Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser



Untuk memahami tempat Edmund Spenser dalam renaisans sastra yang luar biasa yang terjadi di Inggris selama dua dekade terakhir masa pemerintahan Ratu Elizabeth, akan sangat membantu untuk memulai dengan pernyataan kritikus sastra terkemuka pada zaman itu, Sir Philip Sidney. Dalam The Defense of Poetry, (1595), yang ditulis pada awal 1580-an, Sidney melihat kembali sejarah sastra Inggris dan melihat sedikit untuk dikagumi. Dia menyebutkan karya-karya Geoffrey Chaucer dan beberapa soneta oleh Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; tragedi sesekali seperti yang dicetak pada tahun 1560-an dalam A Mirror for Magistrates; dan satu buku puisi kontemporer, Spenson's Shepheardes Calender (1579). Meskipun Prancis dan Italia dan bahkan negara-negara yang lebih rendah seperti Skotlandia memiliki penyair-penyair terkenal mereka dan menganggap mereka terhormat, Inggris, menurut Sidney, baru-baru ini hanya melahirkan "penyair-penyair sampah" dan "penyair-monyet," dan, akibatnya, seni itu sendiri telah "jatuh menjadi anak-anak yang tertawa-tawa." Meskipun orang mungkin bertengkar dengan Sidney atas daftar penulis pribumi terbaiknya, memang benar bahwa Inggris tidak dapat membanggakan tidak ada penyair awal selain Chaucer yang sebanding dengan perawakannya sampai Dante, Petrarch, atau Boccaccio. Pada saat itu Sidney sedang menulis, apalagi, Inggris sama sekali tidak memiliki jenis budaya sastra yang berkembang pesat yang begitu terlihat di Selat di Prancis. Sidney sendiri berangkat untuk memperbaiki kekurangan ini, dan bersamanya penulis lain yang paling penting dari generasinya, Edmund Spenser.



Sepintas rencana berani Spenser untuk membantu menyediakan Inggris dengan literatur nasional yang besar muncul dalam lampiran yang dicetak dalam edisi 1590 dari tiga buku pertama dari karyanya yang paling penting, The Faerie Queene. Dalam sepucuk surat yang ditujukan kepada tetangganya, Sir Walter Ralegh, Spenser menjelaskan tentang "maksud dan arti umum" dari epiknya yang kaya. Ini adalah "fiksi bersejarah," yang ditulis untuk memuliakan Ratu Elizabeth dan "untuk menjadi seorang pria yang berbudi luhur dalam disiplin yang lincah dan lembut." Dalam mengejar tujuan yang terakhir ini, sang penyair menjelaskan bahwa ia telah mengikuti teladan para penulis epik terbesar dari dunia kuno dan dunia modern: Homer dan Virgil, Ludovico Ariosto dan Torquato Tasso. Sekarang, untuk berangkat untuk menggambarkan ratu sendiri dan untuk "fashion" anggota bangsawannya dalam disiplin yang berbudi luhur dan dibesarkan dengan baik tentu saja merupakan usaha yang berani untuk anak seorang penenun London. Baginya untuk membandingkan karyanya dengan puisi Italia yang paling agung, pusat kebudayaan Eropa yang berkilauan pada periode ini, pastilah bagi banyak pembacanya, hanya bravado atau delusi diri.



Upaya menulis epik neoklasik dalam bahasa Inggris tanpa preseden — kecuali, mungkin, salah satunya mencakup Arcadia Sidney (1590), yang dimulai pada waktu yang hampir bersamaan. Di antara penyair heroik yang disebutkan dalam Surat Spenser kepada Ralegh sebagai praktisi yang layak dalam bentuk, Virgil umumnya dianggap sebagai yang terbesar, dan Spenser, seperti Dante dan Petrarch di hadapannya, tampaknya telah mengambil Virgil sebagai mentor dan pembimbing pribadinya. Dari Proem hingga Buku I dari The Faerie Queene, pembaca dapat menyimpulkan bahwa Spenser kadang-kadang memikirkan seluruh kariernya sebagai rekapitulasi dari rekannya yang terkenal di Romawi. Dia memulai, karena Virgil telah memulai di Eclogues-nya, dengan puisi pastoral, yang Spenser publikasikan dalam karya utamanya yang pertama, The Shepheardes Calender. Satu dasawarsa kemudian, di The Faerie Queene, ia lulus dengan puisi tentang mata pelajaran bela diri dan politik, seperti yang dilakukan Virgil ketika ia menulis epik besarnya, Aeneid, untuk istana Caesar Augustus. Garis pembuka Spenser, yang menggemakan ayat-ayat yang diawali dengan Aeneid, mengumumkan niatnya untuk menukarkan "buluh Oaten" nya (atau pipa gembala) untuk "terompet sterne." Meskipun ia mengubah pengenalan epik tradisional untuk memasukkan doa ke dewa asmara, dewa cinta, bersama dengan alamat yang lebih tradisional untuk Muses dan meskipun puisi sebenarnya menyerupai epos romantik quasi-abad pertengahan Ariosto dan Tasso lebih dekat daripada itu epos klasik , klaim penyair untuk mengikuti garis besar yang didirikan oleh Homer dan diwariskan oleh Virgil benar-benar serius.



Sadar akan diri sendiri sesuai dengan praktik para penyair kuno, dan juga yang lebih baru di Benua Eropa, merupakan bagian penting dari proyek Spenser — tetapi hanya sebagian. Dengan matanya yang sering beralih ke Chaucer dan penulis Inggris lainnya, ia mulai membuat puisi yang khas Inggris — dalam agama dan politik, dalam sejarah dan adat istiadat, dalam setting dan bahasa. Sebagai contoh, ia menyebutkan dalam Surat kepada Ralegh bahwa ia merancang epiknya untuk menggambarkan "dua belas titik moral pribadi, seperti yang dirancang Aristoteles." Namun dalam kenyataannya, hanya tiga dari enam buku yang ia jalani untuk menyelesaikan berkisar kebajikan yang diakui oleh Aristoteles, dan bahkan ketiga hal itu — kesederhanaan, persahabatan, dan keadilan — sangat diubah oleh bentuk Kekristenan Spineter yang Protestan dan oleh elemen lain dalam latar belakang bahasa Inggrisnya. Tiga lainnya — kekudusan, kesucian, dan kesopanan — tidak ada kaitannya dengan Aristoteles tetapi banyak berkaitan dengan Inggris di Abad Pertengahan yang tinggi. Dalam artian terbaik, seni Spenser adalah sinkretis, menggabungkan unsur-unsur dari banyak tradisi. Namun tujuannya adalah untuk memperkaya budaya tanah kelahirannya.



Proses di mana dia menyadari tujuan ini tidak cepat dan tidak dapat diprediksi. Membandingkan Spenser dengan Sidney, C. S. Lewis telah menulis bahwa dia "pria yang lebih biasa, kurang pintar, kurang mudah mengartikulasikan," dan dia berhasil dengan bekerja lebih keras. Untuk alasan itu, barangkali — bersama dengan humornya yang rendah, pemahamannya yang mendalam tentang psikologi manusia, dan kemanusiaannya yang mudah dan akal sehat — Spenser lebih dekat daripada Sidney ke hati banyak orang sebangsanya.



Edmund Spenser lahir di keluarga pembuat kain yang tidak jelas bernama John Spenser, yang tergabung dalam Perusahaan Pedagang Taylors dan menikah dengan seorang wanita bernama Elizabeth, yang hampir tidak ada yang diketahui. Sejak paroki catatan untuk daerah London di mana penyair dibesarkan dihancurkan dalam Kebakaran Besar 1666, tanggal lahirnya tidak pasti, meskipun tanggal sekolahnya dan ucapan di salah satu soneta nya (Amoretti 60) memberikan kepercayaan kepada tanggal yang ditetapkan secara tradisional, yaitu sekitar 1552. Yang mana John Spenser adalah ayahnya juga tidak pasti, karena setidaknya ada tiga orang dari nama itu yang bekerja di London sebagai penenun pada saat ini. Jika penyair itu mengambil garis keturunannya dari John Spenser dari Hurstwood, maka ia berasal dari keluarga mapan yang pernah tinggal di Lancashire sejak abad ketiga belas. Jika dia adalah putra John Spenser yang disebutkan dalam Survei John Stow di London (1603), maka ayahnya adalah orang yang terkenal di kemudian hari membeli sebuah rumah yang dulunya milik Humphrey, Adipati Gloucester, dan siapa dinobatkan pada 1594 oleh Ratu Elizabeth pada pemilihannya sebagai walikota London. Dalam kasus apa pun, dari puisi Prothalamion (1596) mengungkapkan bahwa Spenser menganggap dirinya sebagai keturunan dari "Rumah ketenaran yang kuat", yaitu keluarga Despencer. Di sana, tidak ada bukti, bagaimanapun, bahwa ia dapat mengklaim sebagai seorang gentleman, dan fakta itu sendiri membuat kemunculannya menjadi lebih sulit di usia yang sadar-kelas.

Orang tua Spenser mengambil langkah yang mungkin paling penting dalam memajukan nasib putra mereka dengan mendaftarkannya di sekolah Merchant Taylors di London. Selama awal 1560-an, ketika Spenser memulai studinya di sana, ia berada di bawah pengarahan yang mampu dari seorang pendidik humanis terkemuka bernama Richard Mulcaster, yang percaya sepenuhnya membumi murid-muridnya di klasik dan di Kristen Protestan, dan yang tampaknya telah mendorong ekstrakurikuler seperti itu. kegiatan sebagai pertunjukan musik dan drama. Mulcaster juga penting bagi karier Spenser karena alasan-alasan yang murni pragmatis, karena ia memiliki hubungan baik dengan universitas dan mengirim para siswa sarana sederhana seperti Spenser kepada mereka dengan beberapa keteraturan. Penyair itu kemudian menyatakan rasa terima kasihnya kepada Mulcaster dengan menggambarkan dirinya sebagai "Seekor shephearde yang baik, Wrenock" dalam elog bulan Desember The Shepheardes Calender dan dengan menamai dua anak pertamanya, Sylvanus dan Katherine, setelah mereka dari gurunya. "



Hanya sekilas yang bertahan dari penyair muda di sekolah berasal dari catatan keuangan yang menunjukkan bahwa pada tahun 1569, ketika ia berada di tahun terakhirnya, ia adalah salah satu dari enam anak laki-laki yang diberi shilling dan gaun baru untuk menghadiri pemakaman Robert Nowell, sebuah pengacara terkemuka yang berhubungan dengan sekolah. Hubungan ini dengan Nowell adalah untuk membuktikan penting untuk perkembangan kemudian Spenser, untuk real pengacara itu membantu mendukung pendidikan berikutnya. "



Pada tahun 1569, pada usia enam belas atau tujuh belas tahun, Spenser meninggalkan Sekolah Saudagar Taylors untuk Cambridge, di mana ia mendaftar di Pembroke Hall. Bahkan sebelum dia datang, dia sudah membuat puisi dan menarik perhatian penulis lain. Mungkin dengan bantuan Mulcaster, yang memiliki teman di komunitas imigran Belanda, dia baru-baru ini mengatur untuk menerbitkan kumpulan epigram dan soneta yang terkait secara tematis berjudul The Visions of Petrarch dan The Visions of Bellay, yang muncul dalam koleksi yang biasa disebut A Theater for Worldlings (1569) oleh penyair Belanda Jan van der Noot. Bahkan dalam kedewasaannya Spenser tampaknya telah memikirkan dengan baik terjemahan awal puisi Prancis dan Italia ini, karena ia merevisi dan mencetak ulang di antara Keluhannya pada tahun 1591. Meskipun tidak asli, mereka tetap menjelaskan kepentingan Spenser pada waktu yang diarahkan ke penyair dari Benua dan telah menetapkan tema-tema yang akan muncul lagi dalam puisinya nanti, yaitu bahaya kehidupan yang tragis dan ketidakkekalan benda-benda di dunia material. "



Potongan-potongan informasi yang dapat dipercaya seperti yang diketahui tentang Spenser selama masa kuliahnya menunjukkan bahwa ia melayani sebagai seorang sizar (seorang sarjana yang terbatas yang melakukan tugas-tugas sebagai imbalan untuk kamar dan makan) dan bahwa ia menerima B.A. pada tahun 1573 dan M.A.-nya pada tahun 1576 tanpa tanda resmi sebagai seorang sarjana. Dia menganggap pengalaman itu penting bagi perkembangannya, namun, seperti dapat dilihat dalam referensi kemudian ke universitas sebagai "ibuku Cambridge" di The Faerie Queene (IV.xi.34). Sedikit yang diketahui tentang pertemanannya di Pembroke. Dia pasti kenal dengan Lancelot Andrewes, dua tahun lebih muda, yang kemudian menjadi seorang uskup dan terkenal karena khotbahnya dan bagiannya dalam menerjemahkan Alkitab Versi King James. Jelas, Spenser juga mendapatkan kepercayaan dari master Pembroke, John Young, yang kemudian menjadi uskup di Rochester dan memberi sang penyair pos pertamanya sebagai sekretaris pribadi. Namun, yang paling penting bagi karier sastra Spenser adalah persahabatan dekatnya dengan Gabriel Harvey, seorang profesor retorika yang pada mulanya menjabat sebagai mentornya dan akhirnya sebagai promotor literaturnya. Spencer kemudian merayakan persahabatan mereka di The Shepheardes Calender, di mana ia muncul sebagai Colin Clout dan Harvey diwakili sebagai Hobbinoll gembala yang bijaksana. "



Meskipun penyairnya sendiri tidak bersemangat, Harvey tampaknya telah mendorong Spenser dalam banyak aspirasi yang kemudian membentuk kariernya. Harvey secara khas sangat berlebihan, misalnya, tentang perlunya membumikan puisi Inggris pada model-model besar dari zaman Yunani-Romawi, baik dengan membentuk versifikasinya pada prinsip-prinsip Latin dan dengan melakukan genre klasik yang belum dicoba dalam bahasa Inggris. Pada akhir 1570-an ia menyusun epik vernakular (sekarang hilang) dan sebuah karya pada Muses kuno puisi yang mirip dalam garis besar untuk Spenser's Teares of the Muses (1591). Pada waktu yang hampir bersamaan, ia mungkin telah memainkan peran dalam memperkenalkan Spenser ke Sidney dan dalam mengamankan posisi temannya di rumah tangga London, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, yang merupakan favorit Ratu Elizabeth serta tokoh kunci. dalam faksi Protestan radikal di istana dan salah satu bangsawan paling berkuasa di dunia. Hubungan dengan Leicester dan Sidney membantu untuk memulai karir Spenser, baik sebagai seorang penyair dan sebagai pejabat pemerintah. Akhirnya, pada tahun 1580, tepat sebelum keadaan memaksa pemisahan antara dua teman, Harvey memberi keunggulan Spenser sebagai penulis dorongan oleh pu


Dalam surat-surat Spenser dan Harvey mengobrol dengan gembira tentang kontak mereka dengan orang-orang hebat dan berbagai karya mereka yang sedang berlangsung, termasuk Faerie Queene karya Spenser dan sederetan mengejutkan karya-karya awal lainnya yang kemudian hilang - atau mungkin diam-diam dimasukkan ke dalam karya-karya yang diterbitkan. Karya-karya ini termasuk sepuluh komedi Latin, beberapa mimpi visi, epithalamium merayakan "perkawinan" dari sungai-sungai Inggris, dan karya kritik sastra berjudul The English Poete. Surat-surat itu bahkan lebih menarik bagi wahyu mereka bahwa Spenser dan Harvey baru-baru ini terlibat dalam lingkaran sastra yang berkumpul di sekitar Sidney. Kelompok, yang menyebut dirinya "Areopagus," berumur pendek, dan meskipun itu mungkin telah dibentuk dengan referensi yang menyenangkan untuk akademi sastra besar di Perancis dan Italia, tampaknya lebih dikenal karena semangatnya yang tinggi dan percakapan yang baik. daripada keseriusannya. Para penulis yang terlibat - termasuk diplomat terpelajar Daniel Rogers, teman-teman Sidney Sir Edward Dyer dan Fulke Greville, First Lord Brooke, dan akademisi Thomas Drant - tampaknya telah menduduki diri mereka sendiri terutama dengan eksperimen dalam prosodi Latin, upaya berbagai genre puisi baru berdasarkan model klasik, dan promosi bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa sastra. Rogers, bagaimanapun, juga menyebutkan diskusi besar "dari hukum, Tuhan dan kebaikan," yang mungkin memiliki beberapa efek pada karya heroik yang menduduki Sidney dan Spenser di tahun-tahun berikutnya. "



Keterlibatan langsung Spenser dengan Sidney dan lingkarannya pada tahun 1579-1580 menempatkannya pada suatu kursus sastra yang akan ia kejar sepanjang sisa hidupnya. Meskipun kedua pria itu tidak pernah bertemu satu sama lain lagi, mereka mengadopsi agenda sastra yang sangat mirip, menulis terutama dalam genre yang telah ditemui Sidney di antara penyair neoklasik dan religius terkemuka di Benua Eropa. Kedua pria, misalnya, menulis karya kritik sastra yang membahas keadaan puisi saat ini di Inggris, dan keduanya mencurahkan sebagian besar energi kreatif mereka untuk puisi pastoral dan epik percintaan, untuk soneta dan epithalamium, dan untuk himne agama atau mazmur. Keduanya juga menulis traktat politik tentang Irlandia, di mana ayah Sidney melayani selama lebih dari dua dekade dan di mana Spenser segera menjadi pejabat pemerintah. Ekspresi kekaguman untuk Sidneys dan Dudleys muncul berulang kali dalam karya-karyanya, dari puisi-puisi awal seperti Stemmata Dudleiana (kini hilang) hingga yang terakhir seperti The Ruines of Time (1591), Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), dan Astrophel (1595). "



Melalui kontaknya dengan orang-orang seperti Sidney dan Leicester, yang sangat terlibat dalam urusan negara, Spenser mungkin telah berani untuk menerbitkan Kalender Shepeardes-nya, yang didedikasikan untuk Sidney dan berurusan dengan kontroversi politik yang sensitif pada hari itu. Muncul dalam enam edisi sebelum akhir abad, itu menjadi tonggak sejarah dalam kebangkitan kembali sastra Inggris karena ini adalah karya besar pertama yang diterbitkan dari puisi baru yang ditulis di sepanjang garis neoklasik yang diadvokasi oleh penyair nasionalis seperti dari Areopagus. Dengan bakat untuk promosi diri yang mengingatkan Harvey, Spenser - atau mungkin penerbitnya - diatur untuk mengeluarkan volume seolah-olah itu adalah teks yang mulia dan kuno. Bahasa kuno dari puisi, yang ditentang Sidney dalam bukunya Pertahanan Puisi, mungkin telah diadopsi sebagian untuk meningkatkan efek ini. Diilustrasikan dengan indah dengan ukiran kayu, puisi-puisi itu muncul dari permulaan yang sudah dipenuhi dengan materi pembelajaran dan pengaburan yang dilakukan oleh seorang sarjana tak dikenal yang ditunjuk hanya sebagai "E. K." Kemungkinan besar, ini adalah teman Spenser Edward Kirke, yang dia kenal sejak hari-hari mereka bersama di Pembroke Hall pada awal 1570-an. Namun, siapa pun dia, dia berbagi pandangan Spenser bahwa puisi-puisi Inggris berantakan dan bahwa itu harus dibangun kembali pada "citra anti-kejahatan yang abadi" - sebuah argumen yang diulang dalam eclogue untuk bulan Oktober. Dalam surat pengantar untuk volume, E. K. lauds Spenser sebagai "Poete baru kami," yang akan "dicintai, dipeluk paling banyak, dan bertanya-tanya tentang yang terbaik." Jika dia menulis karya Virgil atau Petrarch, daripada seorang penyair Inggris yang tidak dikenal, dia hampir tidak bisa mengatakan lebih banyak. "



Pinjaman sastra terampil Spenser memberikan kontribusi pada efek volume yang mengesankan. Dari penyair Italia, Petrarch dan Mantuan, ia mengadopsi berbagai pastoral yang menyembunyikan di bawah permukaannya menggigit alegori-alegori politik dan sindiran-sindiran duniawi kepada tokoh-tokoh terkemuka di gereja dan negara. Dari Eclogues of Virgil yang lebih tradisional dan dari para penulis kuno seperti Theocritus, Bion, dan Moschus, ia mengambil fitur-fitur lain, seperti rasa waktu statis yang misterius dari pastoral klasik. Perdebatan karismanya dan bernyanyi, cinta dan putus asa, tetapi tidak ada perkembangan naratif nyata dalam Kalender dan sangat sedikit tindakan. Ragam diperkenalkan dalam subjek yang para gembala merenungkan dan dalam bentuk puitis yang mereka terapkan, yang meliputi keluhan-keluhan asmara, dongeng, pertandingan bernyanyi dan debat, sebuah encomium, elegi pemakaman, dan nyanyian pujian bagi Dewa Pan. "



Spenser juga tertarik pada seni visual pada zamannya, khususnya karya yang dikenal sebagai "lambang buku." Ini biasanya menyatukan tiga elemen yang berbeda: serangkaian gambar dari jenis figuratif atau simbolik, "mottos" atau perkataan bernada terkait dengan gambar-gambar tetapi diutarakan dalam istilah-istilah misterius, dan penjelasan dalam prosa atau ayat yang menafsirkan motto dan gambar dan menggambar moral. Masing-masing dari dua belas eclog Spenser mengikuti versi yang lebih rumit dari pola ini. Pertama muncul potongan kayu, yang biasanya menggambarkan penggembala (s) dalam eclogue dan sesuatu dari lagu-lagu mereka atau situasi mereka, dengan tanda zodiak yang sesuai dengan bulan yang dipermasalahkan di atas. Kemudian datang puisi itu sendiri, didahului dengan "argumen" atau ringkasan singkat, yang mungkin telah ditambahkan oleh EK Setelah eclog datang satu atau lebih "emblem" verbal atau motto dalam berbagai bahasa, yang secara singkat meringkas sifat atau situasi dari pembicara dan tema lagu mereka, tetapi yang sering menggoda imajinasi dengan interpretasi alternatif. Dan akhirnya ada gloss E. K., melayani beberapa fungsi yang sama seperti penjelasan di bawah lambang konvensional. "




Spenser juga menambahkan inovasi penting pada elemen tradisional dalam Kalender. Satu teknik puitis yang terlibat. Dalam berbagai meteran dan bentuk, eclogues-nya tidak didahului dalam puisi pastoral sebelumnya dan memberikan banyak pajangan untuk eksperimen dalam prosodi yang begitu mempesona para penyair dari Areopagus. Inovasi lain yang mencolok adalah organisasinya tentang puisi menjadi perkembangan musiman. Dengan mengikuti siklus tahun ini, Spenser mampu menggunakan dunia luar dari padang rumput dan kandang domba sebagai cara untuk menggambarkan dunia batin gembala muda Colin Clout, yang cinta Rosalind-nya yang tak berbalas memberikan benang persatuan melalui seluruh volume. Dalam puisi pertama, "Januari," Colin putus asa, memecahkan pipa gembalanya dan, dengan itu, sumber kesenangan terakhir yang tersisa baginya. Di matanya, tanah, pepohonan, dan kawanan ternak di sekitarnya menjadi emblem untuk keadaan jiwanya. Dia mengeluh, "Tanah Anda barrein, ke mana musim dingin murka telah disia-siakan, / Seni membuat mur, untuk melihat penderitaan saya." Meskipun tidak ada atau bahkan disebutkan dalam beberapa eclogues, Colin memberikan garis bass melankolis di mana semua gembala lainnya bernyanyi, mengatur nada kemarahan dan kegembiraan yang lebih tinggi, debat dan refleksi, dalam kontras tajam dengan kesedihannya yang tak ada bandingannya. "



Pertentangan emosi tidak pernah lebih bergerak daripada di "April," di mana teman baiknya Hobbinoll menyanyikan salah satu lagu lama Colin, yang ditulis untuk merayakan gembala Eliza di musim semi tahun sebelumnya dan lebih bahagia. Dunia batin lagu terus menyamai musim luar di mana lagu itu dinyanyikan, karena semua lagu dalam Kalender lakukan; namun itu juga meningkatkan kesadaran pembaca tentang musim dingin yang gelap dari jiwa di mana Colin terus menderita. Pada titik tengah siklus, pada "Juni," ia menyesali bahwa Rosalind telah meninggalkannya untuk gembala lain bernama Menalcas. Dalam puisi terakhir, ia menyanyikan keluhan lelah kepada Dewa Pan dan merasakan firasat kematiannya yang sudah dekat, sehingga mengembalikan urutan ke titik yang mirip dengan titik di mana ia mulai, meskipun bahkan lebih sunyi. "



Selain perputaran musim, siklus lain terlibat dalam pekerjaan. Seperti yang dikatakan oleh kepala E. K. untuk "Desember", pengesahan tahun ini secara tradisional berfungsi sebagai lambang untuk tahap kehidupan. Dari musim semi masa kanak-kanak hingga musim panas hasrat dan cinta sampai musim dingin kesepian dan usia tua, kehidupan Colin menjadi lambang bagi semua orang di dunia ini. Ditafsirkan dengan cara ini, Kalender kembali ke tema ketidakpastian tragis dan ketidakmampuan tanpa henti yang diungkapkan sepuluh tahun sebelumnya dalam kontribusi Spenser pada A Theatre for Worldlings. "



Tema-tema yang lebih besar ini, pada gilirannya, terkait dengan alegori politik yang sering bersembunyi di bawah permukaan puisi. Salah satu implikasi dari alegori ini adalah bahwa negara-negara juga memiliki siklus musim semi dan musim gugur. Perayaan "her Majestie" Eliza di "April," yang merupakan encomium terselubung yang ditujukan kepada Ratu Elizabeth, menunjukkan bahwa Inggris berada di bunga penuh zaman baru. "Maye," "Julye," dan "September," bagaimanapun, semua menghidupkan kontroversi antara reformis Protestan dan Katolik Elizabeth yang lebih konservatif, yang merupakan ancaman tunggal terbesar terhadap kemampuannya untuk memerintah. Alegori topikal dalam eclog ini menunjukkan bahwa, pada 1579, ketegangan dalam politik tubuh adalah masalah yang menjadi perhatian khusus bagi Spenser. Penyebab alarmnya tidak diragukan lagi negosiasi pernikahan mulai dilakukan antara Ratu Elizabeth dan pangeran Katolik Perancis, François, Adipati Alençon. Faksi Protestan yang kukuh di sekeliling Leicester dan Sidney mengambil setiap kesempatan untuk menentang perkawinan semacam itu sebagai ancaman serius terhadap kemerdekaan agama dan politik Inggris. Jika, seperti yang dikira oleh beberapa kritikus, Rosalind adalah sosok Ratu Elizabeth, dan Colin untuk Spenser dan alasan Protestan, maka penolakan Rosalind terhadap Colin untuk Menalcas mungkin harus dilakukan dengan penolakan Ratu Elizabeth terhadap faksi Protestan yang mendukung Alençon Katolik. "



Jika demikian, maka penolakan Colin di akhir Kalender dapat mencerminkan kekayaan politik Spenser yang rendah pada akhir 1579 dan awal 1580, ketika ratu mengambil langkah-langkah kasar untuk membungkam kritik terhadap rencananya untuk pernikahan Perancis. Sidney, misalnya, dipecat dari pengadilan, kemungkinan besar untuk menyampaikan surat kepadanya tentang hal itu. Spenser, juga, tampaknya telah mengkhawatirkan ketidaksenangan ratu, karena ia menerbitkan Kalendernya dengan nama samaran "Immeritô" dan mengawali dengan sebuah puisi ke Sidney di mana ia berbicara kepada Kalender itu sendiri, mengatakan "ketika engkau melewati bahaya, / Datanglah katakan padaku, apa yang dikatakan sayangku / Dan aku akan mengirim lebih banyak setelah kamu. " Bisa jadi representasi penyair muda tentang urusan-urusan kenegaraan yang rapuh telah membuatnya hanya memiliki beberapa pembela dan sedikit prospek untuk maju di pengadilan. "



Dalam beberapa kasus, pada bulan Juli 1580 ia menerima jabatan sebagai sekretaris pribadi untuk Arthur Gray, Wakil Lord baru Irlandia. Ada beberapa bukti bahwa ketika ia berangkat ke Dublin, ia membawa seorang istri baru bernama Machabyas Chylde, tentang siapa yang sedikit diketahui, kecuali bahwa ia menikahi salah seorang "Edmounde Spenser" pada 27 Oktober 1579, bahwa ia rupanya memberinya dua anak bernama Sylvanus dan Katherine, dan bahwa ia meninggal sekitar sebelum 1594. Sebagian besar dari dua puluh tahun berikutnya kehidupan penyair itu dihabiskan di Irlandia, di mana ia melayani di berbagai jabatan pemerintahan, dari juru tulis Dewan Penasihat di Dublin pada tahun-tahun awal hingga keadilan Ratu. dan sheriff-menunjuk untuk county Cork pada akhir hidupnya. Posisinya memungkinkan dia untuk mendapatkan daftar kepemilikan tanah yang luas, termasuk Kastil Kilcolman yang paling menonjol dengan tiga ribu hektar di county Cork, yang berfungsi sebagai tempat tinggal utamanya dari 1588 hingga tahun sebelum kematiannya pada 1599. Kepemilikan seperti itu penting, karena mereka memberi dia status seorang lelaki mendarat, dan ini memudahkan dalam masyarakat, memungkinkan dia, misalnya, untuk berteman dengan Sir Walter Ralegh dan menikahi istri keduanya, Elizabeth Boyle, yang berasal dari keluarga penting di Herefordshire. "



Referensi ke Irlandia sering muncul dalam puisi Spenser di kemudian hari, dan beberapa dari mereka mengungkapkan banyak kasih sayang yang lembut untuk tanah dan orang-orangnya. Yang paling mengesankan, mungkin, adalah pernikahan negara yang diabadikan dengan keindahan pedesaan dalam Epithalamion-nya (1595) dan adegan penghakiman besar di Arlo Hill, sebuah gunung dekat Kilcolman Castle, yang menempati banyak Mutable Cantos di Buku VI The Faerie Queene. Sebagian besar deskripsi penyair Irlandia, bagaimanapun, diwarnai oleh kesedihan atau rasa jijik pada keadaan miskin rakyatnya atau oleh permusuhan tegas terhadap pemberontak yang cerdik dan sukar dipahami, yang melecehkan penjajah Inggris selama periode tersebut. Spenser menggambarkan sisi gelap dari pengalamannya di Irlandia, misalnya, dalam serangan terhadap House of Alma di Buku II The Faerie Queene dan dalam kebiadaban pemberontakan, pemberontak berambut panjang Malengin di Buku V. "



Orang yang kurang patuh di antara orang-orang Irlandia tidak memiliki alasan untuk menjadi orang yang lebih pedas daripada Spencer daripada mereka. Pada tahun 1580, sebagai pejabat baru dalam pemerintahan kolonial, dia hadir ketika pasukan paus Inggris membantai di Smerwick, dan dia juga menyaksikan kelaparan yang mengerikan di Munster yang menggelapkan akhir pemberontakan Desmond. Bahkan, dia menulis laporan resmi tentang pertempuran Smerwick dan kemudian menggambarkannya dan insiden-insiden lain selama tahun-tahun penuh gejolak dari dinas kolonialnya dalam karya prosa satu-satunya. Sebuah Vewe of the Present State of Ireland (1633). Ini ditulis kira-kira sebelum 1598 sebagai sebuah dialog yang membahas tindakan brutal yang diperlukan untuk membentuk rezim kolonial yang stabil di negara ini, dan bagian-bagiannya mungkin telah dimasukkan ke dalam laporan resmi yang ia presentasikan di London pada 1598. Pada akhir tahun 1580-an ia memiliki Bertanggung jawab untuk menyelesaikan imigran Inggris di Kilcolman di tanah yang disita dari pemberontak Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond yang kelima belas, dan beberapa pemilikan tanah milik Spenser lainnya berasal dari pembubaran paksa biara-biara Katolik di Irlandia. Maka tidak mengherankan bahwa tahun-tahun terakhirnya di Cork adalah konflik, keributan, dan kerugian. "



Hingga akhir 1590-an, bagaimanapun, Irlandia menyediakan hidup, tempat untuk menulis, dan bahkan teman-teman sastra. Selama bertahun-tahun di sana, Spenser mungkin telah berkenalan dengan Barnabe Rich dan Barnabe Googe, dan dia tahu teman dekat Sidney dan sesekali sesama penyair Lodowick Bryskett, yang mengubah dua pos kepadanya sebelum pindah. Yang paling penting, bagaimanapun, adalah persahabatan Spenser dengan Ralegh, yang tetangganya di bekas perkebunan Desmond dan yang, pada musim panas dan musim gugur 1589, datang menemuinya di Kilcolman dan menaruh minat pribadi pada puisinya. Spenser kemudian mengungkapkan pentingnya hubungannya dengan Ralegh dengan melestarikan catatan puitisnya di Colin Clouts Come Home Againe dan dengan menulis "Letter to Ralegh" dan sonat pengabdian kepadanya di The Faerie Queene. Menurut Colin Clout, Ralegh yang mengatur agar Spenser melakukan perjalanan ke London pada tahun 1590 untuk menerbitkan tiga buku pertama dari epiknya dan untuk menyajikannya secara pribadi kepada Ratu Elizabeth, yang senang dan menyatakan keinginan untuk mendengarnya dibacakan untuknya. "pada jam yang tepat waktu." Begitu senangnya dia, pada kenyataannya, bahwa dia memberi sang penyair uang pensiun sebesar lima puluh pound setahun, yang lebih dari sekadar ratu pelopor yang diberikan kepada penyair lainnya pada masa itu. Spenser menyatakan rasa terima kasihnya atas dukungan Ralegh dengan menulis alegori simpatik dari hubungan petualang yang sering bergejolak dan romantis dengan ratu, yang muncul dalam kisah Timias dan Belphoebe dalam Buku III, IV, dan VI dari The Faerie Queene. "


Cara terbaik untuk memulai pemeriksaan epik Spenser adalah mungkin untuk melakukannya seperti yang dilakukan Ralegh, dengan surat pengantar Spenser di tangan - meskipun, diakui, sebagian dari niatnya tidak cocok dengan puisi karena penulis benar-benar menulisnya. Seperti yang diungkapkan surat itu, enam buku (dan dua canto yang ketujuh) yang akhirnya diterbitkan mewakili tetapi sebagian kecil dari rencana, yang meluas ke dua belas buku tradisional dari sebuah epik, yang dikhususkan untuk masing-masing "dua belas pribadi morall vertues. " Bagian lain dari puisi, mungkin dengan panjang yang sama tetapi tidak pernah ditulis, adalah untuk menutupi kebajikan publik atau "polliticke". Setiap buku dalam struktur besar ini adalah untuk berkonsentrasi pada satu kebiasaan karakter, yang diwakili oleh satu atau lebih ksatria yang patut dicontoh seperti Britomart, Kesatria Kesucian dalam Buku III, dan Sir Artegall, Knight of Justice dalam Buku V. Mungkin bahwa, seiring berjalannya waktu dan Spenser menyadari besarnya usaha itu, dia mengubah pikirannya dan mulai memasukkan kebajikan politik di antara kebajikan moral dari bagian pertama. Tentu saja Book V, Legend of Justice, melibatkan banyak alegori politik. Dalam kasus apa pun, enam buku yang ia selesaikan dimulai dengan kebajikan dalam hubungan seseorang dengan Tuhan dan diri (kekudusan dan kesederhanaan) dan melanjutkan kepada mereka yang melibatkan hubungan dengan orang lain (kesucian, persahabatan, keadilan, dan sopan santun). Keseluruhan skema itu sesuai dengan dua perintah besar dari tradisi Kristen: "Kasihilah Tuhan, Allahmu, dengan segenap hatimu, dan dengan segenap jiwamu, dan segenap akal budimu" dan "Engkau harus mencintai tetanggamu seperti dirimu sendiri" (Mat. 22: 36-39). "



Dua belas buku pertama harus dipersatukan oleh kehadiran dua karakter dominan: Prince Arthur, pendiri mitos dari Round Table, yang tampil sebagai kesatria yang berkeliaran di masing-masing buku, dan Gloriana, Faerie Queene, yang akan bingkai aksi puisi dengan mengadakan pesta tahunan dua belas hari, di mana ia menugaskan kesatrianya dua belas pencarian, masing-masing dijelaskan dalam satu buku epik. Di akhir puisi, tampaknya, Pangeran Arthur akan menikahi Gloriana, dan karena penyair itu menunda pernikahan pahlawan lain dalam buku-buku individu, tidak diragukan lagi ada pernikahan lain dalam Buku XII juga. Karena Arthur mewakili keutamaan Magnificence, yang memahami dalam dirinya sendiri semua kebajikan aktif lainnya, dan karena Faerie Queene mewakili Glory, yang untuk Spenser mengakhiri semua tindakan duniawi, ada filosofi yang rapi di balik seluruh struktur. "



Seperti yang diungkapkan oleh penyair, kesulitan utama bagi para pembaca terletak bukan dalam memahami organisasi besar dari puisi itu, tetapi dalam mengetahui bagaimana menafsirkan alegorinya. Namun, dia menawarkan petunjuk, dengan menyebut karya itu sebagai "lanjutan" alegori atau "kesombongan gelap." Pada zamannya, istilah kesombongan bisa membawa setidaknya dua pengertian dalam konteks ini, keduanya membantu. Pertama, itu bisa berarti hanya sebuah pemikiran atau, dalam konteks filosofis tertentu, suatu bentuk atau Ide dalam sesuatu yang sangat mirip dengan pengertian Platonik. Kedua, istilah itu bisa menunjukkan metafora yang panjang, yaitu, perbandingan tersirat antara subjek utama pemikiran penulis dan sesuatu yang lebih mudah divisualisasikan atau digenggam, yang bertindak sebagai "sosok" untuk subjek itu. "



Dalam menafsirkan Kitab I sebagai metafora yang panjang, seseorang mungkin berkonsentrasi pada pahlawan wanita, Una, putri dari "Raja Eden," yang berangkat dari rumahnya untuk menyelamatkan orang tuanya dari naga besar. Untuk tujuan ini dia melakukan perjalanan ke istana Faerie Queene dan mendapatkan bantuan dari Red Crosse Knight, yang, setelah berbagai percobaan dan pengembaraan, kembali bersamanya ke kota orangtuanya. Di sana ia mengalahkan naga, dihormati sebagai pemenang, dan menawarkan untuk menikahi Una begitu ia telah melayani ratunya selama enam tahun lagi. Mengambil petunjuk dari Kitab Wahyu, yang mengidentifikasi Setan sebagai naga yang telah memperbudak manusia (keturunan Adam dan Hawa yang jatuh) dan merupakan musuh besar Gereja, pembaca mungkin menganggap Una sebagai "kesombongan" untuk tubuh universal orang percaya karena telah bertindak melalui sejarah. Ini, kemudian, akan menjadi metafora "berlanjut" melalui keseluruhan Kitab I. Pada asumsi ini, pembaca mungkin menyimpulkan bahwa makna alegori adalah sesuatu seperti ini: Gereja, yang diturunkan dari manusia yang berdosa, menetapkan untuk menebus mereka dengan melepaskan mereka dari belenggu Setan. Dalam hal ini memerlukan bantuan dari orang Kristen, yang mungkin kehilangan jalannya untuk sementara waktu, tetapi, melalui bantuan Gereja, akhirnya akan menemukan jalan yang lurus dan sempit lagi dan akan terus mengalahkan kekuatan jahat di sekitarnya. Begitu ia menjalani "enam hari" kehidupannya di bumi, ia akan dipersatukan dengan Gereja selamanya pada hari ketujuh, saat istirahat pada hari Sabat Allah di surga (lihat VII.viii.2). "



Such a reading, based on the assumption that the poem is a kind of code to be deciphered character by character, has something to be said for it. It reveals a point that is probably central to Spenser's attempt to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline," namely that Christians tend to respond to the call of the church enthusiastically enough in the beginning, but often lose their zeal or fall away. Each stage in the wanderings of the Red Crosse Knight--his initial acceptance of lies about Una, his departure from her and his affair with another woman named Duessa, his drifting into the broad path of worldly fame and pleasure represented by the House of Pride, and finally his removal of his Christian armor, his defeat, and his overwhelming sense of failure at the Castle of Orgoglio and the Cave of Despair--represents a stage in the process by which an immature believer might fall away. A period of humility, instruction, and hard discipline (represented in the House of Holiness) is required before a young man like this can be of much use in helping others."



Namun demikian, ada masalah dengan upaya untuk "memecahkan" puisi itu dengan cara yang begitu sederhana. Yang paling menyakitkan hati, mungkin, adalah bahwa begitu seseorang telah mengerjakan teka-teki itu, ia kehilangan minatnya. Dalam sebuah edisi 1831 dari Edinburgh Review, Thomas Macaulay, yang pasti telah membaca puisi itu dengan cara seperti ini, mengeluh bahwa "bahkan Spencer sendiri ... tidak dapat berhasil dalam upaya membuat alegori menarik .... Satu kesalahan yang tak terampunkan , kesalahan tediousness, meliputi seluruh ratu peri. Kita menjadi muak dengan Kardinal Virtues dan Dosa Mematikan, dan merindukan masyarakat pria dan wanita biasa. " Orang bertanya-tanya apakah upaya untuk menguraikan karakter hanya sebagai tanda-tanda yang cerdas untuk abstraksi mungkin tidak berada di belakang kecenderungan, penting sepanjang abad kesembilan belas, untuk mengurangi alegori Spencer dan untuk berkonsentrasi pada keindahan dari ayat dan citra-Nya. "



Kesalahan di sini lebih terletak pada pembaca Spenser, bagaimanapun, daripada dengan penyair itu sendiri. Tidak ada yang sederhana atau membosankan tentang alegori, yang sering berhasil menyulap beberapa makna yang berbeda secara bersamaan. Seiring dengan "kesombongan gelap" dari jenis moral, politik, dan agama, Spenser juga melakukan setidaknya tiga varietas lainnya. Ada alegori psikologis, yang menyelidiki indra-indra pikiran dan kerja mereka dalam keadaan normal dan abnormal; ada juga alegori topikal, yang memuliakan atau menyindir tindakan para penguasa dan tokoh-tokoh terkemuka lain dari hari Spenser, dan ada alegori sejarah yang melibatkan masa lalu pribadi atau nasional mereka. Hanya dengan secara tegas mengabaikan perincian-perincian yang krusial, seseorang dapat membaca puisi itu sebagai metafora "lanjutan" dengan "makna" tepuk tunggal.



Una, misalnya, bukan hanya satu Gereja yang benar tetapi juga (seperti namanya) "kesatuan" itu sendiri. Spenser menyebutnya sebagai "kebenaran" dan tampaknya ada dalam pikiran rasa kesatuan yang dijelaskan oleh para filsuf Neoplatonis Renaissance, yang melihat dunia sebagai keragaman yang kadang-kadang sumbang yang berasal dari kesatuan sempurna dan kesederhanaan pikiran ilahi. Berangkat dari Una berarti melupakan kebenaran yang dipahami dengan merenungkan Gagasan-gagasan abadi yang menginformasikan segalanya di dunia material. Bertindak bersama Duessa (dualitas, bermuka dua) adalah meninggalkan kebenaran dan menghancurkan persatuan seseorang dengan satu sumber dari semua yang baik. "



"Una" juga merupakan nama yang diterapkan pada periode ini untuk Ratu Elizabeth, satu-satunya gubernur tertinggi Gereja Inggris, dan gadis gadis Spenser jelas merupakan salah satu dari banyak tokoh untuknya dalam puisi itu. Elizabeth hidup di bawah ancaman serangan militer atau pembunuhan oleh pangeran-pangeran Katolik di Benua Eropa, yang ingin membalikkan Reformasi Protestan di Inggris dan mengembalikan bangsa itu ke kelompok Katolik. Dalam alegori historis puisi, Duessa mewakili Maria, Ratu Skotlandia, yang memiliki klaim hukum atas mahkota Inggris dan yang bersaing dengan Elizabeth untuk kesetiaan orang-orang Inggris. Dalam polemik hari itu, Maria kadang-kadang digambarkan sebagai "pelacur Babel" yang disebutkan dalam Kitab Wahyu, yang menunggang seekor binatang buas dengan tujuh kepala dan dikaitkan dengan Roma. Di Canto viii Spenser menggunakan citra ini ketika Duessa mengendarai "monster berkepala banyak" untuk menyerang perwakilan heroik Inggris, Pangeran Arthur, yang mengalahkannya dan memaksanya untuk membuang "piala emas" dan "mitra yang dinobatkan", yang simbol-simbol yang terkait dengan kekayaan dan priTX Bahkan tiga interpretasi yang sangat berbeda dari Una yang dibahas di sini mungkin tidak menguras kemungkinan alegoris. Spenser adalah ahli kompresi dan implikasi mendalam yang mengakui keragaman makna yang melekat dalam konsep dan gambar primal tertentu, seperti kesatuan dan dualitas, dan keragaman yang terletak di jantung daya tarik yang telah diberikan Faerie Queene selama banyak pembacanya. Alih-alih menafsirkan "kesombongan gelap" penyair itu hanya sebagai metafora yang panjang, orang lebih baik, terutama dalam menganalisis plot-plot puisi, untuk mengambilnya lebih luas sebagai pemikiran atau bentuk yang mengatur. Teman sastra Spenser, Sidney, menulis dalam The Defense of Poetry (1595) bahwa penyair dimulai dengan "Ide, atau depan-kesombongan," yang ia wujudkan dalam soal puisi - cerita, karakter, dan gambarnya. Pembaca kemudian menggunakan materi itu sebagai "plot tanah imajinasi dari penemuan yang menguntungkan," memahami "kesombongan" penulis dengan tindakan penciptaan kembali mental. Semakin kaya gagasan awal si penulis dan semakin jelas soal ciptaannya, semakin kaya dan lebih menguntungkan tindakan "penemuan" pembaca sendiri. Selama seseorang tetap setia pada rincian masalah ini, kemungkinan makna hanya terbatas pada sejauh mana bentuk-bentuk atau ide-ide dasar terbatas dalam implikasi yang melekat padanya. "



Sehubungan dengan Una, Red Crosse Knight menjadi ciptaan yang luar biasa kaya. Ketika seseorang belajar di Canto x, dia adalah Saint George, santo pelindung Inggris. Dalam banyak hal ia juga adalah Orang Terberkati dari tradisi Kristen abad pertengahan, yang, setelah jatuh ke dalam dosa dan pemulihan di Rumah Kekudusan, meniru kehidupan Kristus dengan melawan naga, jatuh dalam pertempuran, dan dibangkitkan dalam kemenangan atas pagi hari ketiga. Dia juga mewakili orang-orang Inggris pada masa Reformasi Protestan, membela "satu gereja sejati" melawan korupsi Roma Katolik abad pertengahan. Lebih khusus lagi, ia dapat mewakili para penulis dan intelektual Kristen di Inggris abad keenam belas yang rentan terhadap kesalahan dan membutuhkan fondasi doktrinal yang lebih kuat. Ksatria memulai pencariannya di Canto i dengan pertempuran melawan naga yang lebih rendah bernama "Errour," yang dikaitkan dengan buku-buku dan pamflet religius, dan hanya setelah dia telah diselamatkan dari kesalahan doktrinal dirinya, yang diwakili dalam filsafat Keputusasaan yang salah, dapat dia memenuhi pencariannya. Setelah satu periode dengan Perenungan pertapa dan guru-guru lain di Rumah Kekudusan, dia bertarung dengan naga kedua dan lebih besar, dan kali ini, dengan rahmat Tuhan, dia menang. "




Even in the passages of Book I devoted to philosophical abstractions, such as the virtues and vices that bored Thomas Macaulay, Spenser invites more from his readers than a dry process of "decoding." His stories and pictorial descriptions are not simply means to convey philosophical insights. They are themselves the ends of the poet's labors, figures capable of transforming barren philosophy into what Sidney 's friend Fulke Greville, first Lord Brooke, once called "pregnant images of life." It is one thing to know the definition of a particular vice, but quite another to know how people afflicted with it might talk or act and to see how their sinful dispositions might harm them over a period of time. It is these latter points that most interested Spenser. In Canto iv of Book I, for example, Queen Lucifera and her "six wisards old" are readily identified as the Seven Deadly Sins of medieval Christian tradition. Yet it is the extraordinary detail with which the poet depicts them that matters, not simply what they represent. In a series of exquisitely painted miniatures, Spenser depicts each of the six counselors on one of the beasts that draw Lucifera's coach: Idleness on an ass, Gluttony on a pig, Lechery on a goat, Avarice on a camel, Envy on a wolf, and Wrath on a lion. Each detail in the imagery of coach and team--from the animals themselves to the clothing and behavior of their riders and the things that they bear in their hands--serves to characterize the six vices and Pride, their queen. Even the order of the riders is significant, for Spenser has dramatically altered the traditional Catholic sequence in order to place Idleness first as the "nourse of sin." Since Idleness is dressed "Like to an holy Monck," the change in order doubtless has to with what is now call the Protestant "work ethic" and with common complaints in the Renaissance that the Catholic monasteries were bastions of laziness and corruption."



Tentu saja, akan menjadi kesalahan untuk menganggap bahwa setiap bagian dalam puisi itu kaya makna sebagai deskripsi House of Pride dan penghuninya, atau bahwa pembaca perlu memahami segala sesuatu yang bersembunyi di bawah permukaan puisi di untuk menikmatinya. Sebagian besar daya tariknya terletak di depan mata, dalam cerita-ceritanya yang aneh dan menakjubkan serta arak-arakannya yang penuh warna. Namun, dalam menyelidiki implikasinya yang lebih dalam, ia membantu memulai dengan apa yang kadang-kadang disebut "inti" alegor atau "kuil" puisi. Di kuil-kuil besar, istana, rumah-rumah bangsawan, taman-taman dan gua-gua yang mendominasi pemandangan, Spenser memberikan perbedaan utama yang diperlukan untuk memahami konsep-konsep filosofis yang sedang dia jelajahi, sering mengungkapkan poin-poin penting dalam nama-nama karakter dan dalam rincian mereka penampilan atau lingkungannya. Bersama dengan Istana Kebanggaan dan Rumah Kekudusan di Buku I, inti utama termasuk Rumah Alma, Bower of Bliss, dan gua yang berisi House of Mammon di Buku II; Taman Adonis dan Rumah Busirane di Buku III; Kuil Venus dalam Buku IV; Kuil Isis dan Istana Mercilla di Buku V; Gunung Acidale di Buku VI; dan Arlo Hill dalam fragmen Buku VII bahwa Spenser tidak dipublikasikan pada saat kematiannya. Dalam narasi yang mengarahkan karakter utama ke dan dari tempat-tempat instruksi, penyair sering memberikan sedikit alegori terkonsentrasi dalam tindakan mereka, seperti dalam pengembaraan Una setelah ia dipisahkan dari Red Crosse Knight. Dan akhirnya, dalam cerita dan episode anak perusahaan yang terus dijalin ke dalam alur utama plot di setiap buku, Spenser memberikan contoh moral yang lebih jauh mengilustrasikan tema utamanya. Sebuah contoh dari kisah seperti itu di Buku I adalah kisah Fraelissa dan Fradubio, dua kekasih yang berpisah dengan Duessa dengan cara yang sama seperti Red Crosse Knight yang berpisah dari Una. "



Dalam urutan inti alegori dalam masing-masing buku, Spenser cenderung bergerak dari yang sederhana ke yang kompleks, tiba hanya terlambat dalam tindakan pada gambaran lengkap dari kebajikan yang diperlukan dari pahlawan. Dalam Buku II, inti pertama meninggalkan kesan bahwa kesederhanaan adalah kebajikan "alami", yaitu, yang dapat digenggam tanpa kebenaran Kitab Suci yang diwahyukan secara ilahi. Spenser menawarkan potret tiga saudara perempuan: Elissa ("kelebihan"), Perissa ("kekurangan"), dan Medina ("makna emas"), dan akar Latin dari nama mereka mengingatkan filosofi Aristoteles. Seseorang yang beriklim sedang, dalam pandangan Aristoteles, telah membentuk kebiasaan mengambil nilai tengah antara ekstrem, seperti menghambur-hamburkan dan kesal, kebodohan, dan kepengecutan. Para pelamar yang menggoda Elissa dan Perissa menggambarkan hal ini dengan cara yang penuh warna. Huddibras mewakili sifat "maju" yang cenderung menarik kembali dari orang lain dalam arogansi atau kemarahan, dan Sansloy merupakan "maju" sifat yang menarik ke arah orang lain dalam keinginan yang tidak terkendali. Seseorang yang beriklim akan menahan impuls ke salah satu dari ekstrem ini. "




The House of Medina suggests that in Book II the reader has come into a new region of Spenser's fairyland, one different from the quasi-medieval religious landscape of Book I and more like the plain humanist schoolrooms of the Merchant Taylors' School that Spenser attended as a boy. To take its classical philosophy as his final word on temperance, however, would be a mistake. Guyon's attempt to put into practice the rational ideal embodied in Medina is successful, but only for a time. To be sure, he avoids the corruption inherent in characters such as Pyrochles and Cymochles, who allow themselves to be governed by excesses of the bodily fluids (or "humours") of choler and phlegm. The brothers provide emblems of the two great temptations of the book: irascibility, which is seen in the hotheaded characters of the early cantos, and concupiscence, which appears in lazy and self-indulgent figures later in the book. Guyon avoids both. Yet, as early as Canto iii, he makes a crucial blunder, allowing a buffoon named Braggadocchio to steal his horse and so becoming the only pedestrian hero in the poem. At the midpoint of the book, in Canto vi, he makes a second mistake in parting from his Christian counselor and friend, the Palmer. By accepting a boat ride from a languid and sensuous lady named Phaedria at Idle Lake and allowing the Palmer to go on by foot, Guyon needlessly subjects himself to temptation. He does so again in the next episode by voluntarily undertaking a traditional epic descent into the underworld, where he is tempted with every imaginable form of worldly excess. These are represented in three subterranean chambers: the treasure house of Mammon, god of money and possessions; the temple of Philotime, the goddess of honor and ambition; and the garden of Proserpina, the goddess of worldly pleasure and rest. The very sense of his own self-sufficiency that prompts the hero's needless descent into hell is a sign of danger, for, in Spenser's view, no one can long resist the sinful tendencies inherent in fallen human nature without the grace of God."



This point comes home in Canto vii, where, having emerged from Mammon's cave, Sir Guyon faints from exhaustion, falling prey to several of the enemies that he had earlier avoided, including Pyrochles and Cymochles. An angel is required to save him, and does so by fetching the Palmer, who stays with Guyon until Prince Arthur arrives to beat back the figures of intemperance attempting to despoil the hero of his armor. A stay in the House of Alma, which is the second important locus of instruction in the book, educates Guyon in the limits of his strength, presenting in the very structure of the house an emblem of the human body and the human psyche for his instruction. It is a place besieged by assaults on the senses, which are represented in the attacks of lawless rebels outside the castle. Their leader, Maleger (who represents appetite and passion), has the ability to regain his strength simply by touching his mother, the earth. As Prince Arthur later discovers, Maleger can be defeated only when he is cast into the water."




This last point reveals the very Christian conception of temperance that underlies the entire book. The water in which Maleger drowns is an emblem of baptism, and his defeat is related to the episode that first set Guyon forth on his quest. In Cantos i--ii he and the Palmer had come upon the body of a knight, Sir Mortdant, who had been lured to his destruction by a false enchantress named Acrasia (whose name means both "badly mixed," referring perhaps to the bodily humours, and "incontinent," implying an inability to contain her desires). The knight's wife, Amavia, had stabbed herself in grief at his loss, and their baby, Ruddyman, had stained his hands in her blood. When Guyon had attempted to wash the child's hand in an enchanted spring--one associated with pagan mythology and the goddess Nature--the stain would not wash away. It had remained as an emblem of Original Sin, which can be cleansed only by the Christian sacrament of Holy Baptism. At the time, Guyon had not understood the meaning of this incident, but in the battle against Maleger the point comes home."




With his temperance now "fast setteled / On firme foundation," the hero departs on the last stage of his quest to avenge the death of Ruddymane's parents upon Acrasia. After a sea voyage on which he encounters fresh allegorical representations of the Seven Deadly Sins, he ruthlessly destroys Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, releasing the many men whom she has transformed to beasts and binding the witch herself."




From the analysis of inward psychological states in Book II, Spenser next turns to outward social relations in Book III. At the outset he pauses, as he often does, to show the relation between the central virtues of adjoining books by having their heroes meet briefly in conversation and in feats of strength. Here, the superiority of the social virtue of chastity, represented by the heroine Britomart, over the personal virtue of temperance appears clearly in Britomart's defeat of Guyon in a joust. Other episodes suggest further contrasts between the books. In comparison with Acrasia's Bower of Bliss in Book II, Spenser portrays another garden in Book III that is also concerned with the fulfillment of bodily desires, but in healthier ways. Whereas the Bower had been a false Paradise, apparently natural but actually created by self-indulgent art (see II.xii.58-59), the Garden of Adonis is a true Eden, where "All things, as they created were, doe grow" and obey God's first command "to increase and multiply" (III.vi.34). The two passages are linked by the classical myth of Adonis, presented first in a bad form in Acrasia's Bower and then in a good form in the Garden of Adonis. Though the healthy garden embodies a philosophy of divine generation that is as rich and enigmatic as any other conceptual scheme in the poem, the place of the passage in the unfolding narrative is fairly straightforward. The chaotic inner forces of the psyche explored in Book II are here presented in ordered and temperate manifestations, with particular stress on healthy sexual desire. Whereas Acrasia is governed by an insatiable appetite for young men, the characters Amoret and Belphoebe, who were born and reared in the Garden of Adonis, seek higher goods. Amoret takes as her goals marriage and family, whereas Belphoebe chooses lifelong virginity and an active life outsiTX The classical myths woven into these and other episodes in Book III do much to illuminate the characters. The myth of Cupid and Psyche, which is retold in the episode at the Garden of Adonis, shows the human mind brought into proper and fruitful union with the divine power. Britomart, the heroine of the book, best fulfills this ideal. She is not like the delicately beautiful Florimell, who is timid and inclined to flee from men. She is not like Belphoebe, who seems contemptuous of affairs of the heart. Nor is she like Amoret, who lives for such experiences. Britomart combines the best qualities of all three women, drawing them toward a golden mean. She shares, for example, Florimell's determination to leave the comforts of courtly life and search through the world for the man whom she is destined to marry. She matches Belphoebe in mental prowess, courage, and skill in manly pursuits such as hunting and jousting. Yet she also shares Amoret's capacity for warmth and nurturing."




It is tempting to take Britomart as a figure for Queen Elizabeth, but it seems likely that she is something far more complex. The "Letter to Raleigh," which identifies major figures for the queen in the poem, makes no mention of Britomart in this regard. As the wise magician Merlin reveals in Canto iii, she is actually an ancestor of the English queen, though one who displays a close family resemblance. Britomart is, in fact, a far more glorious figure than either of the other main embodiments of Elizabeth: the noble but somewhat icy Belphoebe, who represents the queen in her private life, and the magnificent but absent Gloriana, who represents Elizabeth in her public role as a ruler but who appears only in the dreams of Prince Arthur (I.vii) and in brief references in the proems and elsewhere, but never in the action itself. Some scholars see Britomart's quest for her future husband, Artegall--which begins with a vision of him in a crystal ball and is destined to end in marriage, joint rule over England, and a long line of glorious offspring--as a reference to Elizabeth's often-stated desire to marry no suitor but England itself. This way of reading the poem makes a good deal of sense of later passages in Book V, where the character Radigund represents Mary, Queen of Scots; Britomart resembles Elizabeth; and Artegall suggests some of Elizabeth's most powerful noblemen at court, who were torn in their allegiances between the two queens. When Britomart rescues Artegall from captivity in Radigund's city of Amazons, there is reason to believe that the incident represents Elizabeth's salvation of England from the threat of Catholic domination under Mary. Yet the potentially fruitful Britomart stands in notable contrast to the virginal and childless Belphoebe, and it may be that one of Spenser's points in the poem was to criticize Elizabeth for not marrying and providing England with a proper heir."




In any case, Britomart stands in glorious contrast to two degraded types of womanhood in Book III, both defined once again with the help of classical mythology. The first is Malecasta in Canto i, who represents the tradition of Courtly Love. She leads men on by the gradual stages of courtship represented in the six knights who fight on her behalf: Gardante ("brief glances"), Parlante ("enticing words"), Iocante ("courtly play"), Basciante ("kissing"), Bacchante ("wine drinking"), and Noctante ("spending the night"). Once Malecasta has conquered a man, she makes him a slave to her whims and desires. She represents woman as predator. The tapestries depicting Venus and Adonis that hang in her castle link her with the more classical figure of Acrasia in Book II. The second example of unchastity in Book III is Hellenore, who represents the tradition of Ovidian love. Like Helen of Troy, she yields to the seductions of a guest (named, appropriately, Paridell) and allows herself to be carried away from her aged and jealous husband Malbecco, only to be discarded by her new lover and left to satisfy the lusts of forest satyrs. She represents woman as prey."




Both she and Malecasta are medieval embodiments of ancient types, and their presence helps to extend the moral allegory of the poem to include glimpses of the history of Western culture. For Spenser, lines of dynastic descent are important, as they had been for earlier epic poets such as those mentioned in his "Letter to Raleigh." Here, he glorified Britain through the ancestry of its representative Britomart. Like Paridell (and Virgil's Aeneas), she traces her ancestry back to the old stock of Troy. Unlike Paridell, however, she descends from the worthy hero Brutus, the founder of Troynovant (or London), not from the lustful and irresponsible Paris (III.ix.32-46). Through passages such as this--along with depictions of legendary English heroes throughout the poem and accounts of early English history, such as those that Arthur reads at Alma's castle and Britomart hears in Merlin's cave--Spenser establishes himself as a writer of "an historicall fiction" on which England may establish a sense of its national heritage."




In the climactic episode of Book III, when Britomart rescues Amoret from the evil enchanter Busirane, Spenser briefly sketches the history of relations between the sexes in Western culture, tying his account to the current difficulties that Amoret has suffered in marrying the aggressive young knight Scudamour. As the reader subsequently learns in Canto i of Book IV, she was kidnapped by Busirane during a ribald entertainment or "masque" performed on the night of her wedding, and clues in various rooms of the enchanter's house suggest that he represents the power of poetry and the visual arts to shape the attitudes of one gender toward the other. At least one of Amoret's problems on that night was a clash of cultural expectations."




In the first room, rich tapestries illustrate the dominance of men over women that characterized the myths of ancient Greece and Rome. In the second room, golden ornaments suggest the dominance of women over men found in the tradition of Courtly Love in the late Middle Ages. In the third room, where Amoret herself appears, the reader find what seems to be a Renaissance confusion of masculine and feminine dominance, fostered by an attempt to combine classical and medieval erotic ideals. As we learn in Book IV, Amoret's husband Scudamour sees himself as a domineering male of the classical sort, who bears the sign of triumphant Cupid on his shield (see III.xi.7 and IV.x). Amoret, however sees herself as a "recluse virgin," whose education at the Temple of Venus has elevated her to a station much like that enjoyed by women in the medieval tradition of Courtly Love (see IV.x). If we may assume that Amoret's mental state following the night of her marriage is represented in the nightmarish procession known as the Masque of Cupid that appears in Busirane's third room, then the lady is not only suffering from a virgin's fears of the bridal night but also from confusion over her proper role as a wife. The allegorical figures surrounding her in the masque represent the course of her relationship with Scudamour. It begins happily enough with Ease, Fancy, and Desire, but eventually graduated to more-turbulent emotions such as Fear and Hope, Grief and Fury, and ends with feelings of Cruelty and Despight. Following these personifications comes the cause of her distress, depicted as Cupid riding on a lion. This figure reminds us of Scudamour's shield and probably represents his aggressive desire to dominate. Although Scudamour has attempted to release his bride from Busirane, only a third party such as Britomart, who understands the problem from a woman's point of view, can subdue the enchanter and dispel Amoret's fears."




In the second edition of the poem, which was printed in 1596, the problem of Scudamour and Amoret is never satisfactorily resolved. In Book IV she transfers her affections to her new friend Britomart, is captured by a lustful giant and rescued by Timias, and passes through a series of painful adventures ending in the Castle of Corflambo (or "burning heart"), from which she can be saved only by the intervention of Prince Arthur himself. Meanwhile, Scudamour mistakes the armed Britomart for a man and, after she goes off with Amoret, suffers a fit of jealousy in the Cave of Care. Not until Canto vi, in which he attacks Britomart, does he discover her gender and his own folly. After these incidents, we hear little more of him or of Amoret. In the first edition of the poem published in 1590, however, Spenser fully resolved the tensions between the newlyweds. Upon Amoret's release from captivity to Busirane, she and Scudamour embrace and fuse with one another in a single hermaphroditic form, which seems to symbolize not only sexual union but also a golden mean between masculine and feminine forms of dominance and the consummation of an ideal Christian marriage."




By now it should be obvious that, as Spenser moves from the inward virtues of holiness and temperance in Books I and II to the more outward ones of chastity and friendship in Books III and IV, he adopts a far more complicated method of plotting. The first two books follow a fairly straightforward and self-contained pattern: the hero sets forth on his quest, suffers a disastrous fall, is rescued by Arthur in Canto viii, joins forces with the prince for a time, undergoes a process of reeducation, and finally completes his quest with a victory in Canto xii. In Books III and IV, however, events are far more chaotic. This may be the case because the god Cupid has come into the picture. Among the epic invocations at the beginning of the poem, Spenser adds something not found in Virgil or Homer, a prayer to the "most dreaded impe of highest Jove, / Faire Venus sonne," and Cupid's enormous power over earthly events is manifested in the social disorder of Books III and IV."




In the opening canto of Book III, for example, Spenser demonstrates love's power by drawing together all the major heroes of the poem so far, only to have Cupid divide and scatter them. Arthur appears with his squire Timias, Guyon with the Palmer, Britomart with her nurse Glauce--and, not far away from them, the women also encounter the Red Crosse Knight. Almost as soon as the heroes meet, however, Florimell rides by, fleeing a forester who intends to rape her, and the men in the party ride off in hot pursuit. Guyon and Arthur pursue the lady more, it seems, for her beauty than for her safety, and they soon become separated and lost. Timias nobly rides off to subdue the forester, but afterward falls in love with Belphoebe, forgetting about Arthur and eventually becoming entangled in a romantic scandal involving Belphoebe and Amoret that drives him to despair and turns him into a hermit. Even the Red Crosse Knight loses his head in Book III, requiring assistance from Britomart in turning back Malecasta's six knights. Thereafter, hardly a male in the poem can guide his own affairs sensibly until a semblance of order has been restored in Book V. The point seems to be that, in matters of love and friendship, women do better than men, and no one does very well. The beauty of a woman such as Florimell is like a comet, an astrological sign that "importunes death and dolefull drerihed" (III.i.16)."




One of the governing aims of Books III and IV is to harmonize love with friendship. In the Renaissance many took from antiquity the view that bonds between two men were nobler than those between a man and a woman or between two women. Spenser undercuts this view by exalting marriage over friendship and also by idealizing amicable relationships between women and between members of the opposite sexes. In the first episode of Book IV, Britomart and Amoret arrive at a castle where no knight may enter without a lady. Britomart's solution is to exploit her disguise as a knight in order to enter as Amoret's champion, thus raising interesting issues of homoerotic attraction between the two ladies but also exalting the importance of their friendship. Later, Prince Arthur saves Amoret at the Castle of Corflambo, acting magnanimously as her male friend rather than as a potential lover."




Spenser's emblem of the social ideal is a foursome of two men and two women, all bound in complex interrelationships of erotic attraction and friendship. This pattern is seen most clearly in the main heroes of the book, Campbell and Triamond, and in the ladies whom they love. Before Campbell will allow anyone to marry his sister Canacee, he requires that they first defeat him in battle. Triamond's two brothers, Priamond and Diamond, try and fail. Because, however, their mother, Agape (or "love"), has made a pact with the Destinies that Triamond should inherit the spirits and the strengths of his brothers, he is able to succeed where they failed. Later, Campbell marries Triamond's sister Cambina, and the four become fast friends."




A second foursome, that of Paridell and Blandamour and their ladies Duessa and Ate, acts as a false parody of the first. Since the men are altogether faithless to one another and to their ladies, they quarrel over a third woman, a demonic copy of Florimell created by a witch in Book III. Once they have gone after this new “comet” of beauty in Canto ii, discord erupts among all four members of the group.




The primary destructive force in Book IV is represented in the hag Ate, the “mother of debate / And all dissention which doth dayly grow / Amongst fraile men” (IV.i.19). Her power can be seen most dramatically in the central incident of the book, the Tournament of Satyrane. There, ladies compete for the “glorie vaine” of owning a magic girdle of “chast love / and wivehood true” that once belonged to Florimell. This prize is to be given to the most beautiful among them, and the knights are to do battle for the hand of the winner. Ironically, at the end of the violent turmoil and strife represented in the tournament, the girdle is awarded to the false Florimell, who represents the beautiful but cruel mistress idealized in Petrarchan love sonnets of the period. Victory on the field is awarded to Satyrane, one of the Knights of Maidenhead (who, in the historical allegory of the episode, are associated with the virgin queen Elizabeth). The false Florimell, however, insists on choosing a mate to her own liking and selects one as shallow as she is, namely the impostor Braggadocchio. The folly of Petrarchan love conventions, which Spenser will take up again in the episode of Serena among the cannibals in Book VI and in his sonnet sequence Amoretti, is amusingly satirized in this outcome.




Yet even amid the discord and delusions of Book IV, the “fatall purpose of divine foresight” is nonetheless at work, guiding lovers to mates destined to them by higher powers from the foundation of the world (see III.iii.1-2). At Satyrane’s tournament, Britomart encounters and defeats her long-sought future husband, Artegall, though without recognizing him in his disguise as the Salvage Knight. In Canto vi he attempts to avenge this dishonor on her, but when her helmet falls off in battle, he falls in love with her instead. After a brief period of courtship, he plights his troth to marry her. Similarly, the true Florimell, who had been taken captive by the sea-god Proteus in Book III, finds her Marinell in the closing cantos of Book IV and is subsequently betrothed to him, as prophecies had foretold. Though confusion still reigns late in the book—as the brawl in Canto ix involving Britomart and Scudamour, Blandamour and Paridell, Prince Arthur and others reveals—images of harmony begin to appear, like sunlight after a storm. Most notable is the image of Concord celebrated in the Temple of Venus. Spenser say of her, “Of litle much, of foes she maketh frends,/And to afflicted minds sweet rest and quiet sends” (IV.x.34).




Many of the discords of Book IV are resolved in Book V, which recounts the Legend of Justice. Florimell marries Marinell at another great tournament, and in this contest the outcome is more just. Braggadocchio is revealed as a coward and a fraud; the false Florimell is revealed as a demonic illusion; and Guyon, who had long ago lost his horse to Braggadocchio, reclaims it again. Yet both the proem and the opening canto of the book remind us of the deeply fallen state of the world, where even the stars and planets no longer follow their ancient courses, and the goddess of justice, Astraea, has departed from the earth. Spenser here invokes Ovid’s myth of the Four Ages of Mankind, which began with the Golden Age of Saturn and has since declined from the Age of Silver toward those of Brass and Stone.




The allegory of Book V focuses on the last period in this decline, stressing the corruption and injustice of England’s enemies in Spenser’s own day. Nearly everything in the main plot is related to Queen Elizabeth’s struggle to preserve the independence of the English church and state against the Catholic forces arrayed against her in Scotland and Ireland, France and Spain. The main quest of the book is Artegall’s attempt to rescue Irena from the tyrant Grantorto, which represents the English attempt to free Ireland from Catholic domination in the 1580s and 1590s. The incident in which Artegall encounters the Amazons and Queen Radigund is an account of the actions of Mary, Queen of Scots, beginning in 1558 and ending in 1571, when Elizabeth imprisoned her in England. Her execution in 1587 is later portrayed in the death of Duessa in Canto ix. The incident in which Prince Arthur and Artegall defeat the Souldan in Canto viii represents England’s repulse of the sea invasion mounted by the Spanish Armada in 1588, and Arthur’s rescue of Belgae from Geryoneo in Cantos x-xi represents England’s intervention to free the Netherlands from Spanish forces in the 1580s, in which Sidney died and Leicester came to grief.




Against these forces, the hero of the book proves—like the Red Crosse Knight and Guyon before him—an inexperienced and sometimes inadequate hero. When Artegall first appears in the Tournament Satyrane in Book IV, he is armed as the Salvage Knight, and some of his untamed roughness carries over into Book V. Although he is successful in the early episodes, overthrowing Munera (or “bribery”) and settling property disputes between the likes of Amidas and Bracidas, he seems incapable of conceiving of justice in any but harsh, inflexible, legalistic terms. His limitations appear most clearly in the brutality of his servant Talus and in his own submission to the Amazonian tyrant Radigund, who manages to lure him into agreeing to a foolish contract with her concerning their private combat in Canto v. What Artegall requires is a sounder philosophy of justice that will allow him to avoid such errors and to moderate his severity. Spenser provides him with one in the figure of his future wife, Britomart, who rescues him from Radigund.




Britomart represents a form of justice known as “equity,” which allows a judge or public official to mitigate the severity of punishments or to adjust the application of the law whenever the case involves unusual circumstances that could not have been foreseen when the written legal code was drafted. In following normal procedures of equity, the judge returns to the philosophical principles on which the code was originally based and infers the proper way to handle the case at hand. Such moderating procedures are allegorized at the Temple of Isis in Canto vii, where Britomart learns to temper Artegall’s sternness with clemency and his rigid adherence to the legal code with wisdom. After she has rescued him from Radigund, he serves an apprenticeship under Prince Arthur and receives his final education in the Palace of Mercilla.




The queen of that house represents the Christian virtue of mercy, which is different from the equitable justice allegorized in Britomart. Whereas equity returns to philosophical principles in order to ensure that the defendant receives his proper due, mercy offers freely to redeem offenders who sincerely repent their crimes. Artegall’s education thus leads him from legal justice through classical equity to Christian mercy, symbolized respectively in the iron man Talus, the mostly silver idol of Isis, and the gold-bedecked queen Mercilla. By this progression the poet seems to point the way to reclaim Ovid’s lost Age of Gold, and indeed, with Artegall’s liberation of Belgae in Canto xii, nearly all the disorders of Books III-V have been resolved.




As often happens in The Faerie Queene, however, moments of victory and harmony prove short-lived. At the end of Book V, Artegall encounters a new threat, the Blatant Beast, whose name means both “prattling” or “babbling” and “hurtful.” The monster, which Spenser describes as a “hellish Dog,” represents slander, backbiting, and other forms of verbal abuse that tend to disrupt in private the social harmony that Artegall has been working so hard to establish in public. The monster may seem a minor threat in comparison with the more imposing enemies of justice in Book V—such as the giant with Scales in Canto ii, who advocates the overthrow of the aristocracy in favor of an egalitarian form of government, or Grantorto in Canto xii, who represents political and religious tyranny. Yet because of the widespread and covert nature of its abuses, the Blatant Beast is more difficult to subdue. Throughout Book VI it appears unexpectedly, attacking with poisoned teeth and “thousand tongues” and then disappearing again before anyone can bring it to bay. It is first set on by Envy and Detraction (V.xii.35-37) and is later employed by Despetto (“malice”), Decetto (“deceit”), and Defetto (“detraction”), who succeed in provoking the Beast to wound Timias, a figure identified by his name with “honor” (VI.v). The two major strands of plot in Book VI—those involving Calidore’s quest to bind the Beast and Calepine’s search for Serena—both include episodes illustrating the power of the tongue.




The line of plot in which Serena (or “tranquillity”) is ravaged by the Blatant Beast suggests the loss of reputation and the subsequent shunning and abuse that aristocratic women of Spenser’s day sometimes suffered because of rumors that they had been unchaste. In Serena’s case, the Beast attacks soon after she is discovered in a secluded forest glade with her lover, Calepine, who has violated the social conventions of aristocratic courtship by removing his armor “To solace with his lady in delight” (VI.iii.20). The inward torments that she suffers in consequence of this tryst appear in her gradual decline into illness, which is brought on by the festering bites of the Beast (Cantos v-vi). The social degradations to which she is subjected are allegorized in her subsequent capture by the “Salvage Nation,” a band of cannibals who are prevented from sacrificing her naked body on a forest altar only the timely arrival of Calepine (canto viii). The threat of similarly violent social repercussions hangs over Priscilla and her less nobly born lover Aladine in Canto ii, where they are also found dallying in the woods and are immediately attacked by a lustful knight.




The story of Serena among the cannibals involves more, however, than issues of reputation and the abuse of young lovers who overstep the bounds of custom. The language of the episode suggests the Petrarchan love poetry of Spenser’s day, in which the woman is depicted as alluringly beautiful but cold and unattainable, and her lover is expected to vacillate endlessly between abject adoration and frustrated erotic desire. That such poetry should degrade an entire “Nation” to the level of savages, worshiping feminine beauty in a leering and cannibalistic religion of love, raises serious questions about the proper role of literature in shaping the social order. The more refined and pragmatic lover Calepine, whose name means “gracious speech,” offers a contrasting ideal, in which love is mutual and courtship progresses naturally toward “solace” and “delight.”




The chivalric code of the Middle Ages—in which men have a duty to honor and protect women, and women have an obligation to provide patterns of morality and images of “grace” to temper masculine aggressiveness—lies behind much of Spenser’s thought about love and courtesy in Book VI. The opening episode, for example, involves an inversion of this ideal. In it the proud knight Crudor entices the lady Briana to serve him by forcing knights and ladies who pass her castle to shave their beards or their hair. By this means she hopes to win Crudor’s love by lining a mantle with hair, as he has demanded. The chivalric ideal is at least partially reasserted when Calidor intervenes on behalf of Briana, forcing her cruel knight to marry her. Crudor must also promise to behave better toward errant knights and to assist ladies “in every stead and stound” (VI.i.42). The Knight of Courtesy later confronts ethical dilemmas posed by this chivalric ideal. In Canto iii, for example, he violates his knightly duty to tell the truth in order to conceal Priscilla’s secret meetings with Aladine from her father. In Cantos ix-xi, Calidore is tempted to discard his armor and to abandon his quest altogether in order to court the shepherdess Pastorella.




This last incident reveals a conflict between personal fulfillment and social responsibility that is an underlying theme of Book VI. Spenser identifies the virtue responsible for maintaining a proper balance between the two as courtesy, which he sees broadly as “the ground, / And roote of civill conversation” (VI.i.1). In its original sense, courtesy was simply the pattern of conduct acceptable at a prince’s court. By Spenser’s day, however, it had come to imply a rather lengthy list of personal traits and abilities: noble birth and elegant manners, comely appearance and cultivated speech, athletic skill and martial prowess. All these traits were combined in a man such as Sir Philip Sidney, who is sometimes regarded as the Elizabethan knight on whom Sir Calidore was modeled. In the initial description of the Knight of Courtesy, Spenser depicts him as a marvel of courtly refinement. He is one




In whom it seemes, that gentlenesse of spright




And manners mylde were planted naturall;




To which he adding comely guize withall,




And gracious speach, did steale mens hearts away.




Nathlesse thereto he was full stout and tall,




And well approv’d in batteilous affray. (VI.i.2)




Only certain parts of this description, however, actually involve things that Calidore has “added” at court. The first qualities mentioned are the “naturall” elements of courtesy: “gentlenesse of spright” and “manners mylde,” and these subsequently receive special attention.




Perhaps because Spenser was distressed by the extravagant artificialities and corruptions common in the royal courts of his day, he laid his greatest stress on the natural roots of courtesy. His most idealized depictions of the virtue are set in the partly civilized yet predominantly natural settings of the pastoral countryside. The sheepfolds of Pastorella and her foster father Meliboe in Cantos ix-xi provide a refuge both from the savagery of uncivilized nature (represented by the brigands who live in nearby forests and caves) and from the follies and extravagances of aristocratic life (depicted at the castles of Briana and Aldus). The fruitful interplay between the natural and the cultivated, the wild and the civilized is depicted emblematically in Calepine’s rescue of an infant from a wild bear in Canto iv. Afterward, he gives the orphan to the barren Lady Matilde and her husband Sir Bruin so that their aristocratic house may have a suitable heir.




In the central episode involving Turpine (or “baseness”) and his wife Blandina (or “flattery”) in Cantos vi-vii, Spenser explores the two extremes represented in the symbolic forests and castles of the book. Both characters have the trappings, but not the substance, of true civility. When Calepine attempts to find shelter for the wounded Serena in Turpine’s castle, he is repulsed and forced to spend the night with his lady in the forest, where he is gravely wounded by Turpine on the next day. From the forest, however, comes a wild and apparently “Salvage” man, who is actually more courteous than Turpine and his wife. That the wild man risks his life to rescue Calepine and his lady and carefully tends the knight’s wounds suggests something of the inherent goodness of human nature. That he succeeds in curing only Calepine’s injuries and not those of Serena, however, suggests the limitations of that nature when it is not cultivated by civil custom and informed by religion. A pious hermit who had once been a great knight is the only one who can save Serena.




In Calidor’s quest to subdue the Blatant Beast, Spenser presents a further exploration of the relationship between the civil and the natural. The knight first finds the Beast in Gloriana’s city of Cleopolis, which in one of its allegorical senses stands for Elizabethan London. The knight then pursues the monster from smaller towns past outlying castles to the sheepfolds of Pastorella and Meliboe, which are associated with Spenser’s own rural home in Ireland. So much more courteous are the simple shepherd and his daughter than those whom Calidore has left behind in “civil” society that he abandons his life as a knight and takes up that of a shepherd, hoping to win the heart of Pastorella. His most exalted moment comes in Canto x, when he is immersed in the beauties of nature, far from the court of his queen. Walking on Mount Acidale, he comes upon the shepherd Colin Clout, whose name associates him with Spenser and The Shepheardes Calender . Colin is playing his pipes, and all before him are “An hundred naked maidens lilly white,” dancing in a ring about the three Graces of classical mythology. The Graces, in turn, are dancing about Colin’s beloved, who represents Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. Though the poet might have placed Queen Elizabeth in the midst of the rings, portraying her as the central emblem of grace and courtesy in Book VI, he pointedly avoids doing so, beseeching his monarch to give him leave to place his own Elizabeth there instead. His own natural bonds with his wife take precedence over his civil bonds with his queen.




This curious detail is sometimes interpreted as a sign that Spenser, like his hero Calidore, had turned away from Gloriana’s court, abandoning in disillusionment his great project of glorifying Queen Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene. Apparently he composed very little more of the poem after he finished the pastoral cantos of Book VI, which were the last episodes published in his own lifetime. Yet the poet’s gesture toward his wife need not be taken as a slight to the queen. After all, he had only recently remarried and therefore had special reason to request leave of his monarch “To make one [brief passage] of thy poore handmayd, / And underneath thy feete to place her prayse” (VI.x.28). It seems clear, moreover, that he did not entirely endorse Calidore’s “truancy” among the shepherds. By adopting their life of pleasure and contemplation, the knight has acted irresponsibly, as subsequent events reveal. Not only has he left the Blatant Beast free to do further harm, which is described in Canto xii, but he has also let Pastorella and her father undefended from other evils in the surrounding forest. A band of brigands soon sweeps down on them, killing Meliboe and several other shepherds and binding Pastorella in a cave in hopes of selling her into slavery. To rescue her, Calidore is forced to rearm himself, and after he has scattered the brigands, he is compelled to seek shelter for his beloved at a nearby castle. In a fallen world, the natural life divorced from the civil is no more sustainable than the civil divorced from the natural.




Even Calidore’s idealization of the shepherds has been based partly on a mistake, for as he discovers in Canto xii, Pastorella is actually a child of the aristocracy, born to Sir Bellamour and Lady Claribell in a secret love affair like those examined elsewhere in Book VI. She was abandoned among the shepherds to conceal her parents’ shame. At the climax of the book, this noble child reared by common shepherds returns in joy to her parents as an emblem of the ideal union of the natural with the civilized. Whatever Spenser’s personal attitudes toward Elizabeth and her court may have been when he wrote this part of the poem, the passage hardly endorses a radical reappraisal of the prevailing social order or a renunciation of the poet’s lifelong project. At the end of Book VI, Calidore resumes his quest, captures the Blatant Beast, and leads it captive through Faerie Land.




When Books I-III of The Faerie Queene were first published in 1590, Queen Elizabeth was not the only one to admire them, and by 1596, when Books IV—VI appeared, her grant of a royal pension was not the only reward that its author had received. The poem won immediate recognition as the finest poetic achievement of its generation, and further works by the poet were evidently in demand. In 1591 he returned to London to print two other works, Daphnaïda and the Complaints. Just four years later, three more of his works were published; Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, and the sonnet sequence titled Amoretti with his widely admired Epithalamion. These were followed in 1596 by the last of works published during his lifetime, Fowre Hymnes and the Prothalamion.




Daphnaïda is a dreary and somewhat overly expansive pastoral lament written soon after the death of the wife of Spenser’s friend Arthur Gorges, a minor poet and translator. Based on Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess (circa 1370), it is partly an experiment in patterning poetry according to symbolic numbers (here multiples of seven, the number associated with divine judgment and rest from sorrows), and it may have helped to prepare the way for the wonderfully detailed and suggestive number symbolism of the Epitalamion.




More successful were the Complaints , nine lengthy poems on the general themes of mutability and the vanity of earthly desires. The volume looks back to Spenser’s earliest work, reprinting revised versions of his two dream visions from the 1569 volume A Theatre for Worldings and adding a similar poem titled Visions of the Worlds Vanitie. These three show a side of Spenser that would later appeal to writers of the Romantic period, namely his sense of the poet as a prophet, speaking inspired truths against the follies of his age. The volume also includes an imitation of the French poet Joachim du Bellay’s Antiquitez de Rome (1558), which is a meditation on the tragic impermanence of even the greatest works of human ambition, epitomized in the ancient city of Rome.




The Complaints continue the experiments in poetic technique characteristic of The Shepheardes Calender, and they also explore some of the same literary forms and themes. Like “October,” for example, The Teares of the Muses laments the current low esteem of poets in England. Like “Maye” and “September,” Mother Hubberds Tale employs a beast fable for satiric purposes, presenting four stories about a fox and an ape that warn of abuses among the three traditional estates of English society: commoners, clergy, and nobility. The dedication preceding the poem calls it “the raw conceipt” of the poet’s youth, and since topical allusions tie it to political affairs in the years 1579-1580, it is probably work of the same period as the Calender.




Mingled with early materials such as these, however, are poems that have more to do with the major works of Spenser’s maturity. Muiopotmos, for example, resembles “February” in its use of a beast fable to expound a moral point. Its primary affiliation, however, is with The Faerie Queene. It is a mock epic about a vain butterfly caught by an envious spider, and may have been written as a light interlude in the serious business of composing the longer poem. In Clarion, the butterfly, it depicts a diminutive hero who, like the human characters in Spenser’s epic, was born under the biblical injunction “to be Lord of all the workes of Nature” yet is also bound by the will of “the heavens in their secret doome” (lines 211, 225). In the rhetorical questions of the three central stanzas of the poem, just before the butterfly becomes ensnared in the webs of its tragic antagonist, Arachne, Spenser echoes one of the great themes of The Faerie Queene, the contrast between human folly and shortsightedness and “The fatall purpose of divine foresight” (III.iii.2).




As a counter to the dominant theme of the Complaints, which is the transience of earthly things, Spenser turns to poetry as one of the few means that human beings have to resist the depredations of time. The volume begins with The Ruines of Time, a poem that contrasts a depiction of the great but forgotten city of Verulame with an elegy for Sidney , who had died of wounds suffered in battle in the Netherlands in 1586. By means of this contrast Spenser celebrates the power of poetry to confer on Sidney a kind of glory that will outlast empires. The pastoral poem Astrophel and the six elegies and epitaphs for Sidney by other authors that Spenser gathered four years later at the end of Colin Clouts Come Home Againe reiterate this theme and offer a belated though impressive tribute to the dead poet-hero who had served as Spenser’s early mentor.




Sidney ‘s impact on Spenser did not end with the tributes printed in the Complaints and Colin Clouts. Along with the mingling of pastoral and epic in Book VI of The Faerie Queene, which resembles the same blending in Sidney ‘s Arcadia (1590, 1593), the dead poet’s influence also appears in the Amoretti , a series of sonnets published with the Epithalamion in 1595. Spenser’s volume reads as if it were designed as a reply to Sidney ‘s dazzling sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, which was printed in London in 1591 by Spenser’s own publisher, William Ponsonby, and which began a vogue for English sonnets that lasted more than a decade.




The contrasts between the two sequences are illuminating. Whereas Sidney ‘s poems follow Continental models in depicting the love of a distant and unattainable woman, Spenser’s sonnets go against this widespread Petrarchan convention by celebrating a successful courtship, which culminates in the joyous wedding ceremony depicted in the Epithalamion . Both sequences seem to have been, at least in part, autobiographical, with Sidney ‘s reflecting his love of Lady Penelope Rich and Spenser’s his courtship of his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, who later bore him a son named Peregrine. Yet, whereas Sidney depicts love with another man’s wife and describes a gradual process by which passion conquers reason and religious principle, Spenser moves from such passion early in his sequence toward an eventual restoration of Christian piety and self-control. His address to the Amoretti themselves in Sonnet 1 sets a tone for the entire sequence that is lighter and less turbulent than that of Astrophil and stella: “Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands, ... shall handle you.” Though the poems that follow show the influence of various earlier sonneteers—including Petrarch and Philippe Desportes, Tasso and du Bellay—Spenser never departs from his own vision of healthy courtship, which progresses from the follies and excesses of infatuation toward the stability and fruitfulness of Christian marriage.




The organizing principle of the Amoretti and the Epithalamion is, as in The Shepheardes Calender, the passage of time. The poet’s wooing of Elizabeth Boyle initially seems an endless endeavor. Like Petrarch’s love of Laura, it drives the poet to exclaim in Sonnet 25, “How long shall this lyke dying lyfe endure ...[?]” Yet, even as he says this, an important phase in the courtship has already begun that will eventually lead to the resolution that he desires. As Alexander Dunlop and other scholars have pointed out, in Sonnet 22 he mentions the beginning of Lent, “The holy season fit to fast and pray.” If one sonnet is counted for each day between Ash Wednesday and Easter, then the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection would be expected in Sonnet 68, and that is where it appears. Sonnet 67 announces the end of the lover’s “hunt” for his “gentle deare,” in which the lady has been “fyrmely tyde” and “goodly wonne.” In Sonnet 68 the poet prays to Christ: “This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin, / and grant that we for whom thou diddest dye / being with thy deare blood clene washt from sin, / may live for ever in felicity.” Before the Lenten section there are twenty-one sonnets of preparation, and after the Easter sonnet there are again twenty-one in the denouement. These eighty-nine, plus the four short mythological poems known as anacreontics that come between the Amoretti and the Epithalamion, make a total of ninety-three, which is the number of days in the season of spring. That the central sonnets of the sequence are meant to be read as a depiction of springtime courtship is suggested in Sonnets 19 and 70, which fall just before and after the Lenten sonnets.




The Epithalamion continues this elaborately patterned sequence of symbolic seasons and times. Spenser’s wedding took place on Saint Barnabas’s Day, 11 June 1594, which was, by Elizabethan reckoning, the longest day of the year. As A. Kent Hieatt has shown, the twenty-four stanzas of the poem represent the hours of that particular day, beginning with the groom’s preparations before dawn and ending at the same hushed hour on the following morning. So precise is the temporal sequence that the coming of night is announced in the fourth line of stanza 17, just as Irish almanacs of the period set the hour of sunset at sixteen and a fraction hours after sunrise. All the stanzas leading up to this long-awaited moment contain a refrain that rejoices in the happy sounds of the day, from the singing of the birds at the bride’s awakening to the joyous ringing of the church bells after the ceremony is over. All the stanzas after nightfall, however, call for silence: “Ne let the woods us answere, not our Eccho ring.”




As in The Shepheardes Calender , where the passing of the months becomes a metaphor for the entire span of Colin’s life, so here the hours are connected with the larger cycles of the year and of life itself. Perhaps to magnify the significance of the wedding day, it is represented as if it had lasted a year, as the reader can see from the fact that the poem contains 365 long lines (while the 68 shorter lines total the number of weeks, month, and seasons). At the end, as Spenser and his bride lie in bed in the darkness before the dawn, he thinks of the whole course of their coming life together, looking forward to their final rest and that of their children in “heavenly tabernacles.” Along with this God-given way to escape from time, the wedding poem itself provides another, becoming, as the last line suggests, “for short time an endlesse moniment.”




Throughout the Epithalamion Spenser maintains a delicate balance between the heavenly and the earthly, the classical and the Christian. The poem begins with invocations to the Muses and to the forest, river, and sea nymphs of antiquity, who, along with Hymen and the Graces and the greater gods Bacchus and Venus, Cynthia and Juno, rule over mundane affairs in the poem. The poet, acting as a genial (though sometimes fretful) master of ceremonies, seems to invite the entire creation to join in celebrating his wedding day. He begins by depicting the sun as its rises, proceeds through the fish in the river and the beasts and birds in the forest, and continues up the Great Chain of Being to village children and the musicians hired to play for the wedding. This progression leads finally to his bride, who comes forth like a goddess among less comely “merchants daughters.” At the beginning of stanza 12 and 13, which lie at the formal and conceptual center of the poem, the poet sings, “Open the temple gates unto my love,” and this turns the reader’s attention from the world outside the church to the Christian ceremony of Holy Matrimony that is to be celebrated within. The musicians then raise a great crescendo to heaven, and the priest unites the couple before the altar, invoking the authority of a God who stands far above the pagan deities in the natural world of the poem. At the metrical center of the central line, Spenser places the words endlesse matrimony. After the ceremony comes feasting with bells and carols and wine poured out “by the belly full.” The wedding party gradually disperses, leaving the poet alone with his bride, and the final image that lingers at the end is of Spenser lying awake beside her in the silence just before dawn,thinking of children to come and the joys of heaven. This image is perhaps his most telling response to the fruitless idolatry and the frustrated earthly desire that are the subjects of Sidney ‘s Astrophil and Stella.




A similar, though more puzzling, blend of the classical with the Christian appears in Spenser’s next volume, the Fowre Hymnes. The first two hymns, which are meditations on earthly love and beauty, invoke the pagan gods Cupid and Venus as their reigning deities. The second two, which deal with heavenly love and heavenly beauty, are addressed to Christ and Sapience (or Christian wisdom). Though hymns modeled on the work of Pindar and other pagan poets of antiquity had recently been revived on the Continent, Spenser’s book is unusual in setting such poems side by side with more traditional Christian material. To be sure, the pagan hymns follow a Platonic “ladder of love” in which the speaker progresses from love of the body to love of the soul, but there is no way to reconcile their essentially worldly and self-centered philosophy with that depicted in the second pair of poems. Whereas the pagan hymns celebrate an altogether human form of love that aims to conquer and possess the beloved for its own self-fulfillment, the Christian hymns celebrate a divine love that aims to free others from bondage to sin by undertaking selfless acts of personal sacrifice.




The difficulty in resolving such contradictions has led some critics to accept at face value comments in the poet’s letter of dedication to the volume, which suggest that the first pair was written “in the greener times of my youth” and the second was offered by way of a retraction. Other scholars have noted, however, internal evidence suggesting that the pagan hymns were written—or at least revised—in the same period as the Christian ones and therefore that they are not likely to represent the mere errors of Spenser’s youth. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that the poet was simply repeating a pedagogical device employed frequently in The Faerie Queene. First, he presents a widely respected view from antiquity, and then he offers a far richer Christian view of the same subject, leaving his readers to puzzle out the differences and choose for themselves.




The Prothalamion, which was the last of Spenser’s poems to be published during his lifetime, also involves unresolved tensions, though of a darker sort than those found in the Fowre Hymnes. The poem was written to celebrate a double betrothal ceremony for the two daughters of Edward Somerset, Earl of Worcester. It took place during Spenser’s journey to London in the latter half of 1596, which he apparently undertook in order to seek a government position in England. Like The Shepheardes Calender, the poem begins with notes of weariness and despair. As the poet wanders along the bank of the river Thames, thinking about his own “lone fruitlesse stay / In Princes Court” and seeking to ease his “payne,” he sees two lovely swans floating on the water, with river nymphs gathering about them. These, of course, represent the prospective brides and their attendants. The counterpoint between the poet’s sadness and the rising tones of joy in the betrothal ceremony is caught most movingly in a song of blessing sung to the swans by one of the nymphs. Only two years earlier, Spenser had sung a wedding song of his own, but sorrows have since crowded in upon him. In coming from a turbulent world beyond the security of London, he cannot see the peaceful scene before him without thinking of faraway wars, glimpsed briefly at the end of the poem in a stanza glorifying the recent English burning of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz under the direction of Elizabeth’s young favorite, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex. The refrain in the poem, which invokes the river to “runne softly, till I end my Song,” suggests that the river may not always run softly, and the lingering impression of the poem is one of fragile beauty and transient joy.




The tone of dejection in Spenser’s Prothalamion appears in other of his works published in 1596. It may reflect the worsening situation in Ireland, where Tyrone’s Rebellion would soon uproot the English colonists and, with them, Spenser’s family. It may also have arisen from Spenser’s belief that he was being slandered at the English court and that old enemies were preventing him from gaining a better and safer position there. Both concerns stand out prominently in the last three cantos of Book VI of The Faerie Queene. There, shepherds associated with Spenser’s literary persona, Colin Clout, are attacked by lawless brigands, and the poet’s final words are a complaint that the Blatant Beast has escaped and “raungeth through the world againe ... Ne spareth he the gentle Poets rime, / But rends without regard of person or of time.” This passage probably refers to William Cecil, Baron Burghley, Elizabeth’s powerful counselor, who had censured Spenser’s epic for dealing too much with themes of erotic love (see The Faerie Queene, IV. Proem).




The poet’s last work, the Mutabilitie Cantos, published posthumously in 1609, reflects once again on the old themes of time and the sorrows and uncertainties of life. The cantos were apparently written as the main allegorical “core” for an otherwise unfinished book of The Faerie Queene, which a headnote by the printer identifies as “the legend of Constancie.” Appropriately set amid the turbulence of the Irish countryside, the cantos place the local and the immediate problems threatening Spenser and his family within a universal context, reflecting on the role of mutability in God’s creation. Once again using classical myth to explore issues that deeply touched his Christian view of the world, Spenser tells the story of the goddess Mutability, a daughter of the Titans who long ago rebelled against Jove. Longing to be admired like her sisters Hecate and Bellona, Mutability sets out in the world’s first innocence to ravage “all which nature had establisht first” and all the laws of civil society, thereby bringing death into the world. She then mounts up to the circle of the moon, attempting to drag from her throne the goddess Cynthia (who, in one of her allegorical references, stands for Queen Elizabeth). Ascending higher, Mutability then challenges Jove himself, putting forth her case that she is the rightful ruler of the universe. In order to resolve her dispute with Jove, she appeals to the highest judge of all, Dame Nature, who assembles all the gods on Arlo Hill to hear her judgment.




Within this larger framework Spenser tells the story of Faunus, who bribes the Irish river nymph Molanna to place him near Diana’s favored haunts on Arlo Hill, where he may see the goddess bathing. When the satyr betrays himself by laughing, he is captured by Diana’s nymphs, covered with a deer skin, and set upon by hounds. He manages to escape, but Diana thereafter abandons Arlo Hill, cursing it as a haunt for wolves and thieves. Through the Irish setting of the story and its depiction of a humiliation offered to the moon goddess Diana, the poet links the account of Faunus to mutability’s attack on Cynthia and her subsequent trial by Dame Nature. The inner story raises, however, an important issue not so clearly presented in the outer story, namely the role of erotic desire in bringing discord into the world.




The Mutability Cantos represent the perfection of Spenser’s art, combining almost effortlessly the strains of moral, psychological, and historical allegory that run through the entire poem. The poet’s description of the great trial on Arlo Hill brings forth all his poetic powers, providing opportunities for dramatic word paintings of Mutability’s effects upon the heavens and the earth, but also for more delicate passages, such as the colorful miniatures of the season, months, and hours that parade before Dame Nature as evidence of endless change. Many of the dominant themes and images of Spenser’s other works, from the earliest vision poems and The Shepheardes Calender to the Complaints and the Prothalamion, come together here.




The closing stanzas of the Mutability Cantos offer Spenser’s last word on the problem that had preoccupied him throughout his life,and, like the mottoes in the Calender, that word is enigmatic. Addressing Mutability, Dame Nature says only,











I well consider all that ye have sayd,

And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate

And changed be: yet being rightly wayd

They are not changed from their first estate;

But by their change their being doe dilate:

And turning to themselves at length againe,

Doe work their owne perfection so by fate:

Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne;

But they raigne over change, and doe their states maintaine.

(VII.vii.58)




Characteristically, Spenser leaves his readers to bring light to this “darke conceit,” offering afterward only another equally mysterious solution to the problem of mutability, a Christian one that lies beyond the earthly wisdom of Dame Nature:












... all that moveth, doth in Change delight:

But thence-forth all shall rest eternally

With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:

o that great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.

(VII.viii.2)




It may be that this prayer for rest in another world was the last line of poetry that Spenser ever wrote, for after it the fragmentary third canto of Mutabilite breaks off. Certainly, the last two years of his life allowed him little leisure to write. In 1598 rebels attacked and burned Kilcolman Castle, forcing Spenser and his family to flee to Cork. In December he returned to England, where he delivered a report on the Irish crisis at Whitehall on Christmas Eve. Three weeks later, on 13 January 1599, he died, perhaps of illness brought on by exhaustion. He was buried soon after in the south transept of Westminster Abbey in the Poets’ Corner.