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XVI.—A Study in Renaissance Mysticism: Spenser's ‘Fowre Hymnes.‘

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Jefferson B. Fletcher
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Extract

It was probably during, or shortly after, his residence at Cambridge University that Edmund Spenser composed two ‘hymnes,’ or odes, in praise of love and beauty. The ‘love’ praised was ‘platonic love’; the ‘beauty’ praised was ‘intellectual’ beauty.

These two poems were written, it seems certain, before 1580. Over twenty years later, perhaps twenty-five,–at any rate not long before 1596,–the poet, grown older, professes to condemn them as conspicuous among “the many lewd layes” that “in the greener times of his youth” he had made

In praise of that mad fit which fooles call love.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , 1911 , pp. 452 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1911

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References

page 455 note 1 Cf. the interestingly analogous argument in Dante, Par., vii, 85–120.

page 457 note 1 I Cor. ii, 16.

page 459 note 1 Spenser's attitude towards the Virgin Mary is probably that of his contemporary and fellow-Platonist, Sir John Davies, in ‘Nosce teipsum’ (1599). Davies says:

… God, being made Man, for man's own sake,
And being like man in all, except in sin:
His Body from the Virgin's womb did take;
But all agree, God formed His soul within.

Christ's “soul,” that is, the Holy Spirit, or Ghost, is not born of Mary, but of God alone. In the same way, the Florentine Neo-Platonists conceived the Heavenly Venus as born, without a mother, immediately of God; while the earthly Venus has a dual parentage. Cf. Ficino, Comm. Sympos., ii, vii.

page 460 note 1 Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, Vol. iv, p. 67.

page 461 note 1 vi, xviii.

page 461 note 2 ii, vii.

page 463 note 1 vi, viii, 1.

page 466 note 1 For the text, a translation, and discussion of detailed relations of Benivieni's and the ‘Fowre Hymnes’ see Modern Philology, April, 1911.

page 474 note 1 It is evident that he confounds Sabaoth (hosts) with Sabbath (rest).— Child.