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Another Interpretation of Muiopotmos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Isabel E. Rathborne
Isabel E. Rathborne*
Affiliation:
Scarborough, N. Y.
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Extract

Spenser's Muiopotmos has provoked much ingenious speculation, but no general agreement as to its meaning has been reached. One school of critics in fact warns us against seeking too precise a meaning. Selincourt in the one-volume Oxford edition of Spenser's Works, says:

It is surely a mistake to read into this delicious jeu d'esprit a moral or satirical intention. For once Spenser was not sage and serious, but simply a poet, spinning for sheer delight in his craft a web of verse as delicate as Arachne's.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 1934 , pp. 1050 - 1068
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934

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References

1 For a partial summary of previous criticism of Muiopotmos see Nadal, “Spenser's Muiopotmos in Relation to Chaucer's Sir Thopas and The Nun's Priest's Tale,” PMLA, xxv (1910), 640 ff. and Long, “Spenser's Muiopotmos,” MLR, ix (1914), 457 ff.

2 P. xxxiv.

3 Op. cit.

4 “The Metamorphoses in Muiopotmos,” MLN, xxviii (1913), 82–85.

5 In his edition of Complaints (Scholartis Press: London, 1928), p. 249.

6 In Grosart's Spenser, iv, lxxi.

7 Spenser (New York, 1926), pp. 5–7.

8 Op. cit.

9 “Spenser's Muiopotmos,” MLR, xvii (1922), 409–411.

10 '“A Note on Spenser's Clarion,” MLN, xxxvi (1921), 182–183.

11 Spenser and His Poetry (London, 1845), iii, 172–180.

12 “Spenser's Muiopotmos as an Allegory,” PMLA, xxxi (1916), 90 ff.

13 “A New Interpretation of Spenser's Muiopotmos,” SP, xxv (1928), 128 ff.

14 “The Allegorical Meaning of Spenser's Muiopotmos,” PMLA, xlv (1930), 732 ff. Mr. Lemmi's theory was criticized by Miss Denkinger in PMLA, xlvi (1930), 272–276; by Mr. Strathmann in PMLA, xlvi (1931), 940–945; and by Mr. Purcell, Ibid., 945–946.

15 For a full discussion of this point see Smith, op. cit.

16 Op. cit., pp. lxxi–lxxxii.

17 Op. cit., p. 249.

18 Ibid., p. 251.

19 Batrachomyomachia is mentioned in Jones, A Spenser Handbook, (New York, 1930), p. 97 as an example of an epyllion, to which class he assigns both Virgil's Gnat and Muiopotmos. The Spider and the Flie as reprinted in part in Berdan, Early Tudor Poetry (New York, 1920), is listed under Muiopotmos in Carpenter's Reference Guide (Chicago, 1923), Berdan, op. cit., p. 106, discusses Heywood's poem as a model for Mother Hubberd's Tale, but makes no mention of Muiopotmos. Percy Long, op. cit., p. 457, cites Collier's mention of Heywood's poem as an allegory, and remarks in a note, “Heywood's poem presents no parallel with Spenser's.”

20 Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library), p. 543.—Greek Text, ll. 1–8.

21 Ibid., ll. 78–81. Tr., p. 547.

22 Ibid., ll. 177–184. Tr., p. 555.

23 Ibid., ll. 199–201. Tr., p. 555.

24 Cf. Aeneid, viii, 573–83 and xi, 49–51 with Muiopotmos, 23–32 and 237–240, and Aeneid, x, 487 with Muiopotmos, 439. The likenesses between Turnus and Clarion have been pointed out by Renwick, op. cit., pp. 249, 251, 255.

25 See Nadal, op. cit., for a full but not very convincing analysis of the parallels between Spenser's hero and Chaucer's.

26 Spenser seems at some time to have looked up the Europa story rather thoroughly, either in connection with Muiopotmos or with the Faerie Queene, iii, xi, 30. In Muiopotmos, 277 ff., he draws upon Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, 5–145, and Moschus, Idyll ii. The connections between Europa, Arachne, and Astery are significant. In Ovid Arachne weaves in her tapestry the loves of Zeus for Asteria and Europa. Boccaccio, Geneologia Deorum tr. Betussi (Vinegia, 1547), p. 42, says that the husband of Europa was Asterius, prince of Crete. (Mr. Strathmann points out the same story in Apollodorus. Strathmann, op. cit., p. 943.) Asterius is mentioned in Nonnus, Dionysiacorum, just before the first mention of Arachne, xl, 303. A more important link between Europa and Spenser's Arachne is furnished by Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii, 711, where the story of Europa is immediately preceded by the story of Aglauros. See below, p. 1063. In Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica iv, 1638 ff., we learn that Zeus gave Europa a man of bronze named Talos “to be the warder of Crete.”

27 Heywood, The Spider and the Flie, Reprinted from the Edition of 1556 (Spenser Society, New Series, no. 6, 1894), p. 216.

28 Muiopotmos, 32.

29 Heywood, op. cit., pp. 155, 158, 161, 164, 167, 174, 178, 183, 187, 190, 200, 202, 206, 208. Cf. Muiopotmos, 81–105.

30 Heywood, op. cit., p. 232.

31 So-called by Reed Smith.

32 Cf. Renwick, op. cit., p. 249.

33 Heywood, op. cit., p. 26.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. 27.

36 Ibid., p. 28.

37 Ibid., p. 29.

38 Ibid., p. 32.

39 Ibid., p. 34.

40 Ibid., p. 41.—Heywood represents the spiders as traditionally slaying their victims by sucking out their brains. Aragnoll, however, stabs his enemy. In describing the death of Clarion, Spenser may have had in mind the following passage from Palingenius, in which a fly caught in a spider's web is described as a type of human folly. Palingenius is appealing to men to follow wisdom and beware of the seductions of Voluptas.

… occultos laqueos advertite, ne vos
Haud aliter fallat, quam fallat aranea muscam,
Dum tenuem texit telam, latitatque deorsum
Angusto in thalamo: sed si cognoverit hostem
Delapsum in casses, quamprimum accurrit, et arctis
Stridentem involvit laqueis, et stamina circum
Cruribus assidius glomerat, rostroque peremptum
Perforat, et fugit fusum per membra cruorem.
Zodiacus Vitae, iii, 450–458.

41 Muiopotmos also owes something to Virgil's Culex and Lucian's Muias Encomion, but neither of these works could have furnished the narrative scheme of Spenser's poem.

42 Lodge in his Defense of Poetry: Works (Hunterian Club, 1883) i, 3, speaks of “Virgil's Gnat” and “Ovid's Fley” as allegorical.

43 Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1754), i, 57.

44 N.E.D. quotes Howell, “For spightful spiders spare not, for curious carpers care not.”

45 Wotton, Reliquiae Wottonianae (4th ed., 1685), p. 175.

46 Cf. Greene, Repentance: Works (Grosart) xii, 180 and N.E.D.

47 v, xii, 36.

48 Cf. also the description of Sclaunder, Faerie Queene, iv. viii. 24–26 and of the Blatant Beast. Ibid., vi. i. 7–8; vi. 6. 11–12, and vi, xii, 26 ff.

49 Cf. Legouis, op. cit., pp. 5–7.

50 The suggestion probably came from Lucian, Muias Encomion: Works, tr. Harmon (Loeb Classical Library), i, 83. Some of the details about Clarion's wings are probably from it. For this reference I am indebted to Miss Barbara McCarthy of Wellesley College.

51 Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (1788), iii, 69.

52 Ibid., iii, 70.

53 Op. cit., pp. 740–743.

54 Op. cit., p. 275.

55 Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex, (London, 1853), i, 211.

56 A common comparison used by Spenser himself in Faerie Queene, vi. x. 13 ff.

57 “Spenser and Lady Carey,” MLR, iii (1908), 257–267.

58 Op. cit., i, 91–92.

59 The name is found in Ovid, Met., vi, 108. The two suggestions probably blended in Spenser's mind.

60 Op. cit., pp. 734–736. Haight, Apuleius and His Influence (New York, 1927), p. 161 ff.

61 Metamorphoses, vi, 5, 145.

62 Lines 711 ff.

63 Mythologiae (Patavi, ex typographia Pauli Frambotti, 1637), pp. 482–484.

64 i. i. 48, 9, iv. vii. 7, 1, ii, xii, 61, 2.

65 Mother Hubberd's Tale, 810 ff., Faerie Queene, iii. x. 8. 4–5, iv proem.

66 Cf. the symbolism of the olive garland in Faerie Queene, i. vi. 13. 9 and Shepherd's Calendar, Ap., 123.

67 Idyll II.—This source has often been noted.

68 From Horace, Carmina, i, 2, 34. Riedner, Spenser's Belesenheit (Leipzig, 1908), p. 103.

69 Miss Tuell suggested that Clarion was Spenser's epic muse.

70 Works (Hunterian Club), i.

71 At least to be printed. Marlowe's poem may have been written earlier.

72 Faerie Queene, iv. x. 44–47.

73 Ibid., iii. xii, 3–25.

74 See Carpenter, Reference Guide, p. 243, for references to Spenser in Lodge's works.

75 If he did feel and express some passing envy in 1590, may he not be the Palin of Colin Clout's Come Home Again?

76 Lodge was at Oxford with Edmund and Robert Carey, sons of the first Lord Hunsdon, to whom Lodge dedicated Rosalynde. Lady Elizabeth Carey's husband succeeded his father as second Lord Hunsdon.

77 Gosse, Bibliographical Index to Lodge's Works (Hunterian Club), i, 13; and Paradise, Thomas Lodge (New Haven, 1931), p. 236.