Writing the Nation now

I’ve been re-reading the wonderful Helen Cooper on Spenser and she categorises the Faerie Queene (FQ) as an exercise in ‘writing the nation’ and I started to think about contemporary poets who might, at least in part, be doing the same thing.

Let’s be clear first about the FQ project, he has this:

And thou, O fairest Princess under sky,
In this faire mirrhour maist behold thy face,
And thine own realmes in Lond of Faerie,
And in this antique Image thy great ancestry.

Readers will be delighted to know that I don’t intend to dwell on FQ for longer than I need to but I do want to work out whether much use is made of ‘faire mirrhours’ today. This particular device works for me when it strike a chord with the idea of England that’s in my head and when it expresses the things that I feel about this contradictory and ham-fisted land.

As ever, what follows is subjective and I reserve the right to change my mind. Having given this some thought, I’ve dismissed both Geoffrey Hill and J H Prynne because I don’t think that’s what they’re about. I’ve looked at Hill’s nature stuff again and it seems more about God than nation. I understand Hill’s brand of regretful patriotism but I don’t share it even if it does make me smile.

Simon Jarvis’ ‘The Unconditional’ speaks to me in terms of the road network, cars and the scratchy disintegration of the middle aged and middle class Englishman. I’m not entirely sure how much of the latter element is description or confession but it does contain the right quantity of quiet despair that seems to be prevalent in most of my peers. He’s also pretty good on complicity which seems to run through some of his more recent work too.

Page 91 of ‘The Unconditional’ has this extended riff on how things probably are:

       And when it set again through burning clouds
    in certain knowledge that his enemy
       was sitting there in service station blue
    as when first rumour of a coming war
       from crevices to mute intelligence
    leaks to the avid wire or wireless beam
       a possible integer of probable
    risk or then hope dividing from the fold
       brushes against the oil price like two lips
    on the most sensitive no skin there is
       the slightest contact more than nothing will
    call up all spirits from their surfaces
       sending all shocks of terror or delight
    whether to eros or to thanatos 
       or operatives to keep their sleepy screens
    jerk on to power up the data field
       setting the eddying hammering of blood
    as a no wave on no field spends its flood 
       whose figures bear away a man's whole life
    by one dead jump into the real sea
       whilst they caress the exquisitely keen
    crest which falls off to pleasure or to pain.

This very long and incredibly digressive poem was published in 2006 and one of the many things it does is expose and dissect the New Labour faux managerial nonsense that the nation had been subject to since 1997 and passages like the above express how this felt to those of us with more than half a brain.

Regular readers will know that I’ve struggled in a fascinated kind of way with the difficulties that Jarvis presents but, after several reads, it does (with all its very many quirks) feel like the best/ most accurate mirrhour that we have of England at the start of the 21st century. I appreciate that the above may be primarily aimed at the criminal folly of our recent foreign adventures but the mindset is also present in the Blairite innovations in welfare spending which have been joyously extended by the current dismalities that rule over us- especially the ‘avid wire’ and the misuse of the data field to justify the ever increasing levels of deprivation.

Another poem that holds up the mirrhour to English politics in a way that I can recognise. The exception is Neil Pattison’s ‘Slow Light’ which set off a whole chain of immediate recognition in terms of what the current state of politics and the possibility of what political action might be about.

As with Neil’s earlier work, this is defiantly obdurate stuff but it’s initial strength comes from the careful modulation of the poetic ‘voice’ which is a very human voice rather than a tone. My recognition was immediate but also quite literally breathtaking as if I’d been grabbed in the chest. This happens to me about once every ten years and not usually with poetry, the last occasion was standing in front of one of those big Kiefers in about 2001. As I’ve said, the ‘meaning’ is by no means apparent so I’m still more or less at a loss as to why (apart from the voice) I should have this response but I’m certainly confident of my ability to extoll it’s worth as a ‘mirrhour’.

For example, there’s this from the middle of the poem:

    Gloze edging flouresces, accelerant centre fades :
    inside, the accurate flow to shell-gland, cored
    optic of pure courting is
                            To praise
    consumed in fit loops power, topic parabola
    recoiling : smoke feels, the reliquary a disclosure
    of this stratum, folded in its blastwave, that by
    furnace glossed art
                    coolant, exhales retinal
    clutch, feeding, ordinate, bracket, saline, aluminum,
    a baffling reach. The image smashed, hand formes
    kindling enrichment ; the footing centres exactly :

    as you went out,     becoming small       in the country
    speeding, glazed in : Pace ballots        on
                        mist
    into the entrails
              new white speed will index in her blood :

I’m not going to attempt a detailed analysis of the above but it might be useful to point out that poems epigraph is a quote from Philip Gaskell which describes a process that produces “a perfect image of the mould pattern and watermark in the paper but does not register the printing on the surface”, I also need to draw your attention to the brilliance inherent in both the phrasing and the use of language to create, for me at least, a quite forensic picture of how it is and what may or may not be done. I’m particularly blown away by ‘the accurate flow to shell-gland’ and the two line that begin with ‘as you went out’.

I’ve now realised that I have digressed some way from my initial intention which was to start with the ‘antique image’ and Leland’s remarkable ‘Itinerary’ and proceed via Drayton, Cobbett and Reznikoff to John Matthias with a glance at Olson and David Jones along the way. Hopefully I’ll be more disciplined next time.

Poetry and goodness

I need to start by expressing my gratitude to Michael Peverett, John Stevens and Steffen Hope for their feedback of the ‘Mercian Hymns’ page on arduity which has been invaluable and much appreciated. I’ve just added a longish page on the first four parts of ‘In Parenthesis’, any feedback on this would be much appreciated- either in the comments here or via e-mail- the address is at the bottom of each arduity page.

In his response to my recent thing on David Jones, Tom Dilworth expressed the view that “In IN PARENTHESIS the supreme value is not human life but goodness” which has set me thinking in a number of different directions. The first of these is that poetry is much better at badness than it is on the more positive aspects of the human race. The second is that those great poets who have tried to deal with goodness or virtue have clearly dealt with badness and vice with greater relish. The third thought is that there are those poets who exude goodness in their work and who approach their material with both empathy and compassion for the human condition.

In chronological order, I’m going to have to start with Book I of Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ which describes the quest of the Red Cross knight in achieving holiness. I think it is reasonable to observe that the most interesting/absorbing/entertaining characters are irrevocably Bad and that the way in which they do Badness is much more convincing than the good characters who help the knight on his way. Archimago and Duessa are eminently believable and Despair is a brilliant portrayal of what might be described as early nihilism but the virtuous Fidessa and Contemplation have all the realism of cardboard. The knight is so inept that we can’t take his side whilst Una, the object of his love and devotion, has only one scene where she is allowed to display her real emotions, for the rest of the 12 cantos she remains simply a bland paradigm of virtue.

Book III is ostensibly ‘about’ chastity as embodied by Britomart who does act with compassion and generosity, who does appear to be keen on doing the Right Thing and is much more complex and involving than any of the other ‘good’ subjects of the poem.

Spenser doesn’t write with compassion, he writes as a poet who is keen to demonstrate his value and skill. I am and always will be a Spenserian but that doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the rampant egotism that runs through the work which really does get in the way of any sense of understanding of the reality of human talents and frailties. This self-regard is most obviously on display in the ‘Amoretti’ sequence but it also runs through the Faerie Queene- Spenser describes a great many fight scenes not because they are essential to his theme but because he’s very good at them even though the reader is weary after the first five or six.

George Herbert’s Love III deals with God’s love for mankind and the way in which salvation might work. I don’t want to re-visit Prynne’s detailed analysis but I do want to suggest that the poets displays a degree of goodness (in the sense of compassion and tenderness) as well as insight in the following lines. The poem uses the analogy of a guest and a meal that is offered:

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

                   If I lack any thing.


A guest, I answered worthy to be here.

                          Love said, You shall be he.

This is probably an entirely personal response but this strikes me as more than a theological ‘point’ because it seems to encapsulate the struggle that most of us have with the notion of worthiness. I know than a few individuals who have dedicated their lives to some kind of public service as a way of reconciling or dealing with their own sense of unworthiness and the above exchange seems to explore this in a particularly accurate and humane way that is absent from most of the rest of great English verse.

This brings us to John Milton and his God problem. In Paradise Lost, Jesus has compassion for humanity and does all the right/good things from defeating the bad angels to undertaking to sacrifice himself in order to redeem mankind. God, on the other hand, is grumpy and complains a lot about man’s ingratitude and disobedience. Being omniscient, God knows about Adam’s disobedience before it occurs but also knows (because of Free Will) that there is nothing he can do to prevent it. This makes him far more compelling than either Satan or Christ because he confounds our expectation that God must be inherently good and kind and never, ever bad-tampered.

The other bits of goodness turn out to be rather tedious, I find myself becoming irritated by the unalloyed virtue of Adam and Eve in the idyllic garden prior to the Fall. Milton is our greatest poet but he’s also a streetfighter with a number of points to make and this doesn’t leave much space for an empathetic stance.

Charles Olson’s compassion for the people of Gloucester and the way in which he describes existence on the edge of the Atlantic is an example of warmth and his love for the place which is enunciated in detail throughout ‘Maximus’, drawing us in to a similar viewpoint.

As with David Jones, one of Olson’s concerns is the relationship of the past to the present and the following fourteen lines explore this with great personal warmth;

A year that year

was new to men

the place had bred

in the mind of another


John White had seen it

in his eye

but fourteen men

of whom we know eleven


twenty two eyes

and the snow flew

where gulls now paper 

the skies


where fishing continues

and my heart lies

I could go on for a very long time about how the archive and archival poetry brings the past into the immediate present a how Jones and Olson are two of our greatest poets (in part) because of this element in their practice. Instead, I just want to point to the love expressed and written in the above which to my mind is also an expression of Olson’s goodness.

Finally, Elizabeth Bishop is one of the very few poets who does goodness really well and I want to produce the closing lines of ‘Filling Station’ as an example of technical brilliance and a very human compassion:

Somebody embroidered the doily.

Somebody waters the plant,

or oils it, maybe. Somebody

arranges the rows of cans

so that they softly say:

ESSO-SO-SO-SO

to high-strung automobiles.

Somebody loves us all.

There is a lot going on here but the ‘point’ is beautifully and expertly made and it is these expressions of compassion and human worth, even in the mundane, that makes Bishop so very, very good. There’s a reported conversation in ‘Moose’ which is technically perfect but is also soaked through with this sense of innate value in the human race.

So, I need to thank Tom Dilworth again for enabling me to think about yet another aspect that I’ve taken too much for granted and will now pay much more attention to.

Poetry and the academy (again)

In the early days of this blog I allowed myself the occasional extended rant about the damage that something called the academy does to something we call poetry. The general thrust of this centred around an academic elite having more and more complex discussions with itself and thus locking most ‘serious’ poetry up in a box that excludes the rest of us.

I’d like to be able to report that I’ve mellowed and now appreciate that complex poetry requires complex analysis and that this must be expressed in precise terms which many may consider to be obscure. Unfortunately, recent exposure to academic work continues to confirm the original view although in a slightly modified form.

I read a lot of history and spend many a happy hour arguing in my head with views and perspectives that I don’t agree with. I’d like to be able to read about poets and poetry that interests me, especially work produced between 1580 and 1670 (ish) although I wouldn’t be adverse to reading outside these parameters. The problem is that I can’t finish the vast majority of those that I’ve tried. I start off with the best of intentions but soon get weary and decide not to proceed any further. This weariness is usually due to:

• the points being made don’t seem to be well-founded;
• an ideological agenda is being pursued which requires the author to shoehorn the work into a box that doesn’t fit;
• academic eagerness leading to an ‘over-egging’ of the pudding;
• increasingly convoluted arguments to make a very small point;
• an emphasis on the wrong things;

There are some critics that I read with enormous pleasure even though I disagree with almost everything they say, I read and re-read Stanley Fish on anything and I do the same with Jacques Derrida on Paul Celan. I also read Geoffrey Hill and J H Prynne on anything but my primary motivation stems from my interest in their poetry.

I do appreciate that there are academic trends and that these develop over time, I also understand that academia is competitive but it does seem that academic success is more likely if authors produce work that questions the prevailing status quo (and is well written).

I do not want to single out particular books but I have started about ten that have been published in the last five years. I’ve been attracted by the subject matter and the thesis that’s set out in the introduction and have started with more than a degree of enthusiasm because all of these books promise to do what I think ought to be done.

The over-egging of the pudding is particularly tiresome, it does seem that there is a tendency to develop entire theories on the flimsiest evidence. Some historians also fall into this particular trap but there is a growing trend which emphasises the things that we don’t actually know rather than those which we can only guess about. I’m not inherently against speculation but I am of the view that authors should make it clear when speculation is taking place.

I have tried to be reasonably broad in my reading, I’ve engaged with works about individual poets, about groups of poets, works with a political bent and those with a theological/philosophical angle and none of these have lived up to the promises set out in the introduction. Some of this can be very dispiriting, I’ve been taken through many pages of context and supporting evidence only to arrive at a ‘point’ that is so small as to be meaningless. I’ve been through pages of ideologically right-on posturing to arrive at a ‘point’ that is laughably wrong (as in factually incorrect).

We now come to specialisms and context. I am familiar with the history of this particular period and am therefore reasonably aware when authors provide only partial or inaccurate context. There may however be many readers who ‘only’ have a background in literature and would often struggle to make a judgement about the context that is provided. I’m not suggesting that this is deliberate but too often sweeping generalisations are made in order to prove a (usually speculative) theory. The other side of the coin is represented by J H Prynne who spends many pages in his ‘Love III’ commentary emphasising just how complex and obscure certain theological debates were in the 1620s.

we now come to over-complication which is usually due to putting forward a hypothesis on very, very thin evidence but can also stem from being overly-enamoured with theory. The love of theory is (to say the least) unfortunate because it can often deter the hapless reader (me) who ‘just’ wants to know a bit more about the poems. I could go on for a very long time about how the work of Edmund Spenser has been hijacked and fought over by various theoretical perspectives to such an extent that the poetry has been largely forgotten, looking at recent academic work would lead the neutral observer to conclude that Spenser only ever wrote about Ireland and that this was done in order to promote and strengthen a profoundly dodgy (technical term) imperial project. Needless to say a few critics have attempted to buck this trend but they do tend to get swamped by this kind of errant nonsense.

I’m not in any way adverse to theory but do nevertheless feel that theoretical concerns should be used to inform our understanding of the work and not the other way round. Literary theorists also suffer in the main from a very simplistic view of how things work/worked in the real world. There seems to be a number of straight lines that go from society to any particular poem, so we have a burgeoning economy or a flourishing legal profession or religious controversy having a direct and discernible influence on the way that poems are put together. I shouldn’t really need to point out that life is inherently messy and doesn’t always follow the lines that we draw for it. The refusal of some literary critics (from a variety of theoretical perspectives) to understand and accommodate this unfortunate fact is especially frustrating.

It’s also interesting to note that historians tend to do better on poets than literary critics do on history. Roy Foster has produced the definitive work on Yeats and Edward Thompson’s book on Blake and the Muggletoniansis an absolute delight.

In conclusion, with a few honourable exceptions, the academy continues to produce work about poetry that is incredibly introspective and usually inaccurate. This does enormous disservice to the work and to the interested but non-academic reader.

Edmund Spenser and E K- a response to Michael Peverett

In a recent blog I made the statement that it is ‘glaringly obvious’ that E K is Edmund Spenser. This view has been challenged by Michael who points to his own ‘feebly indecisive’ remarks. Let me say at the outset how delighted I am that at least one reader of this blog cares about E K’s identity because I’m of the view that it’s really Quite Important. I also need to point out that most debates of this sort are utterly meaningless outside the narrow confines of the academy primarily because we will never know the answer but also because the answer doesn’t really matter. So, given that the identity of E K adds nothing to the quality or enjoyment of ‘The Shepheardes Calendar’, I shouldn’t care one way or the other just as I don’t have a view about the two-handed engine in ‘Lycidas’ and get annoyed by both sides of the debate about what exactly occurred at Todtnauberg.

In this instance it does matter, at least to me, because the epistle preceding the Calendar, in which E K justifies a number of devices, seems to outline a quite distinct manifesto which is carried through in Spenser’s later work and because the use of a self-penned gloss is utterly typical of the Spenser that exists in my head. In retrospect and after careful consideration, ‘glaringly’ may be an adjective too far because we all carry different Edmund Spenser’s about with us.

For those unfamiliar with the ‘Shepheardes Calendar’, it is the earliest surviving poem of any significance that we have and it moves away from the ‘standard’ pastoral sequence by using a range of verse forms across the twelve poems (one for each month). It demonstrates a degree of technical virtuosity and deploys a range of archaisms, a practice which is explained and justified in E K’s epistle.

There are three main factions on the E K debate:

• E K Is Edward Kirke who also attended Pembroke College;
• E K is not Edward Kirke but is not Edmund Spenser either;
• E K is either Edmund Spenser or a combination of Edmund Spenser and Gabriel Harvey.

Michael seems to be opting for the second of these – at this stage it is probably useful to look at the evidence for each case. As will be seen, the hard evidence in support of any of these is very thin.

The evidence for Edward Kirke

According to Andrew Hadfield in the DNB, these are the facts upon which this argument is based;

• he matriculated from Pembroke College in 1571, to years after Spenser- Gabriel Harvey was made a fellow of the college in 1570;
• he was ordained rector at Risby on the institution of Sir Thomas Kyston who was the uncle of the Spenser sister of Althorp who make an appearance in ‘Colin Clouts Come Home Again’ (536-70) – a poem that can be read as an updating of the Calendar;
• one of Kirke’s account books shows that he bought a ‘Shephard’s calender’ in 1582 for two shillings;
• letters between Harvey and Spenser refer to ‘E K’ and to ‘Mystresse Kerke’.

As can be seen, this is making the facts work really quite hard. As an aside, as far as I can tell the only reason the Edward Kirke is in the DNB is due to the fact that he might be ‘E K’ even though Hardfield’s entry gently dismisses this claim.

E K as somebody else

David Shore probably provides the most cogent argument against the ‘E K as Spenser’ faction. Following C S Lewis he points out the differences in view between E K and Spenser with regrad to:

• Marot, as in “and used of the French Poete Marot (if he be worthy of the name of a Poete);
• fairies and elves (although Lewis’ reading of the gloss does seem one-sided);
• Arthurian romance as the product of ‘fine fablers and lowd lyers.

Shore also makes the point that Spenser would not have written such a blatant piece of self-promotion as the epistle and goes on at length to find fault with the intellectual level of the gloss.

E K as Spenser

I’m the first to concede that the hard evidence here is even thinner than that outlined above but the soft evidence is much more compelling. The hard evidence (according to Thomas H Cain in the Yale edition) is that the same translation of Cicero is used in the gloss and in the first of the three letters to Harvery and that the mistake made when glossing ‘furies’ (Persephone instead of Tisiphone) is repeated in “Teares of the Muses”.

In terms of soft evidence, Cain makes the point that this device is more light-hearted than we currently think, that there’s more than a degree of the banteringv in-joke in both the epistle and the text. It is likely that this kind of material would find a ready audience around the Spenser/Harvey circle.

Shore undermines his own argument by pointing out that E K actually glides over the more contentious aspects of the sequence. This only makes sense if the gloss was composed purely as a gloss and not as part of the manifesto containe in the epistle. Viewed in this way, it should be reasonably obvious that both are more interested in justification than explanation.

Finally, what we know of Spenser suggests that he was one of those late Tudor grammar school boys with huge ambition- one of the men on the make who were delighted to gain wealth and status in Ireland that they could never have achieved at home. In short, a bit of a chancer (in the Raleigh mould) who would pen fulsome praise to himself and his abilities and (with a little assistance from Harvey) pass this off as the work of a disinterested third party…

Reading Spenser and E K with Andrew Zurcher

I have used this small corner of whatever this is to have a generalised moan about the way in which attention on the works of Edmund Spenser is unduly focused on Elizabethan Ireland. In making a plea for more of a focus on the poetry rather than the politics, I have also made the point that the most significant and radical feature of Spenser’s work is how he uses language, it’s also the most enjoyable.

In making this plea I had manage to overlook Andrew Zurcher’s “Spenser’s Legal Language” which was published in 2007. My only excuse is that I was probably put off by the subtitle -’Law and Poetry in Early Modern England’ and therefore didn’t read any further.

I turns out that this is an exacting and refreshing reading of Spenser in the way that he may have been read at the time and one that gives more consideration to the origins of words because Zurcher claims that the humanist educational practices of the time had a particular focus on etymology.

It is probably reasonable to assume that Spenser is currently known for ‘The Faerie Queen’ and for ‘A Viewe of the Present State of Irelande’ and the relationship between these two. The former is one of the greatest works in any language and should more widely read, the second is in prose and sets out Spenser’s fairly genocidal view of what to do with the Irish. What is often forgotten is that Spenser’s career began with his take on the ‘new’ way to do pastoral- ‘The Shepheardes Calendar’ – which is accompanied by an introduction and gloss by ‘E K’.

The last few decades of the 16th century saw the birth of what is now known as the ‘English Renaissance’ with Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare in the first wave. This was accompanied by a number of manifestos written with a view to create a new kind of English Poetry. Zurcher points out that E K’s introduction can be read as one of those and it does seem to make a number of points that go beyond the ‘Calendar’. I’m a fan of poetry manifestos and this one is especially absorbing for its focus on readerly activity and a disparagement of the ‘drive-by’ reading.

Before getting on to the glorious complexity of E K’s contribution, I also need to point out that both Hill and Prynne have a strong interest in the origins of words and of their other meanings. On some occasions this can be taken to extremes, in ‘Field Notes’ Prynne has a delightful and extremely detailed analysis of the possible meaning of ‘listen’ in ‘The Solitary Reaper’ whilst Hill seems intent on reviving words that slid into obscurity some time ago- ‘maugre’, ‘spavined’ and ‘limbeck’ being recent examples. I’ve often wondered about this seemingly excessive interest but Zurcher may have shed some further light. He points out that 16th century grammar school pupils were taught to acquire a wide range of Latin and Greek words but to also pay close attention to where these words came from and how they have modified over time.

I also want to clarify and restate the bebrowed position on the identity of E K. This is that E K is Edmund Spenser and that this is so glaringly obvious that I can’t imagine why critics continue to argue the point. We then need to stand back and admire the audacity of this conceit (epistle and gloss) when launching a literary career which is also marking a new direction. So, Spenser writes the poem, provides his own gloss to clarify certain sticking points and innovations but also writes an epistle proclaiming the skill of the poet and launching a detailed defence of these devices- in particular the use of ‘old and unwonted words’.

Others have observed that Spenser’s reputation would still stand if he had only published the ‘Calendar’ but it is important to note that wrapping it up in this way does show a lack of confidence as to whether it would be well-received without some kind of detailed explication. It also displays an inordinate amount of ego and ambition for a youthful novice to take big swipes at his older and more established peers.

I’m going to quote the epistle at length because I hope to show that it still has relevance and finds echoes in what Prynne has to say about late modernist verse.

E K starts with some bold claims as to Spenser’s worth:

But I dout not, so soone as his name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthines be sounded in the tromp of fame, but that he shall be not onely kiste, but also beloved of all embraced of the most, and wondred at as the best. No lesse I thinke, deserveth his wittiness in devising his pithiness in uttering, his complaints of love so lovely, his discourses of pleasure so pleasantly, his pastorall rudenesse, his morall wisenesse, his dewe observing of Decorum everye where, in personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach, and generally in all seemly simplycitie of handeling this matter and framing his words:

Which is a bold statement and more than likely designed to get some attention, it also fascinating to note how little the identified qualities of the poet have changed over the last 430 years. E K now begins to tackle word choice and language use, this is how the above continues:

the which of many things which in him be straunge, I knowe will seem the straungest, the words them selves being so auncient, the knitting of them so short and intricate, and the whole Periode and compasse of speache so delightsome for the roundnesse, and so grave for the strangenesse. And first of the wordes to speake, I graunt the be something hard, and of most men unused, yet both English, and also used of most excellent Aothours and most famous Poetes. In whom whenas this our Poet hath been much traveiled and thoroughly redd, how could it be, (as that worthy Oratour sayde) but that walking in the sonne although for other cause he walked, yet needes he mought be sunburnt, and having the sounde of those auncient Poetes still ringing in his ears, he mought needes in singing hit out some of theyr tunes. But whether he useth them by such casualtye and custome, or whether of set purpose and choyse, as thinking them fttest for such rusticall rudenesse of shepheards, either for theyr rough sounde would make his rymes more ragged and rustical, or else because such olde and obsolete wordes are most used of country folke, sure I think and think I think not amisse, that they bring great grace and, as one would say, auctouritie to the verse.

What is so significant about this is that it comes first in the epistle because it is recognised that Spenser’s word choice and language use will draw the most attention and criticism and it is this ‘innovation’ that needs to be defended first. The justification for old words used here can also be applied to ‘The Faerie Queen’ and underlines Zurcher’s point about the way in which educated readers had been taught to work with texts- by paying close attention to the nature and origins of words. As well as the Renaissance appeal to classical authority (Cicero) we have the flamboyantly bonkers ‘sure I think and think I think not amisse’ which surely reveals Spenser as E K.

Zurcher also makes the point that the epistle draws attention not only to the words used but also to the relationship between those words and suggests that this is how Spenser intended his work to be read. I’m not altogether sold on this because it may be over-egging an already complex pudding but it is certainly more useful for this reader to think about than the politics of Book V. In making his claim for the relationship between words, Zurcher cites this from the epistle:

But all as in most exquisite pictures they use to blaze and portraict not onely the daintie lineaments of beautye, but also rounde about it to shadow the rude thickets and craggy clifts, that by the basenesse of such parts, more excellency may accrew to the principall; for oftimes we fynde ourselves, I knowe not how, singularly delighted with the shewe of such naturall rudenesse and take great pleasure in that disorderly order. Even so doe those rough and harsh termes enlumine and make more clearly to appeare the brightnesse of brave and glorious wordes.

Prynne has recently written about the need to be aware of the relationship between words and also the way that words sound. I’m not making a case for Spenser as a 16th century Prynne but what I do think is important is the primacy that both place on the words themselves and what those words can do. For me, this is what the doing of poetry is about far more than membership of a particular school or ideological persuasion and I like to think that our best pets share this concern / perspective as preceding cultural and political context.

Zurcher is also correct in suggesting that there is much more work that needs to be done on aspects of Spenser’s language use. Does anybody know of others working on this?

Back in the Garden with Andrew Marvell’s soul and the colour green

This is going to appear more than a little disjointed but there is (trust me) some method in the confusion that follows. I’ve been re-reading Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ and trying to follow Nigel Smith’s logic with regard to a Neoplatonic reading of the sequence and giving further consideration to Bruce R Smith’s gloriously ambitious ‘The Key of Green, Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture’ in order to try and get this particular poem a bit clearer in my head.

There are a number of things that I think need to be established before getting into the specifics:

1. the middle of the 17th century is very far removed from and foreign to the early part of the twentieth century, the religious groups of the Interegnum and beyond were not the Taliban, John Evelyn was not our first ecologist regardless of what Simon Schama might say;
2. the appearance of the word ‘soul’ in a poem does not automatically imply the presence of all things Plotinus hovering benignly (or otherwise) over the text;
3. poetic influence, especially from one poet to another, is hugely complicated and should not be treated as a simple ‘given’;
4. Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ may not be a single poem but a sequence of nine self-contained and coherent poems grouped around a single theme just as Hill’s Oraclau has Wales and the Welsh as its unifying link;
5. work on the development of gardens and the place of the garden in the 17th century mindset / cultural landscape is only now beginning to produce results and these currently cover a very broad range of perspectives;
6. as with ‘soul’, the use of the word ‘green’ should not be automatically be taken to refer to all things natural and wholesome.

I feel that I can now turn to the poem and start with what Nigel Smith has to say about the Neoplatonic basis for the poem/sequence- “In effect, M. transfers the metaphors of Neoplatonism from the cosmic to the human scale, almost parodying Neoplatonic language: Should not abide unchanged when it produces: it is moved and so brings forth an image. It looks to its source and is filled, and going forth to another opposed movement generates its own image, which is sensation and the principle growth in plants…. The part before this, which is immediately dependent upon Intellect, leaves Intellect alone, abiding in itself.’” The quote is from Book III of the Enneads and Smith refers us to the first 6 line of stanza / poem VI:

Meanwhile, the mind, from pleasures less

Withdraws into its happiness:

The mind, that ocean where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find;

Yet it creates, transcending these,

For other worlds, and other seas;

Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade.

To back up his claim, Smith quotes at some length from Nathaniel Culverwel’s ‘An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature’ and concludes with “Again, the broad patterns of thought M.’s thought are evident.” It so happens that I know a little of Plotinus and the Neoplatonic thread in English verse and it is this sort of opportunistic reading that really doesn’t do attentive readers any favours. Before proceeding with this I think I need to say that Nigel Smith’s work on Marvell (especially in the Longman Collected) is a model of what scholarship should be about- it’s just that here he does overreach himself. If we treat ‘The Garden’ as a single poem then it is clear that it is saying a number of quite different things and that these things are not easily compressed into one particular school of thought. We might also want to suggest that the poem deliberately resists a single, unified reading. This is not a radical insight about Marvell, people have been complaining about the unresolvable ambiguity in his work since 1681. The quest for a single coherent meaning or viewpoint is very attractive, some time ago I posted something on this blog which proposed to make complete sense of ‘An Horation Ode’ purely on the strength of its closing lines.

Before going on to the next stanza / poem, I’d like to draw attention to Smith’s “In effect” and “almost” in the above quote which might just indicate that he knows that he’s on a slippery slope.

We now turn to the next stanza which brings us to Edmund Spenser and the soul:

Here at the fountain's sliding foot

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,

Casting the body's vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide:

There it like a bird it sits, and sings,

Then whets, and combs it sliver wings;

And, till prepared for longer flight,

Waves in its plumes the various light.

Smith states that Spenser’s ‘Hymne to Heavenly Beautie’ is the source for the third and fourth lines and cites most of stanza 4 of that poem. However, the Yale edition of Spenser’s shorter poems is of the view that this sense of ascent is a reflection of Plato rather than Plotinus. Smith also quotes Alistair Fowler’s view that Boethius, Jeremy Taylor and George Herbert are also sources. I don’t have access to the 2003 Times Literary Supplement article that this is taken from but, as a general rule of thumb, anything that Fowler says must be correct because he is better than anyone else and writes with superb elan and authority.

Coincidentally, I know nothing of Boethius but I am now in possession of Prynne’s ‘Kazoo Dreamboats’ which includes Boethius in its ‘Reference Cues’ list so I may have to read this before I get to the rest. I don’t wish to minimise the various threads that Marvell may be making use of here but I think my point is that influence isn’t just about mimesis or imitation, the strongest type of influence is that which gives the influenced permission to act or create in a certain way. For example, Pound gave Charles Olson permission to write a very long poem about many apparently disparate things just as James Joyce gave David Jones permission to write about the thought patterns of troops in WWI.

In this way Spenser gives permission to Herbert and they both give permission in turn to Marvell to write about the soul in a way that may contain elements of the Neoplatonic whilst not embracing the whole philosophy. It is eminently possible, for example, to draw a parallel between Ficino on the One and the structure of Book I of the Faerie Queen but that doesn’t mean that Spenser is putting forward a specifically Neoplatonic position.

With regard to green, this occurs twice in the poem / sequence, in addition to the above, stanza / poem 3 begins with this-

Nor red nor white was ever seen

So am'rous as this lovely green.

Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,

Cut in these trees, their mistress' name

Little, alas, they know, or heed,

How far these beauties hers exceed!

Fair trees! Wher'se'er your barks I wound,

No name but your own shall be found.

When I last wrote about this, I observed that green could be read in a number of different ways. Bruce R Smith has these-

• leaves, especially bay leaves, especially bay leaves wound around a
  poet’s brow,
• greenwood, greensward, greenhouse,
• the village green,
• verdigris, litharge of lead (PbO), and quicksilver “ground with the pisse of a yong childe” to make an emerald-green dye,
• the suit of “flaming greene like an Emerald” that St. George is supposed to have worn when, en route to England, he stopped off in Egypt and was crowned king there,
• a table covering for conducting legal business (the Board of Greencloth,
• the green baize of the House of Commons), playing card games, and shooting pool,
• green phantasms in “Perspective-Houses,” where, according to Francis Bacon, the inhabitants of New Atlantis produce “all Colourations of Light. All Delusions and Deceits of the Sight, in Figures, Magnitudes,
  Motions, Colours: All Demonstrations of Shadows,”
• greenhead and greenhorn,
• “the greene-ey’d Monster,” and
• “Good is as visible as greene.”

Smith contiues with- “The last of these greens is John Donne’s in “Communitie,” a poem printed with Donne’s amorous verse in 1633. Donne’s speaker begins with the commonly held proposition that we must love good and hate ill. But what about “things indifferent”? These we have to “prove” or try out, “As wee shall fi nde our fancy bent.” Take women. Nature made them neither good nor bad, so we must use them all: “If they were good it would be seene, / Good is as visible as greene, / And to all eyes it selfe betrayes.” Green is so visible, it turns out, not just because it is everywhere to be seen in greenwood and greensward or because the speaker is a greenhead full of youthful desire but because women are green goods, pieces of ripening fruit that the speaker can devour one after another.”

I’ve quoted the above at length because I want to make a more general point about the occasional need to accept that we don’t actually know and will never know what certain things mean or refer to and that this is especially the case with Marvell. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to celebrate this multiplicity than contributing to sterile and unresolvable debates over precise intention and meaning….

Helen Cooper on Edmund Spenser and the English Romance

The very first thing that I wrote for this blog was a synopsis and appreciation of Helen Coopers’ ‘The English Romance in Time’ which demonstrates the various ways that both Shakespeare and Spenser made use of the English romance tradition. I’m currently reading the ‘Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature’ which provides the best overview of all the various handbooks and companions that are on the market. Whilst I am going through these chapters in sequence, I have to admit that I read the epilogue first because it is written by Cooper and entitled ‘Edmund Spenser and the Passing of Tudor Literature’. Regular readers will know that I’ll read anything on Spenser and that most of it makes me cross. In fact I’d almost given up on the possibility of any academic saying anything at all that is in any way helpful about ‘The Faerie Queen’.

There are times when what a critic writes strikes a deep chord of affinity with me. These occasions are rare, the most recent significant instance that springs to mind is where Geoffrey Hill sums up in a single sentence all the fairly complicated thins that I feel about Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. Cooper has just provided me with another such moment:

The richness of the Tudor context for The Faerie Queene has for long been overshadowed by scholarship on its classical and Italian connections, and more recently by the New Historicist emphasis on its immediate political context. Situated in its own historical and linguistic moment as the culmination of earlier Tudor literature, however, the work reveals a different set of qualities, variously overlapping with and complementary to what is conventionally thought of as humanist, that underline Spenser’s commitment to the poetics of nationhood.

Coincidentally, I’ve recently had a bit of a rant about this with regard to the problematic Book V of the Faerie Queen and the above passage has made me realise that there is at least one other person on the planet who feels the same way. A more sobering thought is that if you look at the current academic ‘chatter’ on Spenser you come away with the impression that the main ‘thread’ is the dismal Tudor experience in Ireland and that the FQ was largely a re-working of Ariosto and Tasso.

I don’t have any kind of problem with academics that wish to point out the genocidal tendencies in ‘A View’ nor do I wish to deny the profoundly suspect overtones in Book V with regard to Ireland. I do have a problem when this becomes the main ‘point’ of Spenser’s literary output. This together with the notion that, in using some of Tasso and Ariosto, Spenser was adopting European models and humanist ideals whilst rejecting England’s medieval past.

I remain of the view that we ought to read poetry primarily for its use of language rather than for any extrinsic factors or the nature of the subject matter. I don’t think that this is a naive or idealistic position and I think my feelings about Spenser epitomise the reasons why I engage with poetry. I do not read Spenser because of my interest in English colonial adventures in Ireland and elsewhere, nor do I read him for his role in ‘nation building’. Both of these are subjects that I do have an interest in but wouldn’t rely on the poetry as providing anything other than small bits of context. I read Spenser because he is good with language and his confident exuberance shines through almost everything he does. When I read the Faerie Queen I know that I am in the hands of someone who knows what he is doing and that the poetry will carry me forward regardless of the subject matter. I’m much more concerned about how Spenser marks the end of one ‘phase’ of English poetry and marks the start of another by appropriating older forms and using these to point towards what will follow. I’m interested in this because I’m interested in and can see the point of poetry as a means of expression. If I want to know about the politics of the period then I will look at other more relevant primary sources. The same applies to George Herbert and John Milton, I don’t read them to gain a closer understanding of the Arminian strand in Anglicanism, I read them because they are both brilliant poets- what they write about is completely secondary.

Cooper rightly draws attention to the English antecedents of FQ especially Stephen Hawes, Chaucer and Langland as well as two romances- ‘Bevis of Hampton’ and ‘Guy of Warwick’ and she points to Malory’s influence in the role of Arthur in the poem. As a result of this (and the chapter on Hawes in the Handbook) I’ve started to read ‘Bevis’ and Hawes’ ‘The Pastime of Pleasure’ and they are both remarkably full of stuff that reappears in FQ. I’m not sure about the Langland/Lollardry connection but I am teaching myself Middle English in order to get to grips with this argument. My point is that a reader new to the glories of Spenser would soon be wading around in the critical noise around the Irish dimension and be looking at Orlando Furioso (I did this) rather than the English tradition.

A final note about academic trends, I do understand the way that these fads gather pace and become all pervasive but the Ireland ‘problem’ also feeds into a collective guilt that is only now beginning to speak its name- it is unlikely that this kind of perspective would have had such a success when the IRA campaign was at its murderous height. The other thought is- isn’t there something vaguely dubious about English academics (as descendants of the colonisers) choosing to speak for those who had the great misfortune to be colonised. Isn’t this a bit similar to those middle class academics (and thus secondary instruments of class oppression) wittering on about the integrity of the working class?

So, this is more of a plea for a more rounded perspective that starts by looking at poetry as poetry before beginning to take other political and cultural factors into account. I hope I shouldn’t need to point out that this does not in anyway condone or minimise the genocidal nature of Spensers remarks in ‘A View’.

We obviously need more academics like Cooper who are prepared to question the prevailing trends and to look at poetry primarily as poetry. She also writes about complex things in a style that is wonderfully clear and jargon-free. Her contribution on the pastoral form in the Spenser Encyclopaedia is also a model of incisive erudition.

Pierre Bourdieu and the sonnet explosion of 1592/3

The title is a bit of a misnomer, it should read “How not to apply Bourdieu’s work on taste to any element of 16th century creative expression but especially not to the very many sonnet sequences that were churned out after the publication of Astrophel and Stella”.
My interest in said explosion stems from Spenser’s ‘Amoretti’ which is one of the better known sequences and recounts his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle who became his second wife. I also have more than a passing interest in Michael Drayton who was also one of the sonneteers.
My interest in Bourdieu may require a degree of qualification. I really, really want Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’ to be wrong because I’d like to hang on to the notion of culture as having a degree of autonomy. My problem is that I don’t think that he is wrong- he’s done the work, he’s got the figures and the stats and the charts and he was the most technically gifted sociologist of the last century and I can’t argue with him (except on the auto-didact). The Bourdieu thesis is that all cultural activity is determined the economic and class structure of society and it is both naive and foolish to pretend otherwise.
So, when I came across something called “Sonnet Sequences and Social Distinction in Renaissance England” by Christopher Warley I became interested enough to read most of it. My expectations were reasonably high, the last two decades of the 16th century saw a number of rising trends particularly with regard to overseas trade and new forms of raising finance. Standards of education had also improved since about 1550 and I was hopeful that Warley might have something useful about how these changes influenced the literary culture of the 1590s. This was a mistake. The introduction makes reference to most of the usual suspects together with a lengthy quotation from Zizek but the clincher was “Bourdieu’s work, with its emphasis on structures of difference, seems to me in many respects quite close to Derrida (though it is a comparison that both, to the best of my knowledge, tend to resist). This should have caused me to walk away but instead I bought a hard copy, a proper book, from Amazon. To make matters worse he goes on with “Bourdieu’s conception of distinction is thus for me a sort of differance, “the difference written into the very structure of the social space,” that has real, objective, social effects.” This is either a fundamental failure to understand or a deliberate attempt disguise the weakness of the work beneath a cloak of what might pass for continental pretension. It never ceases to amaze me how many English speaking academics fail to grasp what the French have been on about since 1960 and I continue to watch in awe as this huge edifice of nonsense continues to grow. Anybody who has actually bothered to read Derrida and Bourdieu would know that they could never hold similar views because they don’t actually agree on baseline terms of engagement and to foist ‘differance’ on to Bourdieu is simply stupid.
I am grateful to Warley for introducing me to Anne Locke who was a close friend of John Knox and wrote the first sonnet sequence in English. Even here, Warley doesn’t give sufficient space to Locke’s background and fails to mention that her father managed Henry VII’s financial dealings on the Antwerp exchange. If we’re going to do this kind of analysis properly then surely we need to start with some idea of what exactly the economic order was about and why precisely so many of the rich merchants of the time were ardent Calvinists other than some bland platitudes about the end of feudalism and the growth of property for rent.
I’d also like to know more about why so many authorities do not attribute ‘A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner’ to Locke at all. The sequence is a fascinating verse commentary on Psalm 51 and there are many avenues that could have been explored in greater detail, in particular the issue of the nature of the ‘market’ for this kind of material in England.
There’s also the fairly obvious point that Derrida and Bourdieu don’t mix together, primarily because their interests are different but also because they are trying to do quite different things. In trying to mix ‘distinction’ with ‘difference’ Warley succeeds only in producing a confused and incoherent analysis. I have this lingering suspicion in the field of lit crit that the more convoluted the sentences become so they indicate an increasing attempt to hide the fact that not very much is being said.
There is the inevitable chapter on Philip Sidney before we move on to the Amoretti sequence. I need to say at this point that I’m not that keen on this sequence and consider it one of Spenser’s least successful efforts. At about Sonnet 20 it begins to feel like an exercise in sonnet writing, a rather mundane demonstration of technique rather than anything keenly felt. The warning beels began to sound as Warley’s chapter is called “Ireland and capitalism in Amoretti and Epithalamion”. I’ll skip gently over the fact that Epthalamion isn’t actually written in sonnet form and concentrate instead on the Irish element. There are many many interesting things to consider about the Amoretti but the Irish connection isn’t one of them, the section entitled ‘Lyric and narrative in the Amoretti’ begins with “Spenser’s ability to control his own Irish domain becomes thematized as content in Amoretti and Epithalamion in the speaker’s attempts to control his lady like a piece of Irish land.” The only sensible respose to this is the inward groan, I’ve complained in the past about the recent trend to see everything that Spenser wrote through an Irish lens and this is one of the most flagrant examples of selective history and criticism combined to make a factually incorrect thesis for the sake of current fashion.
I have to come back to the fact that there is an interesting book to be written on this subject but it needs to start from the nature and structure of the intended audience and not on some desperate ‘close’ reading of the material. The chapter on Drayton is better only because insufficient attention is paid to him and I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the ‘Afterword’ on Drayton, Wroth and Milton.
What we call the Tudor period as a whole is fascinating in the development of English verse and this does need to be seen in the light of religious and economic trends. Unfortunately Warley’s tome is another example of a wasted opportunity for the sake of critical trendiness.

The Faerie Queen Book V

Book V of Spenser’s great poem is gloriously complex and currently in severe danger of being over simplified by a whole range of critics. The main reason for this is that most of Book V is ‘about’ Ireland and in parts can be read as a thinly veiled argument for a much more brutal attack on the Irish people. This has been the cause (post Said) of much liberal hand wringing in the past two decades none of which seems to have taken too much notice of what Said actually wrote.
The problem is further compounded by Spenser’s ‘View’ which proposes a genocidal strategy as a means of dealing with the Irish “problem”.
For those who don’t know, The Faerie Queen is an exploration of six virtues achieved by means of allegory (described by Spenser as a “dark conceit”) and it is very, very long. Book V uses the figure of Artegall to explore the nature of justice. There are some critics who see Artegall as ‘standing for’ Arthur Grey as Spenser acted as his secretary when he was lord deputy of Ireland.
Grey was one of the most thuggish of Tudor thugs and his brief period (1580-82) in Ireland was marked by quite extraordinary violence including the creation of a famine in Munster in a failed attempt to starve out the leader of the current rebellion.
Before we go any further, I probably need to make it clear that I am not in any way sympathetic to the English presence in Ireland, in fact I am of the view that English efforts to deal with Ireland have been marked by ignorance, greed and indifference in equal measure. One of the saddest facts is that the sentiments expressed in ‘A View’ are shared by most of my compatriots. We do not understand the Irish obsession with religion and with the past and we view the annual disturbances around the Orangemen parades as utterly bizarre- both the protests and the need to parade. We also wish that the people of Ulster could be more like us- indifferent to religion and largely ignorant of the past. The English presence in Ireland has been characterised throughout by the doomed attempt to make the Irish more like us and Spenser is just one of many commentators to propound this view.
What isn’t of ten remarked upon is Spenser’s acute observation of the strength of the bardic tradition in Irish culture and his solution- that it needs to be destroyed by sending the children of the Irish elite to be educated in England. This I think indicates that Spenser was primarily a poet rather than a colonial civil servant.
Spenser introduces the Faerie Queen by means of a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh in which he explains his use of allegory in that the use of ‘delightful’ images is a more effective way of propounding moral worth. This method has attracted a wide range of critical attention and produced many different ways of reading the poem. I’m of the view that we should focus on where the allegories break down because I think these give us a fuller understanding of what might be going on.
Each of the six books is divided into 12 cantos and the ‘Grey’ analogy works to some extent for the first two cantos and then quite abruptly breaks down in canto III which describes a wedding feast and is further disrupted by the appearance of Radigund in Canto IIII.
Before we get to Radigund, it’s probably as well to say a few words about Britomart who is destined to marry Artegall. Britomart represents or stands for chastity which is the theme of Book III, she undertakes various quests and ordeals disguised as a man, she is also deeply troubled by her obsessive love for Artegall whom she has never met. In Book IV Artegall fights with Britomart and is victorious but falls in love with her when he removes his helmet.
It is also worth noting that Spenser is more successful in portraying female characters- both Britomart and Una are more realistic than their male counterparts who fall into a variety of contrived traps.
Radigund leads a bunch of violent Amazons, she defeats knights and then allows them to choose between death and a life spent dressed as a woman doing women’s work (spinning, carding etc). After an initial affray Radigund and Artegall have a more formal fight which Artegall wins but cannot finish his foe off when he lifts her helmet and sees her face. He therefore submits to the life of servitude outlined above.
I also ought to mention that Artegall is assisted by an iron man called Talus who tends to do all the really brutal stuff on behalf of his master. It is Talus who (instead of simply killing Radigund) alerts Britomart of Artegall’s dilemma. Things become a little more complex when both Radigund and her assistant fall in love with Artegall.
The Radigund episode takes up a lot of Book V and there isn’t a clear link in any of it to Ireland although there is much on emasculation, cross dressing and the general blurring of gender roles. It is also incredibly well written so that even now the reader is swept along by the story and is compelled to engage with the various layers of meaning. All of which is a very long winded way of saying that it would be good if critics could concentrate a bit more on the poetry and much less on the politics because it would then be obvious that the Artegall / Grey analogy doesn’t actually work and that Book V has much more interesting and challenging things to say other than the rather tired ‘might is always right’ quip.
Re-reading this in the Longman edition has also reminded me about the weakness of Bert Hamilton’s gloss- he seems to take delight in explaining things that should be left alone and ignoring the stuff that we (I) actually need help with. Or am I just being perverse and failing to recognise that North American readers might need this level of simplification? It is my view that the current notes actually detract from the brilliance of the original.
I’m also aware that this problem is much more acute with 17th century poets like Marvell who seems to have been almost completely hijacked by the political perspective.

J H Prynne on Love III by George Herbert

This tome containing an extensive commentary on the above is now available from Barque Press and costs 10 quid plus 2 quid for delivery. it needs to be read by everyone who cares about poetry and what poetry can do. I’ve now completed my first reading and there are a few things that I need to get off my chest.
The first of these is that the early part of the 17th century was a very odd place to be. I have a view that the past is always quite odd but from 1590 until about 1640 has always struck me as being especially different and (because of this) very difficult for us to make sense of this.
The second point is that George Herbert deserves much more attention. This isn’t to say that he should be elevated to the status of Donne in the canon but that we should spend a bit more time thinking about his place and role in the wider cultural scheme of things.
The third point is that Prynne writes with a great deal of perception about ‘Love III’ and has clearly immersed himself in some of the theological debates of the time. For those of us who are keen on religious poetry and the place where verse and faith meet, this is delightful because we have somebody new to argue with.
The fourth point is that ‘Love III’ is a seriously good poem with a couple of lines that achieve greatness for reasons that I will set out below.
The fifth point is only of interest to Spenserians and relates to Prynne’s use of Canto X in Book One of the Faerie Queen to provide some context to ‘Love III’ which actually raises a number of puzzles.
Finally, as with ‘Field Notes’, this commentary provides further insights into the way that Prynne thinks about poetry and language. This is not to say that they provide the ‘key’ to his poetic project but they do put some more flesh on the bone.
With regard to the oddness of the past, this isn’t the extremist position that we can’t say anything about the past but it is to point out that 400 years is a very long time and things might appear similar or recognisable but closer inspection reveals that they weren’t. The 17th century often descends into caricature with tired old debates about the ideological positions taken by various groups occupying much futile effort over the last thirty five years. This kind of thinking leads to generalised conclusions about certain periods that isn’t (in the Rortian sense) at all helpful. The historical past is always lumpy and consistently refuses to place itself in the boxes that we prepare for it. Prynne spends a lot of time discussing the Arminian elements of ‘Love III’ and the reader is left to assume that by the end of the 1620s there was an established Arminian faction within the Church of England whereas there were probably many variations around both the issues of free will and predestination and that this mixed oddly with bits of Catholic theology and hardline Calvinism (which wasn’t particularly coherent either). I think I would have liked more detail on the wider social and political context, some indication of what it ‘meant’ for Herbert to become a country priest may have been helpful as a way of marking him out from others of a similar status. Or simply some acknowledgement that this particular part of our history is fairly complex and consequently difficult to write about.
With regard to Herbert’s status as a kind of lesser Metaphysical, this does need to change. He has attracted detailed criticism from Stanley Fish for catechising but Prynne makes a very strong case for the strength of this kind of religious verse, whether it catechises or not. There’s also a reasonably direct line that goes from Spenser to Herbert and then on to Henry Vaughan and this needs to be given more prominence because it can be argued that this ‘thread’ produced some of the century’s strongest work.
Unlike ‘The Solitary Reaper’, I do actually care about this stuff and have thoroughly enjoyed arguing with what Prynne has to say. It isn’t that there’s anything inherently wrong with his reading but there are a number of omissions that detract from getting more from the poem. When discussing the Arminian tendency, Prynne goes into great detail about free will and about the mutual nature of ‘service’ but doesn’t give any attention to the Arminian view that although we are all free to choose, God knows what those choices will be. If Prynne is correct and the poem is fundamentally Arminian then this adds a more nuanced aspect to the encounter described in the poem.
He does mention the Cambridge School on one occasion but doesn’t draw attention to what some of us would see as a neo-platonic tinge occurring in the first line “yet my soul drew back,” even though other critics have commented on a neo-platonic theme in Herbert’s work. It would seem that 92 pages of densely packed prose is enough for an eighteen line poem but this is not the case, there is a lot more that could have been said.
Needless to say, most of the margins are now filled with exclamation marks and approving comments and there are only one or two places where I think Prynne is trying too hard. There’s also a final point about contradiction that doesn’t need to be made but on the whole this is a remarkably sensitive reading that should do a lot to promote Herbert’s reputation.
I now have to draw attention to the really great line of this poem. Many great poems have some very, very good lines but, in my view, truly great lines are comparatively rare. The line is question is the poet’s initial response to Christ/God and it is “A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:” which I find to be utterly and staggeringly brilliant in that it manages to convey a whole range of complicated responses to a direct question from God.
We now come to Canto X of Book 1 of The Faerie Queen which Prynne uses to show that views about free will pre-dated what Arminius had to say by at least a couple of decades. This would be valid were it not for the fact that Canto X is theological car crash mangling together threads from both sides of the Reformation and shouldn’t really be trusted to depict any kind of belief system in the ‘real’ world.
For those of us who read Prynne in the hope that this may help with a more informed reading of his poetry there is this: “The very format of utterance grammar, with the subject-position in English syntax coming before and governing all by way of a sequent predicate, performs and expresses this vaunted, front- loaded selfhood.” So, the task for attentive readers would appear to be to identify the ways in which the post-Brass poetry sets out to disrupt the subject/predicate sequence…