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Spenser's Muiopotmos as an Allegory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Jessie M. Lyons
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Extract

Most readers of Spenser's Muiopotmos will recall Professor Palgrave's comments upon the poem in his essays on The Minor Poem of Spenser. He said in part: “The lyric regarded from this point of view, is as light and fanciful, as winged and ethereal, as Clarion himself: the sunshine of the Summer's day which it describes glitters through it: the musical ripple of rhyme and metre is unbroken.” Then, finding but a fantastically slight connection between the episodes of the tapestries and the story of Clarion, Mr. Palgrave further summed up his comment upon the poem: “The tale hence seems even more inconsecutive than Mother Hubbard's; it neither is a whole as a story, an allegory, nor a moralization; and one asks in what humour a poet so sage and serious as Spenser, an artist so finished, can have painted this picture?—a question for sufficient answer to which he might have pointed triumphantly to the exquisiteness with which the fairy web is wrought and embroidered; to the poet's right, now and then, to be fancy free.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , 1916 , pp. 90 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1916

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References

1 The Minor Poems of Spenser, in Grosart's Spenser, vol. iv, pp. lxs-lxxi.

2 Spenser's Works, Cambridge Edition, pp. 115-116.

3 Publications of the Modern Lang. Assn., vol. xxv (1910).

4 Modern Language Review, October, 1914.

5 Spenser and His Poetry, vol. iii, pp. 172-3.

6 The Globe Spenser, Introduction, p. xlvi.

7 Publications of the Mod. Lang. Assn., vol. xxv, p. 640.

8 Lowell's Works, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, vol. iv, p. 313.

9 Modern Philology, January, 1905.

10 Spenser's Poems, Cambridge Edition, p. 116.

11 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 69; E. Gosse, Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 40.

12 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 61-62; E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, p. 35; Oldys, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, p. 84.

13 E. Edwards, Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, vol. i, pp. 2-5; Epistle Dedicatory of John Hooker to Sir Walter Ralegh Knight, etc., Holinshed, vol. vi, p. 101. Oldys, Life and Works of Sir W. Ralegh, vol. i, pp. 87-88.

14 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 9-10.

15 Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 11-17.

16 Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 18-19.

17 Holinshed (London, 1808), vol. vi, pp. 441-442.

18 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 26-30.

19 Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 39-40.

20 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 58-61; Holinshed, Hooker's Dedication, vol. vi, p. 101; E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, pp. 32-35; Oldys, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, p. 83-84.

21 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, p. 61.

22 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 61-62; E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, p. 35; Oldys, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, p. 84.

23 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 61-62.

24 E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, p. 35; W. Stebbing, see note above.

25 Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 69-70; E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, p. 40.

26 W. Stebbing, Life of Sir W. Ralegh, pp. 69-70; E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, p. 42.

27 Life of Sir W. Ralegh, p. 63.

28 Compare the genealogy of Marinell, who clearly represents Sir Walter Raleigh, Faerie Queene, Bk. iii, Canto iv, and Bk. iv, Canto xii. There is an interesting likeness in the characters of Clarion and Marinell.

29 Dedicatory Epistle to Sir Walter Ralegh Knight, etc., Holinshed, vol. vi, p. 108.

30 Dedicatory Epistle, Holinshed, vol. vi, p. 109.

31 See Mr. Nadal's article, Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass., vol. xxv, p. 647.

32 E. Gosse, Life of Sir W. Raleigh, p. 20.