Edmund Spenser Vs Virgil And Ariosto Essay

Edmund Spenser Vs. Virgil And Ariosto Essay, Research Paper

Edmund Spenser vs. Virgil and Ariosto

Some scholars believe Spenser did not have sufficient education to compose a work with as much complexity as The Faerie Queene, while others are still “extolling him as one of the most learned men of his time” (587). Scholar Douglas Bush agrees, “scholars now speak less certainly that they once did of his familiarity with ancient literature” (587). In contrast, Meritt Hughes “finds no evidence that Spenser derived any element of his poetry from any Greek Romance” (587). Several questions still remain unanswered: Was Edmund Spenser as “divinely inspired” to write The Faerie Queene as Virgil and Ariosto were in their works. Or did Spenser simply lack creativity, causing him to steal his storylines from theirs.

“The range and depth of Spenser’s reading have not been precisely discovered: and in the absence of definitive information, one should guard against the two extremes of exaggerating or underestimating the poet’s education” (Steadman 587). Although born to parents of modest income, Edmund Spenser, probably born in 1552, was still able to receive an impressive education at the Merchant Taylors’ School, and Pembroke College at Cambridge. He learned enough Latin to read and understand poets such as Ariosto and Virgil, both of whom his works are frequently compared to (Norton 614).

Born in 70 BC, Publius Virgilius Maro ranks among the greatest Roman poets who ever lived. With only a few Latin poets attempting to write an epic before him (Naevius and Ennius), Latin literature reached its peak wit the publication of the Aeneid shortly after Virgil’s death. His epic heavily influenced succeeding poets throughout Western literature. Ever since people have compared The Shepheardes Calender, one of Spenser’s early works, to Virgil’s Eclogues, “critics have judged Spenser’s poetry by its fidelity to Virgilian models” (Watkins 1). Another scholar testified that both Ariosto and Spenser did not observe Virgil’s conception of an epic as ‘a unified account of a single hero’s career,’ but instead got lost in their concentrations on wild, unnatural allegories that greatly displeased and ultimately confused the reader (1).

Spenser, who was referred to as the “English Virgil” by his contemporaries, was certainly influenced by Virgil’s success (Kennedy 717). The idea of modeling one’s career after Virgil’s is know as the rota Virgilli or cursus Virgilli, meaning “the Virgilian wheel or course” (717). It is explained in a four-line preface added to Renaissance editions of the Aeneid:

‘Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulates avena/ Carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi/ ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,/ gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis’ (I am he who, after singing on the shepherd’s slender pipe and leaving the wood-side for the farmlands ever so much to obey their eager tenant; my work was welcome to the farmers, but now I turn to the sterner stuff on Mars)(717).

Virgil starts off writing the pastoral poem and ends with the epic. He begins his career with “shepherd’s slender pipe (the pastoral Eclogues), proceeds to the ‘farmlands’ (the didactic Georgics), and finally arrives at the ‘sterner stuff on Mars’ (the epic Aeneid)” (717). Spenser described his own career similarly in the first book of The Faerie Queene:

‘Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,/ As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,/ Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,/ For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,(717),

It is in Virgil’s three major poems that Spenser found most of his endeavor. As a young poet, he found inspiration for The Shepheardes Calender in the Eclogues. No single eclogue directly imitates Virgil’s; however, there are several similarities between the two. In August, the singing contest parallels those of Eclogue 3 and 7, and in November, the funeral lament recalls that of Eclogue 5. The writing of the beloved in January 55-60 to Eclogue 2.54-6, and the description of the locos amoenus in June 1-16 to Eclogue 1.48-58 are a few examples of closer imitations (Kennedy 718).

While the Eclogues had a profound influence on Spenser, the moral Georgics did not carry as much significance as Virgil’s other works, including the Aeneid, Virgil’s Gnat, and the Culex. More so, his direct copying from Georgics is far less obvious. In Book 1 of 1 of The Faerie Queene, the fall of the giants echoes Book 1 of Georgics. ”It is a sequence of didactic poems depicting varied endeavors as The Shepheardes Calender would do on a pastoral scale as The Faerie Queene would do on a epic scale” (Kennedy 718).

Virgil’s works provided insight for every Renaissance epic poet. In The Faerie Queene, Spenser twice interlocks versions of Eclogue 1 when he pastoralizes the iron age Ireland of Book 5 into the golden world of Book 6. He rewrites Virgil’s story of exile into one of return with Meliboe’s tale of his trip to the city. The “construction of ‘home’ out of distance from city and court parallels Spenser’s two-fold position as a kind of exile from England and a home-making colonizer in Ireland” (Lupton). Secondly, he softens the tragic Virgilian fate of Meliboe’s murder by restoring the country lands to Coridon. “In both cases, Spenser resolves Virgil’s painful, structural contrast between ‘exile’ and ‘home’ into a red