Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Conventions
- 1 Introduction: Reading Spenser's Language
- 2 ‘Pleasing Analysis’: Renaissance Hermeneutics, Poetry, and the Law
- 3 Results: A Survey of Spenser's Legal Diction
- 4 Property and Contract in the Quests of Florimell and Amoret
- 5 Justice, Equity and Mercy in The Legend of Artegall
- 6 Courtesy and Prerogative in The Legend of Sir Calidore
- 7 The Composition of the World: Managing Power in the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie
- 8 Lyric Opposition in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne
- 9 After Words
- Glossary of Selected Legal Diction in The Faerie Queene
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Renaissance Literature
4 - Property and Contract in the Quests of Florimell and Amoret
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Conventions
- 1 Introduction: Reading Spenser's Language
- 2 ‘Pleasing Analysis’: Renaissance Hermeneutics, Poetry, and the Law
- 3 Results: A Survey of Spenser's Legal Diction
- 4 Property and Contract in the Quests of Florimell and Amoret
- 5 Justice, Equity and Mercy in The Legend of Artegall
- 6 Courtesy and Prerogative in The Legend of Sir Calidore
- 7 The Composition of the World: Managing Power in the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie
- 8 Lyric Opposition in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne
- 9 After Words
- Glossary of Selected Legal Diction in The Faerie Queene
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Renaissance Literature
Summary
Vnmarried Men are best Friends; best Masters; best Seruants; but not alwayes best Subiects; For they are light to runne away; And almost all Fugitiues are of that Condition … Certainly, Wife and Children, are a kinde of Discipline of Humanity: And single Men, though they be many times more Charitable, because their Meanes are lesse exhaust; yet, on the other side, they are more cruell, and hard hearted, (good to make seuere Inquisitors) because their Tendernesse, is not so oft called vpon. Graue Natures, led by Custome, and therfore constant, are commonly louing Husbands; As was said of Vlysses; Vetulam suam prætulit Immortalitati.
Francis Bacon, ‘Of Marriage And Single Life’, The Essayes or Counsels, Ciuill and Morall (1625)MARRIAGE is one of the foremost narrative elements of The Faerie Queene. It recurs as a focal point in every book of the poem, and nearly every episode invokes a marriage promised, performed, or betrayed. The study of marriage themes in Spenser's poetry is almost equally copious, but to date has, curiously, avoided addressing the broader political overtones of this emphasis in Spenser's work. Attention to the poet's use of legal language suggests that marriage figures in The Faerie Queene as only one manifestation – though an important one – of a more general preoccupation with social bonds and contract. Spenser's interest in contract appears throughout the poem at the inceptions of marriages, friendships, partnerships, and patron–servant relationships, but it is the particular focus of the middle books of The Faerie Queene: Of Chastity and Of Friendship.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spenser's Legal LanguageLaw and Poetry in Early Modern England, pp. 89 - 122Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007