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Archaism and Innovation In Spenser's Poetic Diction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

B. R. McElderry Jr.
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Extract

The traditional comment of Ben Jonson that “in affecting the ancients Spenser writ no language,” amplified by objections of nineteenth century philologists against Spenser's supposed inaccuracy in reviving old words and his lawlessness in coining new ones, has been much qualified by recent critical analysis. Professor Renwick has emphasized the relation of Spenser's diction to the general Renaissance problem of developing and enriching the modern tongues as mediums for serious literature. In somewhat greater detail Miss Pope has traced the course of Italian, French, and English Renaissance criticism on the subject of literary diction and its relation to Spenser's practice. From these studies Spenser's experiments in language are seen to have a dignity of purpose quite different from the freakishness implied in Jonson's petulant remark and all too often assumed by previous critics. Though Spenser was the first great English poet of the sixteenth century, general cultural activity had been vigorous. Printing had made possible the vogue of translations, both scriptural and purely literary, and English as a literary language assumed a growing importance.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1932 , pp. 144 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 Probably Jonson had Vergil and Theocritus in mind. P. W. Long, in “Spenser's Rosalind,” Anglia, xxxi, 90, gives the following note: “Dryden (Dedication of tr. of Vergil's Pastorals) notes that by means of them Spenser ‘exactly imitated the Doric of Theocritus.‘ Saintsbury's Scott's ed. of Dryden, xiii, 325.” Dr. Long also refers to the Vergilian inspiration of Spenser's archaism in his review of Osgood's Concordance, MLR, xii, 88.

Jonson himself speaks of Vergil's archaism approvingly for its moderation, contrasting Vergil with Lucretius, who, he says, “is scabrous and rough in these; he seeks them: as some do Chaucerisms with us, which were better expunged and banished,” The Works of Ben Jonson, ed. Francis Cunningham (London, 1897), iii, 414. (The famous remark that Spenser writ no language occurs p. 412 of this edition of Timber.) Sidney's well-known disapproval of Spenser's archaisms reads interestingly here, and exposes a shallower classicist than Jonson or Dryden: “The Shepheards Kalendar hath much Poetrie in his Eclogues: That framing of his style to an old rustick language I dare not alowe, sith neyther Theocritus in Greeke, Virgil in Latin, nor Sanazar in Italian did affect it.” Elizabethan Critical Essays, G. Gregory Smith, editor (Oxford, 1904), i, 96.

2 W. L. Renwick, Edmund Spenser: An Essay on Renaissance Poetry (London, 1925), pp. 65–96.

3 Emma Field Pope, “Renaissance Criticism and the Diction of the Faerie Queene,” PMLA, xli, 575–619.

4 Miss Pope briefly surveys criticism of Spenser's diction, ibid., pp. 575–580. Her list of references could of course be extended; particularly interesting is the curiously bitter denunciation of Spenser's diction by Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, iii, 62–65.

5 Loc. cit., pp. 618–619.

6 “The Poet's Poet,” The Academy, lxv (1903), p. 248. This unsigned article is reprinted without the remarks on archaism in Thompson's Works, (New York, 1913), vol. iii, pp. 140–146.

7 George Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody (New York, 1906), vol. i, pp. 365–366.

8 E. De Selincourt, Introduction, in The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, ed. J. C. Smith and E. De Selincourt (Oxford, 1912), pp. lx–lxii.

9 P. W. Long, Modern Language Review, xii (1917), 88.

10 This article represents part of an unpublished study, Spenser's Poetic Diction, deposited in the library of the State University of Iowa in 1925.

11 Loc. cit., p. 603, note 1.

12 J. W. H. Atkins, “The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare,” Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. iii (Cambridge, 1909), p. 509.

13 P. xxii.

14 John Bartlett, A New and Complete Concordance to … Shakespeare, (New York, 1896)

Crawford, A Concordance to the Works of Thomas Kyd (Louvain, 1906), Band xv, Materialien zur Kunde des Alteren Englischen Dramas, ed. W. Bang.

Charles Crawford, The Marlowe Concordance (Louvain, 1911), Band xxxiv, Bang's Materialien. (Complete only through “goods.”)

Laura Lockwood, Lexicon to the English Poetical Works of John Milton (New York, 1917). The following sixteenth century lists of old words are of some value:

P.G., “Vocabula Chauceriana,” Grammatica Anglicana, 1594. Reprinted by E. P. Hammond in Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York, 1908), pp. 505–506.

Phillips, The New World of English Words: Or a General Dictionary, (London, 1671, Third edition). A list of the words marked “old” is given by J. L. Moore in Tudor Stuart Views on the Growth, Status, and Destiny of the English Language (Halle, 1910), Heft xli, Studien zur Englischen Philologie, ed. Morsbach.

Thomas Speght, The Workes of our Ancient and Learned English Poet Geofrey Chaucer, newly Printed (London, 1598). See sig. Aaaa 1, 7, ff., for an extensive glossary.

Richard Verstegan, A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (Antwerp, 1605), pp. 207–239.

Grosart's editions of Dekker, Greene, Harvey, and Nashe, for the Huth Library have extensive glossaries.

ay. Though O.E.D. gives only three quotations between 1500 and 1650, the word is frequent in Tottel's Miscellany, Sackeville, and other writers.

bent. The verb bend was as ordinary as at present. The sense of “obedient” in the participle is not frequent but is only slightly figurative.

comet. Though O.E.D. lists only four quotations between 1500 and 1650, such a word needs little illustration. The word occurs in Shakespeare. The present use is probably remarked by E. K. merely because it is figurative.

deaffly. Deft and deftly together are represented by two quotations before 1579 and thirteen between 1579 and 1650. Probably the unusual spelling led E. K. to annotate.

moones. The figurative use of this word for months is too natural and widespread for one to take the three O.E.D. quotations between 1500 and 1650 as indicating lack of currency. Further illustration would hardly be necessary.

15 The glosses of The Shepheards Calendar have been previously studied by Grosart in attempt to show that Spenser's dialect words are chiefly Lancastrine: The Complete Works, in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser, ed. Grosart (London, 1882), i, 408–417; by Long “Spenser's Rosalind,” Anglia, xxxi, 72–104, and by Brunner, “Die Dialektworter in Spenser's Shepherds' Calendar,” Archiv f. d. Studium d. n. Spr. und Lit., cxxxii, 401–404, in denying Lancastrine dialect origin for many of the words in Grosart's list; by Herford, Shepheards Calendar (London, 1895), pp. xlviii–lxii in an illustrative way only; and more fully by Draper, “The Glosses to Spenser's ‘Shepheardes Calendar’,” JEGP, xviii, 556–574. These authors take E.K. as sufficient authority that a word was unusual, and assign most of these words to dialect or Middle English origin. Carke, for example, both Grosart and Draper give as dialect. But in spite of the dialectal flavor which the word now has for us, O.E.D. gives quotations from Boorde, Drant, Coverdale, Woolton, Arnolde, Balfour, Palsgrave, and Parker before 1579, and from Babington, Cowell, Florio, Ainsworth, Massinger, Tusser, Holland, Golding, Blythe, Twyne, Heywood, Hall, and Whateley between 1579 and 1650. The force of the term dialect as applied to a word is at least greatly weakened by such evidence.

16 In tabulating the archaisms for my own study I grouped their occurrence under the following heads: Early Minor Poems (aside from The Shepheards Calendar), The Shepheards Calendar, The Faerie Queene, i-iii, The Faerie Queene, iv-vii, and Later Minor Poems. Archaism in the Minor Poems is, of course, incidental. As for the two sections of The Faerie Queene, I found no material difference in the degree of archaism. Most of Spenser's favorite archaisms occur in both earlier and later books, and it is further significant that many occur in the later books for the first time. Abet (sb. fraud), accusement, arow, assemblance, attendment, aviewed, awook, bel-accoile, clemence, crook (nook), endoss, enfelon, eye-pit, fewter, hend (grasp), selcouth, thereamong, and thereas are examples of archaisms first used in the later books of The Faerie Queene.

17 Loc. cit., pp. 607–608.

18 I quote from Lounsbury, op. cit., p. 62. Similar assertions have been made by other older critics.

19 George Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody (New York, 1906), i, 365–366.