2. LITERATURA INGLESA RENACENTISTA

2. LITERATURA INGLESA RENACENTISTA

El día 2 trataremos sobre Donne, Marvell y la literatura de mediados del siglo XVII, terminando el tema 2. Y pasamos la semana siguiente al tema 3 (literatura de la Restauración y Siglo XVIII) empezando por JOHN MILTON.

En la Sección B, seguimos con el Tema 7, con Philip Larkin y Harold Pinter: Literatura inglesa y norteamericana 1900-1960.

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Algunos prosistas ingleses de la primera mitad del siglo XVII:

Sir Francis Bacon  (1561-1626)

_____. Essays.  1597, 1612, 1625.   Observaciones sobre prudencia, gobierno, sabiduría, y ética, por parte de un político importante.
_____.  The Advancement of Learning. 1605.  Una panorámica del conocimiento de su época y de sus progresos.
_____.  Novum Organum.  1620.  Una nueva teoría de la ciencia experimental, en oposición a Aristóteles.
_____. The New Atlantis. 1627. Una visión utópica del futuro de la ciencia.

 

Robert Burton    (1577-1640)
_____. The Anatomy of Melancholy. 1621-1638. (An encyclopedic baroque treatise on depression, madness, and love melancholy).

 
 

 
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
_____. De Cive. 1642. English trans 1651.
_____. Human Nature: or The Fundamental Elements of Policy. 1650.
_____. De Corpore Politico: or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick. 1650.
_____. Leviathan: Or the Matter, Form, and Power of A Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. Political philosophy. 1651. (Una de las principales obras de teoría política de todos los tiempos, y una justificación del poder absoluto del Estado).
_____. The Elements of Philosophy. 1655.
_____. Opera philosophica quae Latine scripsit.  1668.
_____. Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England. 1679, rev. ed. 1681.
_____, trans. The Iliads and Odysses of Homer. 1675.

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  Más sobre el gran filósofo Thomas Hobbes (NIVEL AVANZADO)

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Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
_____.  Religio Medici.   1643. Una defensa de la fe y de la moderación en religión, desde el punto de vista anglicano.
_____. Vulgar Errors (Pseudodoxia Epidemica). 1646. Una colección de curiosidades históricas y científicas, y refutación de errores populares al respecto.
_____.  Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial... together with The Garden of Cyrus.  1658. Una meditación sobre la mortalidad y las sepulturas, y otra sobre la estructura numérica del universo.

Repaso histórico:
Algunos acontecimientos importantes del siglo XVII inglés:

Reinado de Jacobo I ("The Jacobean age") 1603-1625. Unión de las coronas inglesa y escocesa (pero no de los reinos). Colonias anglicanas en Virginia.
The Gunpowder Plot (1605) - "Guy Fawkes Day," the 5th of November. Odio público a los católicos.

Reinado de su hijo Charles I ("The Caroline age"), 1625-1649. Supremacía anglicana, y nuevas colonias (puritanas) en Nueva Inglaterra.

Guerras civiles y primera revolución: 1640-48 - "Long Parliament" y Commonwealth. Supresión de la Iglesia anglicana (y de los teatros y fiestas populares).

Ejecución de Charles I (1649). Oliver Cromwell, "Lord Protector" (1653-58)  (Sobre estos acontecimientos puede verse la película MATAR A UN REY (To Kill a King)).

Restauración de Charles II (1660-85), del anglicanismo y de los teatros y fiestas populares.

James II (Jacobo II, hermano de Charles II) reina 1685-88 - reacción contra el rey católico.

Segunda revolución inglesa (1688) - Reinado de William of Orange y Mary II (hija de James II). Monarquía parlamentaria.

Unión de los reinos de Inglaterra y Escocia: The United Kingdom of Great Britain (bajo Queen Anne, hija de James II, en 1707).

 

 

 
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Finales de octubre-principios de noviembre. Dejamos atrás a Shakespeare,  y nuestros siguientes autores de las lecturas serán por este orden Ben Jonson, John Donne, y Andrew Marvell, terminando así el tema 2. Traed sus lecturas, es importante tener los textos a mano en clase para hacer notas, etc. Mirad que leer literatura clásica es una manera intensiva de practicar y aprender inglés, para mejorar el nivel.

A continuación empezaremos el tema 3, "Literatura inglesa 1660-1800" con otro de los principales clásicos ingleses, John Milton.

 

 

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ANDREW MARVELL         (1621-1678)
   
English metaphysical poet and satirist, born in Yorkshire, lived in Kingston-upon-Hull, studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, BA 1639; father died while he was a student; patronized by wealthy friends, 1640s travels widely in Europe, visits Constantinople; 1651-2 tutor for Sir Thomas Fairfax's family at Nunappleton, Yorkshire; later tutor employed by Oliver Cromwell near Eton; then lived in London, 1657 assistant to Milton as Latin Secretary; 1660, 1661 MP for Hull, 1662-5 diplomatic secretary in Holland and Russia; Opposition MP for Hull, salaried by constituents; friend of Prince Rupert, anti-Government satirist under the Restoration, anti-Anglican polemicist, refused employment and bribes from the King, died of a 'tertian ague', some say poisoned; buried at St. Giles; poems published posthumously by his housekeeper or alleged wife.

_____. "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland." Written 1650.
_____. "Upon Appleton House." Poem. 1651, pub. 1678.
_____. "Bermudas." Poem.  c. 1650.
_____. "The Garden." Poem. c. 1650. Luminarium:
    http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/garden.htm
_____. "The Mower against Gardens." Poem. c. 1650.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/mowagainst.htm
_____. "To His Coy Mistress."    c. 1650. http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Marvell/to_his_coy_mistress.htm
_____. (Anon.). An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England....  Prose satire. "Amsterdam", 1678. (Folio).
_____. Miscellaneous Poems.  1681.

Sobre Andrew Marvell, unos apuntes complementarios.


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JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)
English metaphysical poet, b. London, Catholic gentry stock; st. Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln's Inn; travelled Spain and Italy; secretary to Lord Chancellor and MP; secretly married patron's niece Anne More, dismissed in disgrace; many children, impoverished gentry, l. Surrey, ordained Anglican Priest; favour at King James's Court, Dean of St. Paul's, theatrical preacher, notorious weaver of paradoxes and alambicated wit.

_____. "Songs and Sonets" —in Poems.
_____. "Elegies"—in Poems.
_____. "Satires." —in Poems.
_____. Biathanatos. Discourse on suicide. Written 1608, posth. pub.
_____. Pseudo-Martyr. Discourse against Catholics. 1610.
_____. Ignatius His Conclave. Prose satire. 1610-11.
 _____. The First Anniversary. Elegy. 1611.
_____. "Divine Poems." —in  Poems.
_____. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. 1624.
_____. Poems.  1633. 2nd ed. 1635.
_____. Essays in Divinity. 1651.


Apuntes sobre Donne:

John Donne.  In Luminarium:
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/index.html


Some notes on John Donne (from The Penguin Short History of English Literature).

-A note on the metaphysical poets and the metaphysical conceit.
 
- Un famoso pasaje de las Devotions upon Emergent Occasions de Donne—no es propiamente un poema, pero también lo es: No Man is an Island.

Otro famoso poema de Donne: "The Canonization": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173353

- John Donne, Sonnet XIX - O to vex me...
 
- Sobre "The Good-Morrow" está esta explicación que hice yo hace tiempo, o esta otra en vídeo.
 

 John Donne: NIVEL AVANZADO

 
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NIVEL AVANZADO:  Dos poemas de otros "poetas metafísicos" anglicanos:

- George Herbert: "Prayer, 1".

- Henry Vaughan: "The Retreat."

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BEN JONSON     (1572-1637)

English dramatist and poet, born in Westminster, orphaned son of a Protestant minister, studied at Westminster School, left Cambridge without a degree, apprenticed as bricklayer to his stepfather; volonteer in Flanders army 1592, killed enemy in single combat, actor in London c. 1594, imprisoned for manslaughter, converted to Catholicism for some time, married 1594, 2 children died; returned to Anglicanism 1606; pensioned by the King 1616; honorary MA Oxford 1619; poet for aristocratic patrons, apologist of Stuart royalty; neoclassical theorist and literary authority, overweight and hard drinker; model for Cavalier poets and Restoration dramatists.


_____.  Every Man in his Humour. Comedy. 1596, 1598. (Prologue)
_____. Cynthia's Revels. Drama.  1600.
_____. Every Man Out of His Humour. Comedy. 1600.
_____. The Poetaster. Comedy. Acted at Blackfriars, 1601.
_____. Sejanus His Fall. Tragedy. 1603.
_____. The Masque of Blackness. Acted 1605.
_____. Volpone. Comedy. 1606.
_____. Epicoene: Or, The Silent Woman. Comedy. 1609-10.
_____. The Masque of Queens. 1609.
_____. The Alchemist. Comedy. c. 1610.
_____. Catiline His Conspiracy. Tragedy. Pub. 1611.
_____. Love Restored. Masque. 1612.
_____. Bartholomew Fair. Comedy. 1614.
_____. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson.  1616.
_____. "To the Memory of my Beloved, Master William Shakespeare, and What He Has Left Us." 1623. 
_____. The Staple of Newes. Comedy. 1626.
_____. Works. 2nd ed. 1640. (Including: Timber: Or, Discoveries, criticism).
 

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 Some notes on Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson: NIVEL AVANZADO

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El lunes 2 seguiremos con Ben Jonson, y pasamos rápidamente a Donne y Marvell, para terminar la unidad 2.

El 25 y 26 de octubre seguimos centrados en Shakespeare, y pasamos a continuación a Ben Jonson.

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 NIVEL AVANZADO: Hamlet.

 

 

Richard II: The Deposition Scene (IV.1)

As You Like It: All the World's a Stage

Macbeth: The Sleepwalking Scene (V.1)

SHAKESPEARE -  MÁS MATERIALES A NIVEL AVANZADO

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Esta semana vemos algo de Shakespeare. Leed algo por anticipado— o id recuperando algo de lecturas pasadas si preferís. Voy añadiendo materiales relativos a los temas ya vistos en clase, en cada una de las unidades.

No olvidéis traer los textos a clase. Procuraremos leer todos los días un ratito, y traducir y comentar al paso. Así pues, esta semana Shakespeare primero, y después pasamos a Jonson, Donne y Marvell, por ese orden.


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Una introducción a Shakespeare en su contexto histórico (nivel algo avanzado).

En Project Gutenberg tenéis los textos completos de todas las obras de Shakespeare. Por ejemplo:

The Tragedy of King Richard II

(the deposition scene: 4.1)

 

Hay muchas películas sobre obras de Shakespeare. Sobre el mismo Shakespeare, una película reciente recomendable es All Is True (El último acto), de Kenneth Branagh. Aquí una canción de Shakespeare de esta película: "Fear No More".

 

Seguimos mientras añadiendo autores del siglo XX en la SECCIÓN B

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WORKS BY SHAKESPEARE


William Shakespeare (1564-1616), born and dead in Stratford-upon-Avon, leading dramatist with the King's Men at the Globe Theatre, London; poet and actor; collaborated with Ben Jonson, Marston, and Fletcher; major writer of history plays, comedies, tragicomedies, tragedies and dramatic romances. Total dramatist, both realistic, poetic and metadramatic; keen sense of the stage and of social dramatism; artificer of creative language, of complex and diverse characters, and of fast-moving plots usually based on previous dramas or stories.



EARLY WORKS (1589-93):

Titus Andronicus
The Comedy of Errors
Henry VI (3 parts)
Richard III

and later (1593-97)

The Taming of the Shrew
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love's Labour's Lost
Romeo and Juliet
King John
Richard II
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Merchant of Venice

Venus and Adonis (1593)
The Rape of Lucrece (1594)


MIDDLE WORKS (1598-1604)

Henry IV (2 parts)
Henry V
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
Julius Caesar
As You Like It
Hamlet
Twelfth Night
Troilus and Cressida
All's Well that Ends Well
Measure for Measure


LATER TRAGEDIES (1605-8):

Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Timon of Athens


ROMANCES AND LAST WORKS

The Sonnets (1609)

Pericles
Cymbeline
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest

Henry VIII
The Two Noble Kinsmen


Collected plays in the "First Folio", a.k.a.
Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, 1623.

UNA COMEDIA FESTIVA DE SHAKESPEARE (EN ESPAÑOL). NOCHE DE REYES, por Morfeo Teatro, grupo de teatro de nuestra Facultad.

(Nuestra selección, min. 25)

An introductory lesson on Shakespeare. There are a few mistakes, but anyway it's lively and worth hearing.




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Sección B: Recordatorio: Id estudiando a la par los autores del  siglo XX. Ahora vamos por la Unidad 6.
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SECCIÓN A:

Una introducción sencillita a Shakespeare, en español:  "La Biblioteca: William Shakespeare": https://soundcloud.com/cesarvidal/la-biblioteca-050516

- Y otra en inglés: https://youtu.be/QPMbnodlFgM

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NIVEL AVANZADO:

Shakespeare: Nivel avanzado

 

Una lección sobre King Lear, una de sus grandes tragedias.

En español, una representación de Hamlet (Estudio 1).

 
Entrar en Shakespeare es no salir. Quien quiera ampliar conocimientos sobre él (y es, dicho mal y pronto, el autor más importante que haya escrito jamás en cualquier literatura) tiene millones de páginas en Internet. Ask Google. 


Y unas notas sobre dos contemporáneos que precedieron a Shakespeare: Kyd y Marlowe.
 
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Con los Pilares acabamos la primera fase del curso "antes de Shakespeare". Momento de reflexión y evaluación sobre la marcha del curso...

-  ¿Seguís bien las clases? Si hay problemas de comprensión, etc.—se admiten más preguntas en clase, y consulta de dudas en tutorías. Quienes no asistan, espero que lleven una marcha de estudio constante sin embargo, porque no es en absoluto recomendable el intentar prepararse esta asignatura en unas pocas semanas antes del examen.

- ¿Tenéis material adecuado? Habéis comprado, en efecto, un buen diccionario, un buen manual o dos, de literatura inglesa y norteamericana?

- ¿Consultáis con regularidad esta web y los materiales adicionales? ¿Os acordáis de traer a clase las lecturas al día? ¿Vais siguiendo por vuestra cuenta la sección B del programa (siglo XX), a la par que la sección A?

Si no es el caso, ahora estáis a tiempo de coger la marcha, que aún estamos iniciando el curso. Pero si no lo habéis hecho hasta ahora, pensad que requiere quizá un cambio de hábitos y más horario semanal dedicado al estudio de esta asignatura.

Id decidiendo ya si queréis hacer trabajos de curso o solamente examen final, y organizad el trabajo de modo acorde. Si alguien quiere hacer los trabajos en forma de presentación en clase, que me aviste para fijar fecha.

- Para la preparación de la materia del examen: tened en cuenta que una pregunta del tema será el nombre de uno de los autores de la sección A del programa, para hacer una redacción en inglés sobre él. Otro tema de redacción (a elegir entre el primero y éste) será más amplio, sobre un género y época, tipo "La poesía en el Renacimiento"—pero naturalmente conviene hablar en ella de los autores y lecturas que conozcáis relacionados con esa cuestión, y utilizar tanto lo que oigáis en clase o preparéis con manuales, como vuestra propia experiencia de lectura. El comentario / traducción (parte principal del examen) puede ser de cualquier texto del programa, pero si pongo un texto de la sección B será a elegir con otro de la sección A.

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 El 9 de octubre leeremos algo de Spenser (The Faerie Queene), y pasamos a Shakespeare.

 

 

English drama before Shakespeare:

 

- Medieval Mysteries and Moralities 

- Humanist drama:

John Heywood,  The Play of the Weather. 1533.

Nicholas Udall, Ralph Roister Doister. c. 1552.

Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Gorboduc. 1562.

- The University Wits:

John Lyly, Sapho and Phao. 1584.
_____. Endimion. 1591. 

- Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. c. 1589. 

- Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy. 1580s.

- Christopher Marlowe,
_____. Tamburlaine the Great.  c. 1586.
_____. The Jew of Malta.  c. 1592.
_____. Edward II.  1593.
_____. Doctor Faustus.  c. 1592-93.

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 Después de los Pilares, pasamos a la unidad 2 - Renaissance literature. Necesitaremos los textos de Sidney, Spenser y Shakespeare (de éste hay varios).

El lunes hablamos sobre todo de un par de poetas renacentistas, Sidney y Spenser. Sobre ambos hay material en Luminarium, un interesante sitio web sobre literatura inglesa clásica que tenéis recomendado en el programa.

"Sir Philip Sidney." At Luminarium.org
    http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/sidney.htm




Luego pasaremos a Shakespeare, de quien hay una selección más larga de fragmentos. Id leyendo lo que podáis, y traed a clase los textos. También se pueden consultar problemas de comprensión con las lecturas en tutorías, tomando nota de vuestras dudas.

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SIR PHILIP SIDNEY         (1554-1586)

English renaissance poet, critic and man of letters, aristocratic courtier under Elizabeth, and Protestant leader; d. in combat at Zutphen, Low Countries.

_____.  Arcadia. Prose romance. 1580s, pub. 1590.
_____. Astrophil and Stella. Sonnet sequence. c. 1582, pub. 1591, 1598. (Sonnet 1 - Sonnet 45)
_____. An Apologie for Poetry or The Defence of Poetry. Discourse. Written c. 1580, pub. 1595.

- A video lecture on Sidney - Astrophil and Stella

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NIVEL AVANZADO:

-  The English humanists 

- A video documentary on Sir Philip Sidney.

-  The Elizabethan Sonnet

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EDMUND SPENSER         (1552-1599)

English poet, b. London middle classes, st. Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, MA 1576; colonist in Ireland, advocates famine and genocide, victim of Irish rebellion, Elizabethan courtier, quasi-Poet laureate.

_____. "Visions" and sonnets, trans. from Petrarch and du Bellay.
_____. The Shepheards Calendar. 1579.
_____. "Astrophel." Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney.
_____. Complaints. 1591.
_____. Colin Clouts come Home again. Pastoral. 1595.
_____. Amoretti. Sonnet sequence. c. 1595.
_____. Four Hymns on Love and Beauty. 1596.
_____. Epithalamion. Poem. 1595
_____. Prothalamion. Poem. 1596.
_____. The Faerie Queene. Unfinished epic poem. Books 1-3, 1590. Then 1596, 1609.
_____. A View of the Present State of Ireland. 1596, pub. 1603.

Sonnet 54 from Amoretti.

Read also Sonnet 75

Spenserian stanza: ababbcbcc (with a final Alexandrine)

Una pequeña introducción a Spenser, del Oxford Companion to English Literature.


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NIVEL AVANZADO

The Faerie Queene (Oxford Companion)

Andrew Hadfield on Edmund Spenser (video)

A lecture on Spenser and The Faerie Queene (Adam Crowley)


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16th-century England: The historical and literary context

Tudor dynasty:
Henry VII r. 1485-
Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547; Reformation, 1529-39),
    - Edward VI (1547-53),
    - Mary Tudor (1553-58),
    - Elizabeth (r. 1558-1603) - The Armada, 1588

Religious writings:

- The Book of Common Prayer (1549-)

Biblical translations:
- William Tyndale; Miles Coverdale; 

- The Bishops' Bible.
- (Later: King James Bible or "Authorized Version" in 1611)

Scottish reformers:
John Knox, Sir David Lindsay, George Buchanan. 

 

Petrarchan poets (Tottel's Miscellany, 1557):

- Sir Thomas Wyatt
- Earl of Surrey     


Rhyme scheme of the Elizabethan sonnet: 
abab cdcd efef gg


Prose writers:

Sir Thomas More, Utopia. 1516 (English, 1551).
 

Sir Thomas Elyot, The Governour. 1531.
 

Sir John Cheke, The Hurt of Sedition. 1549.
 

Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique. 1553.
 

John Foxe, Book of Martyrs (Actes and Monuments). 1563.
 

Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster. 1570.
 

Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 1577.
 

John Lyly. Euphues. Romance. 1578.
 

William Camden, Britannia. Geography. 1586.
 

Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. 1589.
 

Sir Walter Ralegh, The Discovery of Guiana. 1596.

 

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Recordad que seguimos añadiendo nuevos autores en la Sección B (tema 6).

 

 

Tema 1: Literatura inglesa medieval

Jonson in Coote

On Ben Jonson. From The Penguin Short History of English Literature, by Stephen Coote (1993).

 ("Shakespeare and the Drama: 1500-1642", 12):

...

Shakespeare's work is never (...) openly autobiographical. Indeed, on the level of personality, England's greatest poet remains her most enigmatic. In studying the works we come no nearer to the man. Rather, Shakespeare is so wholly absorbed in his art—in the imaginative exploration of mankind through the dramatist's resources of language, action, and role-play—that what we do come to appreciate is the inexhaustible richness of human invention itself. In the noble words of Ben Jonson: 'He was not of an age, but for all time'.

 

12

The tribute paid to Shakespeare by Jonson (1572-1637) was the more generous for the rivalry he felt towards the greater man, but if Jonson awarded Shakespeare the honours of posterity, he gained for himself some of those offered by his age. He was effectively Poet Laureate (pensioned, but not titled) and, though his later years were spent in poverty, the nobility of England attended his funeral in recognition of his genius. 

Jonson—convivial, critical, the pundit of his age—remains a fine writer of lyric, a great satirist and a major figure in that classical and humanist tradition of literature which stretches from Sidney, through Milton and Dryden, to the other Johnson and Gray. That this tradition of humane, decorous, yet profoundly experienced poetry was also the standard by which to satirize his times is given dramatic form in Jonson's Poetaster (1601) where the serene values of Virgil and Horace are juxtaposed to seventeenth-century pretenders to art. 

Jonson's two surviving tragedies derive from Roman history. The first is by far the greater, though neither was a popular success. Sejanus (1603) presents the emperor Tiberius's bestial reign of terror in a Rome where, amid parasites and fearful hypocrites—people swollen to distortion with their desire for power—liberty, language and human worth are crushed in the self-destructive intricacy of machination. In Catiline (1611), Jonson shows the working of conspiracy with an even darker and self-conscious scholarship, but the play cannot be counted a dramatic success, and it is in his comedies of city life that we find Jonson's most telling portrayal of human folly. These works were profoundly influenced by classical theory. They also relate to a rich and varied native tradition which they effortlessly transcend. To this last we should briefly turn. 

The rapid expansion of population and mercantile activity in London was a leading phenomenon of the age, and theatres like the Fortune produced plays designed to please the merchant classes. The immensely prolific Thomas Heywood (?1575-c. 1641), for example, wrote The Four Prentices of London (c. 1592-1600) in which the heroes are noble yet 'of city trades they have no scorn'. In the second part of If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody (1605), praise of the great merchant Sir Thomas Gresham combines with intense patriotism. Domestic virtue and moral edification are again central to Old Fortunatus (1599) by Thomas Dekker (?1572-1632) while in the same year Dekker produced The Shoemaker's Holiday in which imaginative comic prose, romance and touching marital fidelity are allied to the eternally comfortable story of an apprentice's rise to the position of Lord Major.  

Dekker's seemingly unlikely collaboration with the tragedian Webster in Westward Ho! (1604) and Northward Ho! (1605) led him beyond the praise of 'a fine life, a velvet life, a careful life'. Others were actively to criticize citizen tastes in drama however, and the most lasting exposure of the works produced for this market is The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) by Francis Beaumont (1584-1616). This piece is both a kind-hearted burlesque and a clever exercise on the idea of the play within the play. Contrasts between chivalry, modern aristocratic values and merchant ideals here centre around the sympathetic figure of Rafe, the apprentice and comic knight errant.

A more bitterly satirical humour is to be found in the comedies of George Chapman (c. 1560-1634) and John Marston (1576-1634). Cynicism is a marked tone in Chapman's work in the form, while Marston's comedies are the work of a verse satirist and reveal the aggressive and twisted syntax characteristic of that genre. Jonson himself came into collision with Marston and Dekker in the so-called 'war of the theatres'. He had already completed Nashe's The Isle of Dogs (1597) and been imprisoned for sedition as a result. Shortly after finishing the first version of Every Man in His Humour (1598, revised by 1616) he duelled with a fellow actor, killed him, and only escaped the gallows through a legal technicality. In Every Man Out of His Humour (1599)—a drama of plays within plays which discusses the problems of play writing and then satirizes the nature of satire—Jonson lightly critized Marlowe in the figure of Clove. Marston himself had recently essayed an unfortunate eulogy of Jonson in his revision of the anti-theatrical diatribe Histriomastix (c. 1599), a portrait which is in fact nearer to parody.

Marston retaliated to the figure of Clove with an open caricature of Jonson in Jack Drum's Entertainment (c. 1600). He received his rebuff in Cynthia's Revels (1600), a boys' company play satirizing the follies of the court. The work is reminiscent of Lyly, and contains the exquisite lyric 'Queen and huntress, chaste and fair.' Jonson's Poetaster, written for Paul's Boys, presents caricatures of Marston and Dekker among the pretenders to art in Augustan Rome and triumphed completely over Marston's What You Will (c. 1601). Dekker was now recruited on Marston's side with his Satiromastix (1601), but Jonson himself tried to rise above the fray with Sejanus. Then—such is the abiding nature of the literary world—he collaborated with Marston and Chapman in Eastward Ho (1605), voluntarily joining his co-authors in prison when the play was considered seditious. However, in the following year, the King's Men gave a triumphantly successful performance of Jonson's Volpone, one of the great comic masterpieces of the English stage. 

All Jonson's immense energies are focused in Volpone where he deals with one of his most characteristic themes: the corruption wrought by greed on those obsessive and fantastic creatures who dupe each onther on the lunatic finges of an enterprise culture. 'This', Jonson wrote, 'is the money-get mechanic age', and Volpone's cunning scheme for getting money makes gold itself the object of a parody religion.

As a rich man without heirs, Volpone adds to his wealth through the brives offered the apparently dying man by those hoping for an advantageous mention in his will. To secure this, people will disinherit their children, pervert the law and prostitute their wives. Volpone's bedroom becomes the centre of inverted human values where money is gained without real work, innocence is all but corrupted by glittering lust, and men are reduced to the foxes, flies, vultures, ravens and crows which give them their names.

To draw his heroic caricature of materialism, Jonson turned to a wide range of sources, his classical training especially. There was nothing frigid or pedantic about this. He confined his play largely within the unities of time (twenty-four hours), place (Venice) and action (the refusal to admit material distracting from the main narrative), not because Renaissance scholars loved Aristotle had promulgated such rules as laws. He did it because these devices help concentrate the dramatic excitement. Again, Jonson did not reduce his characters to types because Terence and Plautus had done so, but because an overmastering obsession or 'humour' caricatures itself, as the anonymous writers of medieval Morality plays had been aware. If older forms helped give a framework, the foundation of Volpone is passionate observation.

As a result, Volpone himself throbs with something of his creator's vitality. He relishes his own play-acting, his frequent disguises and performances which eventually lead to his undoing and that of his parasite Mosca. As a result, the effect of the play is far from simple. The energy of corruption is infectious, and if we are pleased that the villain is exposed by means of his own designs, then the worthlessness of the Venetian authorities who clap him in irons gives justice itself as ironic final twist.

Epicœne, or The Silent Woman (1609) is again concerned with man as a social (or antisocial) animal. Morose tries to shelter himself from the world's din, declaring 'All discourses, but mine own, afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent and irksome.' The world appears to justify his misanthropy. Morose tries to disinherit his nephew by marrying an apparently silent bride. She turns out, however, to be first a scold and then a boy in disguise. The comedy ends in separation rather than marriage, while its sexual ambiguities may be a taunt at the Puritans' objection to the portrayal of female roles in the theatre by boys. 

The Alchemist (1610) again concerns itself with distorting dreams of gold. It is constructed in brilliant conformity to the unities and, in its earthy and imaginative richness of contemporary dialogue and folly, embodies Jonson's ideal of a comedy which employs

     deeds, and language, such as men do use,

And persons, such as Comedy would choose

When she would show an image of the times,

And sport with human follies, not with crimes.

The particular follyhere is the lure of easy money: Sir Epicure Mammon's dream that through the philosopher's stone he can 'turn the age to gold'. Interestingly, it is not alchemy itself that is satirized but the attitude which sees science (which alchemy was still widely held to be) as a fulfilment of fantasy. Face, Subtle and his consort Doll Common—rogues who have employed Lovewit's house for their purpose—are adepts in manipulating vain desires in a variety of characters: Epicure Mammon himself, Abel Drugger the tobacconist, Kastril the roistering boy and the comic puritans Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome. The real transformations in The Alchemist are thus not of base metal into gold but of human folly into absurdity. When the off-stage laboratory finally blows up, fantasy explodes with it. The return of Lovewit brilliantly resolves the action but hardly restores official law and order.

A Puritan is again humiliated in Jonson' prose comedy Bartholomew Fair (1614). Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, a hypocritical creature of appetite, ends up in the stocks. The dramatic re-creation of a real fair allowed Jonson to celebrate de all-licensed, topsy-turvy world of mardi gras with great diversity of action and a matching richness of dialogue. The simple-minded Cokes is robbed, while Justice Adam Overdo, out to spy on 'enormities', also winds up in the stocks. Nonetheless, when he ends the play by inviting all to dine with him, the foolish Cokes insists they be accompanied by the puppet show which has already offered one of the best episodes in the play. The fari itself—its vitality memorably embodied in Ursula, the Pig-woman—is Jonson's image of raucuous humanity, variously hypocritical, simple, vengeful and forgiving.

The plays for the commercial theatre Jonson wrote in the later stages of his career — The Devil Is an Ass (1616), The Staple of News (1626), The New Inn (1629) and The Magnetic Lady (1632) — were harshly if not wholly inaccurately described by Dryden as his 'dotages.' A fascinating and very different aspect of Jonson's dramatic art however is revealed in the series of masques he wrote as Twelfth Night entertainments for the court of James I (1605-25). Here we see an élite drama dealing explicitly with contemporary theories of political power.

Jonson had already designed the lavish and arcane symbolism of the Scottish king's triumphal entry to his new capital, and the masques extend his exploration of James's notion of the divine right of kings: the belief that James was accountable to God alone, that his position partook of divinity and that he was endowed with supernatural wisdom. In The Golden Age Restor'd (1615), we see how classical larning, music, poetry, dance and the lavish sets of Inigo Jones (1573-1652) present James as Jove, the benevolent guide of the nation's fate. Whn the Iron Age is routed in a conventional anti-masque, Astraea or Justice heralds the return of the Golden Age. Through the Neoplatonic philosophy that underpins the Jonsonian masque, the dancing courtiers come to symbolize the completeness, harmony and peace attained by the dramatic enactment of the divine king's decrees.

The Jonsonian masque was an élite celebration of a political and cultural ideal. For many, however, these sumptuous illusions disguised a more troubled reality. Though the court encouraged the highest cultural sophistication, its moral tone was low and corruption and factionalism were rife. James's assertion of divine right gave a dangerous edge to the royal prerogative, while his reckless expenditure led to increading debt in a period of economic uncertainty and bad harvests. Further, while the king (an enthusiastic amateur theologian) failed to satisfy moderate Puritan demands for church reform, his rash creation of new titles (partly as an attempt to raise money) exacerbated a deep sense of status insecurity in a society where ancient notions of hierarchy were being eroded by the power of money and capital. This uncertainty is reflected in the work of a number of Jacobean comic writers.

The 'city' comedies of Thomas Middleton (?1580-1627), for example, combine the idiom of London life and its pace with deft plotting and realistic satire. Middleton is consistently ironic about the rabidly acquisitive London of his time. Merchants, usurers, idle aristocrats and an extravagant gentry are all exposed in a world where it is increasingly the cleverest rather than the most virtuous who succeed. In A Trick to Catch the Old One (1605), surface cleverness works alongside deeper moral concerns with something of the force of the exempla in contemporary Puritan sermons. A Mad World, my Masters (1605) represents the marriage of a whore to a dupe, while in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611) sex is traded for money as the appetites and restless folly of city life controls the gulls and cheats who populate it. Philip Massinger (1583-1640) borrowed the plot of A Trick to Catch the Old One in A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1621), turning it to different and Jonsonian purposes in the humiliation of the great comic figure of Sir Giles Overreach, the loan shark. Overreach is the focus of Massinger's violent and deeply conservative satire of a corrupt Jacobean world, a world where titles are sold to the nouveaux riches and, as traditional social ties collapse, so madness looms.

....

 

("From Donne to Dryden", 2):

The courtiers addressed by Donne in many of his sermons were also the recipients of verses by Ben Jonson (1572-1637), and it is a measure of Jonson's stature that, in addition to being one of the leading playwrights of the age, he was also its most influential court poet.

Drawing extensively on the classics and Renaissance theorists, Jonson's non-dramatic poetry elaborates the ideals and criticizes the shortcomings of those involved in his vision of a cultured, socially responsible life of 'manners, arms and arts'. In these works, Jonson thus aspired to a seventeenth-century version of the urbane and moral gentleman of Latin literature: sociable yet self-contained, grave but unpedantic, a man in whom the virtues of the golden mean have been refeined in the fires of art and personal integrity. Jonson thereby presents himself as an arbiter of civil virtue, an English Horace.

In the prose of his Timber, or Discoveries (1640-41), and often through extensive and unacknowledged paraphrase of Vives and other scholars, Jonson showed how the classical basis of his poetry was rooted in nature, exercise, imitation, study and art. The classical rhetoricians were the masters of his particular practice. Their works were to be used only as guides however, not as commanders. What Jonson was seeking was to relate an awareness of his own time to the timeless values of the past, and to do so in a distinctive idiom. To achieve this, he perfected the rhetoric of the middle voice in which he declared: 'the language is plain, and pleasing; even without stopping, round without swelling; all well tuned, composed, elegant, and accurate'. 

These qualities can be seen in Jonson's Epigrams, 'the ripest of my studies'. In pieces such as 'Inviting a Friend to Supper', the courteous social tone, tinged with fantasy, is modulated through reminiscences of Martial to create the ideal of a shared and civilized enjoyment of good food, good talk and good books. A sense of self-knowledge and self-respect, of constancy tempered by experience, is the subject of 'An Epistle Answering to One that Asked to Be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben', an informal group that numbered some of the finest intellects of the age.

A shared sense of high values is also clear in Jonson's praise of other literary and artistic men, though this was something that did not always come naturally to him. The torrential release of pent-up irritation in 'An Expostulation with Inigo Jones' vividly suggests Jonson's envy of a rival's success at court and his refusal to believe that this great architect and scene designer's skills ranked with his own poetic arts. Jonson's tribute to William Camden, his master at Westminster, achieves a moving reverence. When Jonson writes of Shakespeare however, in a poem printed in the First Folio, his lines are among the most generous of the age.

Jonson's epitaphs to his children temper contradictory feelings of grief and Christian acceptance through an art that seems to belie the emotions that sustain it. In Jonson's two odes to himself, his deep feeling for the integrity of that art is asserted against the allegedly gimcrack tastes of his age. In his few religious pieces, such art also expresses a sinner's measured awareness of his own iniquity.

A contemporary is supposed to have declared that Jonson 'never writes of love, or, if he does, does it not naturally'. This is hard but not wholly unfair. 'My Picture Left in Scotland' has a delicate, honest pathos, and Jonson was capable of both the shrewd cynicism of 'That Women Are but Men's Shadows' as well as the artifice and high compliment 'Drink to me only with thine eyes'. In 'See the chariot at hand here of Love', such artifice creates its own exotic sense of wonder:

Have you seen but a bright lily grow,

    Before rude hand hath touch'd it?

Ha' you mark'd but the fall o'the snow

    Before the soil hath smutch'd it?

Ha' you felt the wool o'the beaver?

    Or swan's down ever?

Or have smelt o'the bud of the brier?

    Or the nard in the fire?

Or have tasted the bag of the bee?

O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!

                                (nard: ambergris)

It is as the poet of the civilized aristocratic community however that Jonson is at his best, the mutual and by no means automatic respect of patron and poet serving to create a Roman ideal of behaviour, an aristocracy of mind as much as birth. Consequently, Jonson was a fine writer of eulogies. These, as in the excellent 'To Sir Robert Wroth', are often tempered by a moral concern for the corruptions of the city and court, a feeling for the virtues of country existence and a piety in which the classical ideal of the good life blends easily with a restrained Christian faith. Bravery, patriotism and friendship—the aristocratic life of action—are celebrated in the Pindaric ode to Cary and Morrison, but it is a tribute to the breadth of Jonson's classicism that he could also celebrate the scatological and mock-heroic exuberance of 'On the Famous Voyage'. 

Such poems to the aristocracy suggest the great importance of patronage to the creative life of the age. When Jonson wrote in praise of his patroness the Countess of Bedford, for example, a new image of woman emerged, one that was aristocratic, liberal and educated, and allowed her to move on an equal and graceful footing with men. In 'A Farewell for a Gentlewoman', this is tempered by a stoic, Christian rejection of worldliness. In one of Jonson's finest achievements, the 'Elegy on Lady Jane Paulet', such faith creates a genuine sense of exultation.

It is in 'To Penshurst' however that such concerns combined to form Jonson's supreme evocation of Christian humanism as well as a work which inaugurated the important tradition of the country-house poem. The ancestral seat of the Sidneys here becomes the focus of all aspects of the good life. Modest yet dignified, blessed by the heritage of a great poet and rich in the bounty of nature, Penshurst is the centre of a humane community where all—peasant and poet—join in Sir Robert's courteous hospitality. Rural England is remade through the classics into an image of harmony, decency and integrity, fit and able to welcome the king and so be part of a patriotic ideal. And at the basis of this public excellence lies private virtue. The lady of the house is 'noble, fruitful, chaste withal', while the children, encouraged in rectitude by the example of their parents, are pious and keen to learn the ways of aristocratic merit. Jonson's vision is thus comprehensive and humane, Christian and classical, private and public. However we may question its political implications, it remains a noble image of a civilizing ideal.

 

 Will Durant on Ben Jonson

 

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The Good-Morrow (explication)

Here you can see another video explication of John Donne's "The Good-Morrow".

Thomas More, Une vie, une œuvre (NIVEL AVANZADO)

Un programa de FRANCE CULTURE sobre Tomás Moro, Canciller de Inglaterra, autor de Utopía, y santo católico, mártir víctima de la Reforma anglicana. En francés, claro (NIVEL AVANZADO).

THOMAS MORE (vers 1477-1535) – Une vie, une œuvre [2006]

The Faerie Queene (Oxford Companion) (NIVEL AVANZADO)

 

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

The Faerie Queene, the greatest work of *Spenser, of which the first three books were published 1590, and the second three 1596.

The general scheme of the work is proposed in the author's introductory letter addressed to *Ralegh. By the Faerie Queene the poet signifies Glory in the abstract and *Elizabeth I in particular (who also figures under the names of *Britomart, *Belphoebe, *Mercilla, and *Gloriana). Twelve of her knights, the 'patrons' or examples of 12 different virtues, each undertake an adventure, on the 12 successive days of the queen's annual festival, and an account of their origins was to have been given in the last of 12 books. Prince Arthur symbolizes 'magnificence', in the Aristotelian sense (says the author) of the perfection of all the other virtues (he must have meant not 'magnificence' but 'magnanimity', or 'gentlemanliness'). Arthur has a  vision of the Faerie Queene and, determining to seek her out, is brought into the adventures of the several knights and carries them to a successful issue. This explanation, given in the introduction,does not appear from the poem itself, for the authors starts at once with the adventures of the knights; as we have it the poem does not conform to his scheme. Of the six books Spenser published, the subjects are:

I, the adventures of the *Redcrosse Knight of Holiness (the Anglican Church), the protector of the virgin *Una (truth, or the true religion), and the wiles of *Archimago and *Duessa.

the Redcrosse Knight, in Bk I of Spenser's *Faerie Queene, St. George, the patron saint of England. He is separated from *Una (the true religion) by the wiles of *Archimago (hypocrisy) and is led away by *Duessa (the Roman Catholic religion) to the House of Pride. He drinks of an enchanted stream, loses his strength, and is made captive by the giant *Orgoglio (pride). Orgoglio is slain by Prince *Arthur, and Una leads her knight to the House of Holiness, to learn repentance and be healed. The Knight and Una are finally betrothed, after he has killed the dragon which besieged her parents' castle.

Una, in Bk. I of Spenser's *Faerie Queene, typifies singleness of the true religion. She is separated from the *Redcrosse Knight of Holiness (the Anglican Church) by the wiles of *Archimago, but meets and is protected by a lion, until the latter is killed by *Sansloy, who carries Una off to a forest. She is rescued by fauns and satyrs, and is finally united to the Redcrosse Knight.

Archimago, or Archimage, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, is the great enchanter, symbolizing Hypocrisy, who deceives *Una by assuming the appearance of the *Redcrosse Knight (I.i). His deceits are exposed and Archimago is 'layd full low in dungeon deepe' (I.xii.36). From this he emerges in Bk II to seek vengeance on Sir *Guyon for what he has suffered at the hands of the Redcrosse Knight, and employs *Braggadochio for the purpose. 

Duessa, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the daughter of Deceit and Shame, Falsehood in general, in Bk I signifies in particular the Roman Catholic Church, and in V.ix, Mary Queen of Scots.

Orgoglio (Italian, signifying haughtiness), in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (I. vii, viii) captures the *Redcrosse Knight, and is slain by Prince *Arthur.

Arthur, Prince, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene. He symbolizes 'Magnificence' (Magnanimity), in the Aristotelian sense of the perfection of all the virtues. He enters into the adventures of the several knights and brings them to a fortunate conclusion. His chief adventures are the slaying of the three-bodied monster *Geryoneo and the rescue from him of Belge (the Netherland) V. x, xi); and, jointly with *Artegall, the slaying of the *soldan (Philip II) in his 'charret hye' (the Armada) (V. viii).

Sansfoy, Sansjoy, and Sansloy, three brothers in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (I. ii. 25 et seq.). Sansfoy ('faithless') is slain by the *Redcrosse Knight, who also defeats Sansjoy ('joyless') but the latter is saved from death by *Duessa. Sansloy ('lawless') carries off *Una and kills her lion (I. iii). This incident is supposed to refer to the suppression of the Protestant religion in the reign of Queen Mary.

II, the adventures of Sir *Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, his encounters with *Pyrochles and *Cymochles, his visit to the Cave of *Mammon and the House of Temperance, and his destruction of *Acrasia and her *Bower of Bliss. Canto x of this Book contains a chronicle of British rulers from *Brut to Elizabeth;

Guyon, Sir, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the knight of Temperance. His various exploits, the conquest of *Pyrochles, the visit to the cave of *Mammon, the capture of *Acrasia, and the destruction of her *Bower of Bliss, are related in II. v-xii.

Braggadochio, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the typical braggart. His adventures and final exposure and humiliation occur in II. iii; III. viii, x; IV iv, v, ix; V. iii. Cf. *Trompart.

Trompart, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. iii),

wylie witted, and growne old

In cunning sleights and practick knavery.

attends *Braggadochio as his squire, and with him is finally exposed and beaten out of court.

Pyrochles, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, symbolizes rage. He is the brother of *Cymochles, the son of 'old Acrates and Despight' (II. iv. 41). On his shield is a flaming fire, with the words 'Burnt do I burne'. He is overcome by Sir *Guyon (II. v), and tries to drown himself in a lake to quench his flames. He is rescued and healed by *Archimago (II. vi. 42-51), and finally killed by Prince *Arthur (II. viii).

Cymochles, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. v, vi, and viii), 'a man of rare redoubted might', given all to lust and loose living, the husband of *Acrasia and brother of *Pyrochles. He sets out to avenge on Sir *Guyon the supposed death of his brother, but *Phaedria intervenes. He is finally slain by Prince *Arthur

Phaedria, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. vi), the Lady of the Idle Lake, symbolizing immodest mirth.

Mammon, theCave of, described in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. vii). It is the treasure-house of the god of wealth, visited by Sir Guyon. Milton in his *Areopagitica uses the example of Spenser making Guyon visit the cave of Mammon, 'that he might see and know, and yet abstain'.

Acrasia, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, II. xii, typifies Intemperance. She is captured and bound by Sir *Guyon, and her *Bower of Bliss destroyed.

Bower of Bliss, the, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. xii), the home of *Acrasia, demolished by Sir *Guyon.

 

III, the legend of Chastity, exemplified by *Britomart and *Belphoebe;

Britomart, the heroine of Book III of Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the daughter of King Ryunce of Britain and the female knight of chastity. She has fallen in love with *Artegall, whose image she has seen in a magic mirror, and the poet recounts her adventures in her quest for him. She is the most powerful of several types of Queen Elizabeth in the poem. 

Belphoebe, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the chaste huntress, daughter of the nymph Chrysogone and twin sister of *Amoret; she partly symbolizes Queen Elizabeth. Belphoebe puts *Braggadochio to flight (II. iii), finds herbs to heal the wounded *Timias ('whether it divine Tobacco were, / Or Panachae, or Polygony', III. v), and rescues Amoret from *Corflambo (IV. vii).

Artegall, Sir, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, V, the champion of Justice. *Britomart, to whom his image has been revealed by a magic mirror, is in love with him, and her quest of him ends in their union. Representing Lord Grey de Wilton, he undertakes the rescue of Irena (Ireland) from the tyrant Grantorto. Jointly with Prince *Arthur he slays the *soldan (Philip II of Spain). His name perhaps signifies 'equal to Arthur'.

Timias, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, Prince *Arthur's squire, may represent *Ralegh. When wounded (III. v), he is healed by *Belphoebe. The incident of Timias and *Amoret, in IV vii. 35 and 36, may allude to Ralegh's relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton.

Amoret, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, III. vi, xii and IV. vii, daughter of the nymph Chrisogone and twin sister of *Belphoebe. She is 'Of grace and beautie noble Paragone', and has been married to Sir *Scudamour, but carried off immediately after by the enchanter *Busirane and imprisoned by him until released by *Britomart. *Timias loves her, but being reproved by Belphoebe leaves her. This incident refgers to the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth at the relations of  *Ralegh with Elizabeth Throckmorton.

Busirane, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (III. xi and xii) the 'vile Enchaunter' symbolizing unlawful love. He is struck down by *Britomart in his castle and forced to release *Amoret. On the door of one of the rooms of the castle was written:

Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold.

But on another iron door,

Be not too bold.

 

IV, the legend of *Triamond and *Cambell, exemplifying Friendship; together with the story of *Scudamour and *Amoret.

Triamond, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (IV. iii, iv), the Knight of Friendship. After an inconclusive fight with *Cambello  in the contest to decide which of her suitors *Canacee (Cambello's sister) is to be awarded, Triamond and Cambello swear eternal friendship. IN the tournament arranged by *Satyrane, Triamond, though wounded, returns to rescue Cambello. He marries Canacee.

Cambell, or Cambello, the name given by Spenser in The Faerie Queene, IV. iii, to *Cambalo, whose tale he borrows from 'Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled', and completes. Cambell is brother of *Canacee, for whom there are many suitors. It is arranged that the stronges of these, three brothers, shall fight with Cambell and the lady be awarded to the victor. Two of the brothers are defeated: the contest between the third, *Triamond, and Cambell is undecided, each wounding the other.They are reconciled by Cambina, Triamond's sister; Canacee is awarded to Triamond and Cambell marries Cambina. The magic ring of Canacee in the 'Squire's Tale' reappears in the Faerie Queene, with the power of healing wounds.

Canacee, the daughter of King Cambuscan in Chaucer's 'Squire's Tale' (see CANTERBURY TALES, 11) and in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, Bk IV. 

Cambalo, one of the two sons of King Cambuscan, in Chaucer's 'Squire's Tale': see CANTERBURY TALES, 11; see also *Cambell for the continuation of his story in Spenser's *Faerie Queene.

V, the adventures of *Artegall, the Knight of Justice, in which allegorical reference is made to various historical events of the reign of Queen Elizabeth: the defeat of the Spaniards in the Netherlands, the recantation of Henry IV of France, the execution of *Mary Queen of Scots, and the administration of Ireland by Lord Grey de Wilton;

soldan (from the Arabic sultan). The soldan or souldan, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (V. viii) represents Philip II of Spain. He is encountered by Prince *Arthur and Sir *Artegall with a bold defiance from Queen *Mercilla (Elizabeth), and the combat is undecided until the prince unveils his shield and terrifies the soldan's horses, so that they overturn his chariot and the soldan is torn 'all to rags'. The unveiling of the Shield signifies divine interposition.

Geryoneo, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (V. x and xi), a three-bodied giant who represent's Philip II's power which controlled Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries.

Mercilla, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (V., viii), 'a mayden Queene of high renowne' (Queen *Elizabeth I), whose crown the *soldan seeks to subvert.

VI, the adventures of Sir *Calidore, exemplifying Courtesy. 

Calidore, Sir, the Knight of Courtesy, the hero of Bk VI of Spenser's *Faerie Queene. He pursues and chains the *Blatant Beast. One of Keats's earliest poems, the fragment 'Young Calidore is paddling o'er the lake' (1816) was inspired by him.

Blatant Beast, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, Bk VI, a monster, the personification of the calumnious voice of the world, begotten of Envy and Detraction. Sir *Calidore pursues it, finds it despoiling monasteries and defiling the church, overcomes it, and chains it up. But finally it breaks the chain, 'So now he raungeth through the world againe.' Cf. *Questing Beast. (Glatysaunt Beast, the creature in Malory's *Morte D'Arthur which is the original of *Spenser's 'blatant beast'. The word is from an Old French term meaning 'baying', 'barking'. In Malory it is pursued by Palomydes the Saracen).

There is also a fragment on *Mutabilitie, being the sixth and seventh cantos of the legend of Constancie, which was to have formed the seventh Book. This fragment contains a charming description of the seasons and the months.

'Mutabilitie Cantos', name given to the fragmentary 'Book VII' of Spenser's *Faerie Queene: two cantos only, first published with the folio edition of The Faerie Queene in 1609. They describe the challenge of the Titaness Mutabilitie to the cosmic government of Jove. (The first canto includes the charming topographical fable of Faunus and Molanna, which reflects Spenser's affection for his Irish home.) The goddess Nautre vindicates Jove's rule, displaying its orderly beauty in a procession of Seasons and Months, asserting finally that natural things 'are not changed from their first estate / but by their change their being doe dilate'. The cantos can be seen as an epilogue to The Faerie Queene, ending with the poet's prayer. 

The work as a whole, modelled to some extent on the *Orlando furioso of Ariosto, suffers from a certain monotony, and its chief beauties lie in the particular episodes with which the allegory is varied and in descriptions, such as those of the Cave of Mammon and the temptation of Sir Guyon by the Lady of the Idle Lake, in Bk. II. The meaning of many of the allusions, which must have added to the interest of the work for contemporaries, is now lost. The poem is written in the stanza invented by Spenser (and since utilized by James *Thomson, *Keats, *Shelley, and *Byron), in which a ninth line of twelve syllables is added to eight lines of ten syllables, rhyming  a b a b b c b c c.

Edmund Spenser

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