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Spenser and Bruno

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Ronald B. Levinson
Ronald B. Levinson*
Affiliation:
University of Maine
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Extract

Recent research into the sources of the philosophical ideas incorporated by Spenser in the Faerie Queene necessitates the re-raising of an old question, never satisfactorily answered: Did Spenser read Bruno? The external evidence—Bruno's residence in England during the years 1583-5, the London publication of his Italian works, the dedication of his Spaccio and his De gl' Heroici Furori to Sir Philip Sidney—has long rendered the supposition initially attractive. Moreover the community of Neoplatonic elements in Bruno and Spenser, together with a certain affinity between the theme of the cantos of Mutability and Bruno's Spaccio, added color to the hypothesis. But in the absence of more specific documentation the suggestion of Bruno's influence upon Spenser has properly retained the status of a mere possibility. It is the primary purpose of this paper to adduce certain further considerations which in my opinion lend a considerable weight of probability to an affirmative answer to the question. Secondarily, my object is to conduct a pacific polemic against Mr. Greenlaw's thesis that certain portions of the Faerie Queene are animated by a spirit of Lucretian scepticism at odds with that Christianized Neoplatonism which has commonly been recognized as Spenser's sole philosophy. My contention is that to a right reading there exists no such antithesis as that which Mr. Greenlaw finds between the main tenor of Spenser's philosophy and the philosophical implications of the passages in question, and that a means of reconciling their apparent incompatibility and saving Spenser from a charge of inconsistency too gross even for poetic license to condone, is the postulate of a Bruno influence.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 1928 , pp. 675 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

page 675 note 1 See especially Professor Greenlaw's article, “Spenser and Lucretius,” Studies in thOeioo, xvii, 437 seq.

page 676 note 2 That Mr. Greenlaw has made his case for the presence of a Lucretain influence upon the Garden of Adonis is I think perfectly dear. Not only are some of the philosophical ideas ultimately derived from the De Rervm Nature,, but in some instances there are verbal paralles, though I can not follow Mr. Greenlaw the whole ce his way in this last.

page 677 note 3 Bruno's chages of attitude toward the problem of the relation of matter and spirit are outlined in Höffding's note, Hist. Mod. Philosophy, 1,508.

page 677 note 4 Opere ltaliane, ed. Lagarde, p. 246-7, “la materia sola essere la sustanxa de le cose.”

page 677 note 5 Of these imitations one of some interest from the present point of view is the free translation of the opening lines of the De Rerum Nature, occurring in the Spacciio, Lagarde p. 426, lines paraphrased also by Spenser who utilises them for the lover's prayer in the temple of Venus, (F. Q. IV, x, 44).

page 677 note 6 Lagarde p. 409. For ar interesting supplement cf. Lag., p. 238.

page 678 note 7 Mr. Greenlaw well compares Lucretius, Bk. II, v. 1002 ff, where the phrase “format mutentque oolores” is striking. A reading of Bruno's borrowings from Lucretius may well have sent Spenser back to his original.

page 679 note 8 Plato in the Timaeus combines Atomism with the Doctrine of Ideas, but matter foe him is no substance.

page 679 note 9 Oliver Elton, “Giordano Bruno in England,” in Modern Studies, Load. 1907.

page 679 note 10 Mr. Elton cites also an interesting parallel from Bruno's De gl“ Heroici Furori, see his article, pp. 33-4.

page 679 note 11 Lagarde, Op. Cit., pp. 482-6.

page 680 note 12 Lagarde, p. 420 (italics my own).

page 680 note 13 That Spenser is adhering to his customary astronomy is well shown by the cross-reference to F. Q. V, prologue, ft. “But most is Mars amisse of all the rest,” st suggested by Sebastian Evans, (Macmiiian's Mag., Vol. XLII). Curiously enough Mr. Greenlaw appears to have forgotten his own earlier statemen t (.Sludies in Classical Philology, XVII, 331) that Spenser's theory of the Cosmos as set forth in the cantos of Mutability and elsewhere, is “Ptolemaic and Aristotelian.” It is one of the ironies of criticism that the writer in Mscmillan's above quoted, was so far from finding in the cantos of Mutability an innovating break with ancient cosirwlogy as to suggest that they constitute an indirect refutation of Bruno's exposition of the Copemican astronomy.