulpicia and Mary Sidney. The interventions which this project makes are two-fold: firstly it applies modern theories of reception and intertextuality to Renaissance love poetry, and refreshes the way imitatio may be read. Secondly, it re-frames ‘Petrarchan’ love poetry of sixteenth-century England and reveals it to be a complex, subtle and sometimes revisionary re-writing of Latin love elegy. By reading the multiple concerns of elegy and its sometimes problematic uses of love, gender and erotic desire into the selected English texts, this project offers fresh interpretations of both bodies of poetry, and demonstrates that Roman elegy has a vital and complex presence in the poetics of sixteenth-century England. 4 Contents Acknowledgements Textual note Introduction: ‘All that rout of lascivious poets that wrote epistles and 7 ditties of love’ 0.1 ‘We should write just as bees make honey’: imitatio, Roman love elegy 7 and the ‘Petrarchan’ 0.2 Imitatio and intertextuality: ‘cultural discontinuity’ or ‘creative 17 assimilation’? 0.3 ‘Ovid was there and with him were Catullus, Propertius and Tibullus’: 22 Roman love elegy in the Renaissance 0.4 Reading the erotic: ‘to teach and delight’? 41 Chapter 1: ‘For truth and faith in her is laid apart’: women’s words 51 and the construction of masculinity in Catullus’ Lesbia poems and Thomas Wyatt 1.1 ‘Written in wind and running water’: the problematics of female 55 speech in Catullus 70, 83, 76, 109 1.2 Brittanus Catullus: locating Catullus in the Henrician Court 73 1.3 ‘Graven with diamonds’: Wyatt’s ‘Lesbia’ in ‘They Flee From Me’ and 84 ‘Whoso List to Hunt’ Chapter 2: ‘“Fool,” said my muse to me’: reading metapoetics 105 in Propertius 2.1 and 4.7, and Astrophil and Stella 1 2.1 ‘My sweetheart herself creates the inspiration’: Cynthia, inspiration 111 and poetic authority in Propertius 2.1 and 4.7 2.2 ‘Propertius rediit ad nos’: the transmission of Propertius 131 2.3 ‘Loving in truth and fain in verse’: Astrophil’s subversive muse 135 and the abuse of poetry: Astrophil and Stella 1 Chapter 3: ‘In six numbers let my work rise, and subside in five’: 152 authority and impotence in Amores 1.5 and 3.7, Donne’s ‘To His Mistress Going To Bed’, and Nashe’s Choice of Valentines 3.1 ‘Hir arme’s are spread, and I am all unarm’d lyke one with Ovids 157 cursed hemlock charm’d’: reading Donne and Nashe through Ovid 3.2 ‘O my America, my new found land’: re-reading Ovid’s Corinna through 182 Donne and Nashe Chapter 4: ‘Never were our hearts but one’: female desire and 199 authorship in Sulpicia and Mary Sidney’s Antonie 4.1 ‘Tandem venit amor’: Sulpicia’s elegies and the lexicon of love 203 4.2 ‘Erudito poeta’: reading Sulpicia in the Renaissance 225 4.3 ‘Outrage your face’: Petrarchan contestations and the voice of Cleopatra 228 in Mary Sidney’s Antonie Conclusion 251 Bibliography 260 5 Acknowledgements What a pleasure it is to look back over the life of this project and express my gratitude to all the people who have helped me get here. First thanks must go to my supervisors, Catharine Edwards and Sue Wiseman: it has become a cliché amongst doctoral students to say that one could not have hoped for better supervisors, but it is a happy one in my case. Thank you both for negotiating that delicate line between being the harshest of critics, and yet remaining endlessly encouraging and supportive. You have challenged me, made me laugh, and cut through the tangles of my thinking and writing for which I am deeply grateful. Birkbeck has been a fabulous place to study with its eclectic and committed community of students and scholars. I have been especially lucky to have found a dual academic home in the departments of both Classics and English/Renaissance Studies both of whom have been open and welcoming. Special thanks need to go to Stephen Clucas for various reading suggestions which have found their way into this thesis. I also need to thank all the students I have taught whose enthusiasm and openness to new ideas has helped to keep my own thinking fresh. Birkbeck has been the source of not just academic support but good friends: in Classics, Janet Powell and Clare Goudy have shared wine and the kind of geeky discussions about Latin poetry and fifth-century Athens that ‘normal’ people would find weird: the little that I know about Athenian silver mining and Juvenal, I owe to you! In the Renaissance group, I’m lucky to have met fellow enthusiasts in Sam Smith, Julie Ackroyd, Hester Goodwin, Jackie Watson, Cat Griffiths and, especially, Judith Hudson: thanks for afternoons at The Globe, various reading groups, and lots of talking over wine. Colleagues and friends at Queen Mary University of London, have helped this project along in various ways: special thanks to Richard Schoch, Josh Bronson and James Dunckerley for stimulating conversation and, yes, even more wine... and to Jerry Brotton for teaching opportunities. Outside of academia lots of friends have provided distraction and kept me sane: Francis Barry-Walsh, John Cleary, John and Ferial McFarlane, Graeme Howe, Del Fasoranti, Jenny Alexander, Lyn Dale have all reminded me that there is life beyond the thesis. And, lastly, profound thanks to my parents: you may not always have understood why this is important to me, but have offered unconditional love anyway. 6 Textual note As a general principle, I have taken quotations from classical Latin texts from the Oxford Classical Text (OCT), with translations from the Loeb edition: translations are sometimes lightly and silently adapted in keeping with the OCT. The few Greek quotations that appear are given in translation only from either the Loeb or, in the case of Homer, from the Richmond Lattimore translations. Early modern quotations are taken from standard editions as noted in the footnotes and bibliography, and follow the editors’ decisions on modernisation of spelling and punctuation: so, for example, Thomas Nashe’s texts, following McKerrow, appear unmodernised, while Thomas Wyatt’s poetry, taken from Rebholtz, has been adapted to current spelling conventions. Abbreviations that appear in the footnotes are OED for the Oxford English Dictionary, and OLD for the Oxford Latin Dictionary. Standard abbreviations for Latin texts are given in footnotes, but the texts are given their full name in the body of chapters to avoid confusion. 7 Introduction: ‘All that rout of lascivious poets that wrote epistles and ditties of love’ 0.1 ‘We should write just as bees make honey’: imitatio, Roman love elegy, and the ‘Petrarchan’ The opening sonnet of Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella gives a vivid picture of a sixteenth-century English poet struggling to write love poetry. Astrophil’s first recourse is to previous poets: ‘oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow | some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain’.1 Poetic inspiration is presupposed to come from reading prior writers, ‘turning others’ leaves’.2 But the practice of Renaissance literary imitatio is not a simple or unsophisticated one. ‘Turning’ certainly refers to the turning over of pages as Astrophil scours through what has already been written; but it also implies a metamorphic art, the ‘turning’ of one image, trope, text or even genre into something undoubtedly related and, yet, different.3 This thesis traces the imitation - a ‘turning’ - of classical Latin love elegy (specifically Catullus, Propertius, Ovid and Sulpicia) in, and into, the so-called ‘Petrarchan’ love poetry of four English writers of the sixteenth century: Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, John Donne, and Mary Sidney.