Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:15:57.575Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Reed Way Dasenbrock
Reed Way Dasenbrock*
Affiliation:
New Mexico State University Las Cruces
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Spenser's Amoretti have never been properly appreciated, because they have been judged by the norms they have sought to criticize, the norms of Renaissance Petrarchism. A critique of Petrarchan love, the Amoretti turn away from that system's restless egotism toward the world of marriage, which Spenser presents as a sacred harbor of rest. This is not an absolutely original turn, since Petrarch himself, founder of the conventions of Petrarchan love, also sought to escape his own love situation. He does so, in the Canzoniere, by turning toward Heaven and by turning Laura into an agent of transcendence, like Dante's Beatrice. The turn the Amoretti make is parallel to the turn made by the Canzoniere, though in Spenser marriage replaces death as the means of obtaining sacred rest. Spenser's exaltation of marriage is indebted to Protestant teaching, though the Amoretti is where this new conception of marriage first enters love poetry.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 38 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Brand, C. P. “Petrarch and Petrarchism in Torquato Tasso's Lyric Poetry.” Modern Language Review 62 (1967): 256–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brand, C. P. Torquato Tasso. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Brown, James Neil. “Lyke Phoebe: Lunar, Numerical, and Calendrical Patterns in Spenser's Amoretti.” Gypsy Scholar 1 (1973): 5–15.Google Scholar
Casady, Edwin. “The Neo-Platonic Ladder in Spenser's Amoretti.” Philological Quarterly 20 (1941): 284–95.Google Scholar
Colie, Rosalie L. Shakespeare's Living Art. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Amico, Jack. Petrarch in England: An Anthology of Parallel Texts. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1979.Google Scholar
Drayton, Michael. The Works of Michael Drayton. 5 vols. Ed. Hedel, J. William. Oxford: Blackwell, 1961.Google Scholar
Dunlop, Alexander. “The Unity of Spenser's Amoretti.” In Silent Poetry: Essays in Numerological Analysis. Ed. Fowler, Alaistair. London: Routledge, 1970, 153–69.Google Scholar
Forster, Leonard. The Icy Fire: Five Studies in European Petrarchism. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Fowler, Alaistair. Triumphal Forms: Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970.Google Scholar
George, Charles H., and George, Katharine. The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation 1570–1640. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giamatti, A. Bartlett. The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M. “The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature.” In The Disciplines of Criticism. Ed. Demetz, Peter, Greene, Thomas M., and Nelson, Lowry Jr. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968, 241–64.Google Scholar
Halkett, John. Milton and the Idea of Matrimony: A Study of the Divorce Tracts and Paradise Lost. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Haller, William. “Hail Wedded Love.” ELH 13 (1946): 79–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hieatt, A. Kent. “A Numerological Key for Spenser's Amoretti and Guyon in the House of Mammon.” Yearbook of English Studies 3 (1973): 14–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, George Elliott. A History of Matrimonial Institutions. 3 vols. 1904; rpt. New York: Humanities, 1964.Google Scholar
Hunter, G. K. “Spenser's Amoretti and the English Tradition.” In A Theatre for Spenserians. Ed. Kennedy, Judith M. and Reither, James A. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1973, 124–44.Google Scholar
Kostic, V. “Spenser's Amoretti and Tasso's Lyric Poetry.” Renaissance and Modern Studies 3 (1959): 51–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lever, J. W. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet. 1956; rpt. London: Methuen, 1966.Google Scholar
Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Mediaeval Tradition. 1936; rpt. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1944.Google Scholar
Martz, Louis L. “The Amoretti: ‘Most Goodly Temperature.‘” In Form and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser. Ed. Nelson, William. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961, 146–68.Google Scholar
McNeir, Waldo. “An Apology for Spenser's Amoretti.” In Essential Articles for the Study of Edmund Spenser. Ed. Hamilton, A. C. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1972, 524–33.Google Scholar
Minta, Stephen. Petrarch and Petrarchism: The English and the French Traditions. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Mortimer, Anthony. Petrarch's Canzoniere in the English Renaissance. Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1975.Google Scholar
Neely, Carol Thomas. “The Structure of English Renaissance Sonnet Sequences.” ELH 45 (1978): 359–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petrarch. Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Scott, Janet. Les Sonnets élisabéthains. Paris: Champion, 1929.Google Scholar
Scott, Janet. “The Sources of Spenser's Amoretti.” Modern Language Review 22 (1927): 189–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spenser, Edmund. Spenser: Poetical Works. Ed. Smith, J. C. and de Selincourt, E. 1912; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Spenser, Edmund. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition. 9 vols. Ed. Greenlaw, E., Osgood, C. G., Padelford, F. M., and Heffner, P. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1932–49.Google Scholar
Surrey, Earl of, Howard, Henry. Poems. Ed. Jones, Emrys. Oxford: Clarendon, 1964.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato. Le rime de Torquato Tasso. 3 vols. Ed. Solerti, Paolo. Bologna, 1898–1902.Google Scholar
Thomson, Patricia. Sir Thomas Wyatt and His Background. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Watson, George. The English Petrarchans: A Critical Bibliography. London: Warburg Institute Surveys, Univ. of London, 1967.Google Scholar
Wilkins, E. H. The Making of the Canzoniere and Other Petrarchan Studies. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1951.Google Scholar
Wright, Louis B. Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Wyatt, Thomas. Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Ed. Muir, Kenneth and Thomson, Patricia. Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 1969.Google Scholar