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The Philosophy of Spenser's “Garden of Adonis”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Brents Stirling
Brents Stirling*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

The main object of this study is to vindicate Spenser of the implied charge of pedantry in one of the most brilliant of his episodes. His Odyssean voyage during the last decade and more among the pages of scholarly journals has left him cast now on the shores of simple Lucretian materialism, now in the bog of abstruse Neo-Platonism. He has even been observed steering a consciously charted course between opposing rocks of dilemma, to say nothing of having sought refuge and instruction among the pre-Socratic Greeks. It is hoped that he may be returned to native English shores. Should the conclusions of this article be epitomized in the statement that Spenser was a second-rate philosopher, that he was a popularizer of already popularized material, no great loss is suffered. His metaphysical poetry may still be read, its simple and direct message gathered, and its charm enjoyed without a ruinous gloss ranging from Empedocles to the refiners of Platonism. Another advantage of simplifying the doctrines of a poet who meant them to be simple and direct is that, when considered in the light of Spenser's naïvete, they lack that inconsistency and puzzling quality so often discerned by commentators. So viewed, the Garden of Adonis, besides losing its character as a technical history of philosophy, may perhaps be regarded no longer as a catalogue of fallacies.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1934 , pp. 501 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934

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References

1 “Spenser and Lucretius,” St. in Ph., xvii (1920), 439 ff.

2 For the usual agreement, see Jones, A Spenser Handbook (Crofts, 1930), pp. 305–307.

3 Op. cit., p. 444.

4 De Rerum Natura, Transl. W. H. D. Rouse (Loeb Classical Library).

5 Op. cit., p. 445.

6 “Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and His Religion,” PMLA, xliv (1929), 730.

7 “Spenser and Lucretius,” op. cit., p. 445.

8 Ll. 113–119.

9 iv, prose 6, ll. 82–86.

10 Op. cit., p. 447.

11 Op. cit., p. 727.

12 “Spenser's Mutabilitie,” PMLA, xlv (1930), 690 n.

13 As for the “uncouth formes” of Stanza 35 representing Miss Albright's “great whales” of biblical history or Ovid's nova monstra, as Professor Cumming would have it, Mrs. Bennett is laudably cautious in her statement that “there is no need for any such straining after Spenser's meaning.” As she says, it would be much better to see an analogue in Palingenius' assertion that there are a store of things in the world of forms “that in this worldly light God hath not made,” or to interpret the passage as a reference to the strange animals reported by explorers of the time (PMLA, xlvii, 46–80). But why any need for glossing the passage? The occurrence of strange and unknown shapes in the garden is not an occasion for puzzlement in reading a poet who wrote of the reptile in the cave of error, the Blatant Beast, and a dragon of no mean order.

14 v, ll. 810–815.

15 “Spenser and Lucretius,” op. cit., pp. 448–451.

16 Ibid., p. 452 ff.

17 Op. cit., p. 746.

18 Ibid., p. 731 ff.—It is difficult to tell just what Miss Albright's position is at this point. Her article, as a whole, develops the four elements as Spenser's fundamental groundwork, but she declares, correctly enough, in one place (747) that Spenser's notion of substance was sufficiently general to be as near Aristotle's as any other. It was probably a Platonic conception, as we shall find shortly.

19 “Spenser's Garden of Adonis,” PMLA, xlvii (1932), 65–66.

20 vii. vii. 21–24.

21 See, for example, Bertrand Russell, Philosophy, pp. 97–113.

22 “Spenser's Garden of Adonis,” op. cit., p. 66.

23 Ibid., p. 65.

24 See Shakespeare's Ovid Being Arthur Golding's Translation, etc., ed. W. H. D. Rouse (De La More Press, London: 1904), Introd., p. v.

25 Ibid., ll. 346–375.

26 Golding in the complete passage makes acknowledgment of this: “To thys effect are Philos words.”

27 Op. cit., Bk. i, ll. 5–8.

28 “Ovid as a Source for Spenser's Monster-Spawning Mud Passages.” MLN, xlv (1930), 167.

29 Golding, op. cit., Bk. i, ll. 495–522.

30 Stanza 21.

31 Ll. 346–375. See note 25 herein.

32 Epistle, ll. 5–12.

33 The pageantry of Mutability is unquestionably Ovidian except for the Irish scene and mythology. See William P. Cumming, “The Influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses on Spenser's ‘Mutability Cantos’,” St. in Ph., xxviii (1931), 241 ff. Professor Cumming, however, disregards entirely Golding's translation.

34 III. vi, 8.

35 St. 35, l. 1.

36 Ll. 57–60.

37 Ll. 141–147.

38 This, of course, could be figurative language; but the likelihood is small in view of Spenser's simultaneous use of “substance” in the plural.

39 Bigg, Neoplatonism, p. 196.

40 Teares of the Muses, ll. 501–502.

41 “Spenser and Bruno,” PMLA, xliii (1928), 675–679.

42 Stanzas 37–38.

43 “Spenser's Garden of Adonis,” op. cit., p. 63.

44 Note also in the same passages that substance “is conditioned … sundry forms to don.” (38) and the babes are “clad with other hew.” (33)

45 See “The Allegory of Venus and Adonis,” herein.

46 xv, 188–192.—Lines 30 ff. of Golding's epistle interpret this passage as referring to the “animal” soul only, thus exemplifying the Elizabethan doctrine of the triple soul,—vegetal, animal, and rational. Man possessed the last exclusively and the first two in common with lower forms of life.

47 Op. cit., p. 53.

48 Ll. 82–84.

49 Ll. 29–40.—The italics are mine.

50 See the recent discussion of H. G. Lotspeich, Classical Mythology in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (Princeton University Press, 1932), pp. 24–27. Here the author describes the dual rôle, now mystical and now rather naturalistic, which Venus plays in various parts of Spenser's poetry. Her probable equation with substance in the Garden of Adonis is discussed in a subsequent part of the present study.

51 Op. cit., p. 53.

52 Ll. 82–84.

53 Op. cit., p. 60.—Italics hers.

54 Ibid., p. 57.

55 Ibid., p. 67.

56 Ll. 106–119.

57 Ll. 5–6.

58 Stanza 36.

59 Spenser and Lucretius, op. cit., pp. 449–450.

60 Op. cit., p. 63.

61 Note, however, her statement made shortly after (p. 68), which is utterly inconsistent with her position here. “He [Spenser] goes on to describe the departure of these forms out of the garden into the world, where they are united with matter and so form living bodies.” Here we are told that the unification of form and matter takes place not in the garden but in the world. Italics are mine.

62 Infra, Section ii.

63 The Second Day of the First Week, ll. 164–168. Italics are Sylvester's.

64 Ibid., ll. 219–222.

65 The naked babes may seem to represent non-substantial form, but see the previous discussion herein which equates them with substance.

66 Stanza 39.

67 Op. cit., pp. 68–69.

68 Stanza 47.

69 Literature and Occult Tradition, Transl. Dorothy Bolton (1930), pp. 191–192.

70 Italics mine.

71 Op. cit., pp. 186–187.

72 v, Prose 6, 231–240.

73 If the reader finds trouble in linking fate and free will with Boethius' discussion of Providence and free will, Book iv, Prose 6, will clear up the difficulty. There fate is described as the agent of Providence in disposing the temporal order. Better still, Golding defines fate as “the order which is set and stablished in things by Gods eternal will and word.”

74 “The Concluding Stanzas of Mutabilitie.”—St. in Ph. XXX, 193-204.

75 It is to be noted, parenthetically, that Plato in Republic, Book x, has Fate exercising the supervisory functions of Genius.

76 Stanzas 32–33.

77 Op. cit., p. 57.

78 Op. cit., pp. 187–188.

79 Ibid., p. 189.

80 Ibid., pp. 190–191.

81 Op. cit., p. 76.

82 Stanza 36.

83 Discussed previously.

84 Op. cit., pp. 194–195.

85 Ibid., p. 195.—The lines quoted from Spenser are from Stanza 43.

86 Ibid.

87 “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” St. in Ph., xvii (1920), 332.

88 Op. cit., p. 196.

89 Ibid., p. 197.

90 Transl. R. G. Bury, 50 D, pp. 117–119.

91 Op. cit., p. 71 ff.

92 Ll. 859–862.—The influence of Ovid seems well distributed throughout the poet's work. The lines here are obviously from the same Ovidian passage discussed in connection with the stanzas prefatory to Adonis.

93 Op. cit., p. 72.

94 iv, x, 47.

95 Ll. 57–70.

96 The lines following in the quoted passage have him related to “heavens life-giving fire” and taking to him“ wings of his owne heate.” This links with the Adonis-Sun relationship, previously discussed.

97 It is true that Venus represents the Idea of Beauty in other portions of Spenser's work. But the hymn to Venus in the fourth book and the Adonis passage present her not in a mystical rôle but in a somewhat naturalistic one. See Lotspeich, op. cit., for discussion of her varying functions in Spenser's philosophical system.