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Spenser and the Renaissance Ideal of Christian Heroism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Michael West
Michael West*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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Extract

WITH THE REEMERGENCE of the classics in the Italian Renaissance, particularly Homer, the concept of a Christian hero as distinct from the Christian champion arose to shape an enormous body of European literature. Broadly speaking, we may describe Christian heroism as aspiring to create an ideal figure, reminiscent of both the chivalric knight and the Christian Everyman, who might fit into a heroic poem that should at the same time rival and eclipse the epics of classical antiquity.1 Perhaps the first poem approaching such dimensions was Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, a superlative romance, but with more tenuous claims to either Christian or heroic values. Ovid, not Virgil, remains clearly the main inspiration for Ariosto's playfully pagan sensuosity, and only by strenuous allegorical interpretation can Christianity be construed as a major force in the poem. Significantly, however, such interpretation was by no means lacking in sixteenth-century Italy, where a host of commentators eagerly supplied it. Concurrently in Portugal Camoens could describe Vasco da Gama's daring voyage with a truly missionary zeal and so create a narrative where heroic action genuinely dramatizes the virtues of the Christian faith. But except for one peculiar episode the Lusiadas lacks the dimension of romance. The curious allegory of the Island of Love with which the epic concludes is apparently evidence of Camoens' felt need to define however hastily his military hero's relation to a world of pastoral romance, where hero and lover are inseparable.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , October 1973 , pp. 1013 - 1032
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 Despite its importance, this concept has received little independent attention. Perhaps closest to a comprehensive treatment is Georg Weise, VIdéale eroico del Rinascimento (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifice Italiane, 1961–65), 2 vols.,but the usefulness of this work is limited by its peculiar literary methodology. Briefer but worthwhile is Margaret Greaves, The Blazon of Honor: A Study of Renaissance Magnanimity (London: Methuen, 1964). However, the most valuable general material is pendant to treatments of individual authors. See esp. Merritt Y. Hughes, Virgil and Spenser, Univ. of California Publications in English, ii, No. 3 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1929), 263–418, and his “The Christ of Paradise Regained and Renaissance Heroic Tradition,” SP, 35 (1938), 254–77; Joseph Cottaz, Le Tasse et la conception épique (Paris: R. Foulon, 1942); John M. Steadman, Milton and the Renaissance Hero (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967); André Stegmann, VHéroïsme cornélien: Genèse et signification (Paris: A. Colin, 1968), ii. Some larger view of pertinent developments in epic is afforded by C. M. Bowra, From Virgil to Milton (London: Macmillan, 1945); Maurice B. McNamee, Honor and the Epic Hero (New York: Holt, 1960). See also E. M. W. Tillyard, The English Epic and Its Background (London: Chatto and Windus, 1954); Pierre-Henri Simon, Le Domaine héroïque des lettres françaises, xe-xixe siècles (Paris: A. Colin, 1963); Eugene M. Waith, Ideas of Greatness: Heroic Drama in England (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971); and other works cited below. But a coherent, comprehensive, and discriminating analysis of the crosscultural development of European heroic ideals from the Trecento to ca. 1700 remains a notable lacuna in Renaissance scholarship.

2 Complete Works, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1912–26), iii, 24–25. See Virgil B.Heltzel, “The Arcadian Hero,” PQ, 41 (1962), 173–80; Alan D. Isler, “The Allegory of the Hero and Sidney's Two Arcadias,” SP, 65 (1968), 171–91.

3 Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Agnes M. C. Latham (London: Routledge, 1951), p. 7.

4 Works, ed. J. William Hebel et al. (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1931–41), ii, 130. On the development of Drayton's heroic ideals see Joan Grundy, The Spenserian Poets (London: Edward Arnold, 1969), Ch. v; also my “Drayton's ‘To the Virginian Voyage’: From Heroic Pastoral to Mock-Heroic,” RenQ, 24 (1971), 501–06.

5 De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum vi.iii, in Works, ed. James Spedding et al. (Boston: Brown and Taggard, 1860–64), ii, 477, and see also pp. 221–22.

6 Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Stratford-upon Avon: Shakespeare Head Press, 1913), p. 156.

7 Hallett Smith, Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge, Mass. :Harvard Univ. Press, 1952), p. 329. My general indebtedness to the body of Spenserian scholarship is evident throughout this essay and sometimes beyond the reach of footnotes. Paul J. Alpers, The Poetry of the Faerie Queene (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), has been especially influential in shaping my conception of the poem.On the characteristically ambiguous workings of Spenser'smind see also W. J. B. Owen, “Narrative Logic and Imitation in the Faerie Queene,” CL, 7 (1955), 324–37, and the essays in Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), ed. Alpers, pp.329–524.1 particularly regret that Maurice Evans' Spenser's Anatomy of Heroism: A Commentary on The Faerie Queene (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970) came to my attention too late for me to profit more by it. Our approaches are complementary but seldom overlap, and the categories of my analysis are without parallel in Evans'Anatomy.

8 Complete Poetical Works, ed. R. E. Neil Dodge (Boston:Houghton, 1908), p. 136. I cite Spenser from this edition.

9 Leonard R. N. Ashley, “Spenser and the Ideal of the Gentleman,” BHR, 27 (1965), 108–32, reviews but does not supersede earlier scholarship on gentility, which tends to overstress the presumed necessity of noble birth. On this general ambiguity in Renaissance thought see Curtis B. Watson, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960), pp. 76–83, 91–92; on Spenser's ambiguity see Arnold Williams, Flower on a Lowly Stalk: The Sixth Book of the Faerie Queene (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 75–79.

10 For an excellent discussion of the genesis of this concept in medieval France (which, however, misconstruesSpenser's position) see Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love: An Introduction to the Love Poetry of the Renaissance (New York: Macmillan, 1958), Ch. ii; also George M. Vogt, “Gleanings for the History of a Sentiment: Generositas Virtus, non Sanguis,” JEGP, 24 (1925), 102–24.

11 Works, p. 136. On middle-class courtesy literature see Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1935), Ch. v; for Spenser's deliberate effort to appeal both to bourgeois and courtly audiences see J. W. Saunders, “The Facade of Morality,” ELH, 19 (1952), 81–114. On the social fluidity mirrored in Spenser see Fritz Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago : Univ. of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 181–83, a necessary corrective to the more canonical view represented by James Lyndon Shanley, A Study of Spenser's Gentleman (Evanston, 111., 1940), pp. 7–9.

12 Shakespeare's Heroical Histories: Henry vi and Its Literary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p. 48, and see Chs. i and ii passim. Cf. Evans, Anatomy, pp. 19–23.

13 Aeneid vi.851–53. For the contrary opinion see Edwin A. Greenlaw, “Spenser and British Imperialism,” in Spenser's Critics, ed. William R. Mueller (Syracuse, ?. Y. : Syracuse Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 128–47; but Caspari, p. 187, seems nearer to the mark.

14 See Michael Walzer, “Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War: The History of a Citation,” HTR, 61 (1968), 11–12.

15 Gordon Worth O'Brien, Renaissance Poetics and the Problem of Power (Chicago : Institute of Elizabethan Studies, 1956), p. 120.

16 See Ralph C. Williams, “The Purpose of Poetry, and Particularly the Epic, as Discussed by Critical Writers of the Sixteenth Century in Italy,” RR, 12 (1921), 18, 15, et passim.

17 Partly because as Alpers, p. 96, demonstrates, “For Spenser the meanings of locutions and formulas are inherent in them, and are as independent of a putative speaker as they are independent of specific dramatic situations within the poem.”

18 On the Thomistic synthesis see R.-A. Gauthier, O.P., Magnanimité: Uldéal de la grandeur (Paris: J. Vrin, 1951), esp. pp. 443–97; for its influence on Spenser see Michael F. Moloney, “St. Thomas and Spenser's Virtue of Magnificence,” JEGP, 52 (1953), 58–62; McNamee, Chs. v, vii-ix. On de Joinville's importance see Greaves, p. 33.

19 See John M. Steadman, “‘Men of the Renown’: Heroic Virtue and the Giants of Genesis 6:4 (Paradise Lost, xi, 638–99),” PQ, 40 (1961), 580–86.

20 For a different emphasis see Kathleen Williams, Spenser's World of Glass (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1966), pp. 123–24.

21 See the Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin Greenlaw et al. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1932–49), i, 374–78.

22 For the intellectual background underlying the inconsistencies of this scene see my “Spenser, Everard Digby, and the Renaissance Art of Swimming,” RenQ, 26 (1973), 11–22. On the difficulty Book v posed for Spenser's allegorical technique see Evans, Anatomy, pp. 66, 199–201.

23 With the problem of Odysseus' corselet in Iliad xii.436, 456–58, cf. Allan H. Gilbert, “Spenserian Armor,” PMLA, 67 (1942), 981–87, on Spenser's substantial ignorance of the subject.

24 For a characteristic version of this argument see Thomas M. Greene, The Descent from Heaven (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1962), p. 328.

25 Graham Hough, A Preface to the Faerie Queene (New York: Norton, 1963), pp. 95–99.

26 See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Pantheon, 1953), Ch. ix.

27 Phyllis Bartlett, “The Heroes of Chapman's Homer,” RES, 17(1941), 257–80.

28 On the anomalous quality of Odysseus' heroism see W. B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), esp. Ch. v.

29 Martha Allen Craig, cited by Alpers, p. 282.

30 On the development involved see Isabel E. Rathborne, The Meaning of Spenser's Fairyland (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937), Ch. i; Sister Mary Anne Winklemann, “Spenser's Modifications of the Renaissance Idea of Glory as the Motivation of the Faerie Queene,” Diss. St. Louis 1961 (Univ. Microfilms, Ann Arbor).

31 John M. Steadman, “Achilles and Renaissance Epic: Moral Criticism and Literary Tradition,” in Lebende Antike: Symposium fiir Rudolf Siihnel, ed. Horst Meller and Hans-Joachim Zimmermann (Bonn: E. Schmidt, 1967), pp. 150–51.

32 See William P. Blissett, “Lucan's Caesar and the Elizabethan Villain,” SP, 53 (1956), 553–75.

33 Francesco Petrarca, Le familiari, ed. Vittorio Rossi and Umberto Bosco (Firenze: G. Sansoni, 1933–42), iv, 92–93 (xii.xiv.8–9).

34 On background see Watson, pp. 124–27; for a finely detailed exegesis of this theme in Book i see Alpers, pp. 334–69.

35 With Kerby Neill, “The Degradation of the Redcross Knight,” ELH, 19 (1952), 173–90. Cf. Alpers, pp. 340–41.

36 Eugene M. Waith, The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare and Dryden (New York : Columbia Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 44–45.

37 Isidore Silver, Ronsard and the Greek Epic, Vol. i of Ronsard and the Hellenic Renaissance in France (St. Louis, Mo. : Washington Univ., 1961), p. 142.

38 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, new ed. (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 68–69.

39 Cf. Alpers, pp. 36–38, on Una's seemingly contradictory expression of heartrending pity and patience (i.x.28).

40 See Rolf Soellner, “The Madness of Hercules and the Elizabethans,” CL, 10 (1958), 309–24; Ruth Wallerstein, “To Madness Near Allied,” HLQ, 6 (1943), 445–71.

41 Thomas Hudson, trans., The Historié of Judith, ed. James Craigie (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1941), p. 8. See also Evans, Anatomy, p. 15.

42 See Weise, i, 87–101 ; also Watson, pp. 102–06; and for extensive treatment of this tendency in Continental humanism, Charles Trinkaus, “In Our Image and Likeness”: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), 2 vols.

43 Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hobv. ed. Walter Raleigh (London: David Nutt, 1900), p. 314.

44 Cited by Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (New York: Pantheon, 1953), p. 2.3.

45 See Hughes, Virgil and Spenser, pp. 359–64, for a somewhat different interpretation.

46 See Guiseppe Saitta, // pensiero italiano neïï Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento (Bologna: C. Zuffi, 1949–51), i, 396–409, 653–71 ; Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. Peter Munz (New York: Harper, 1965), pp. 211–14; Heinz-Ulrich Schmidt, Zum Problem des Héros bei Giordano Bruno, Abhandlung zur Philosophie, Psichologie, und Pâdagogik, 5 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1968).

47 Alpers notes this “fictional inconsistency” (p. 8), explaining that Spenser is “entirely untroubled by possible contradictions” between Christianity and heroism and “trusts the reader to see the relation and coherence of the points made.” However, I am not so sure that “his confidence here is justified” (p. 119). Cf. Alpers' later admission that in this episode “Spenser makes us feel the elements of conflict and incompatibility” (p. 289).

48 J. C. Maxwell, “The Truancy of Calidore,” ELH, 19 (1952), 143–49, formulates the central problems involved.

49 E.g., H. C. Chang, Allegory and Courtesy in Spenser:A Chinese View (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1955), p. 191; A. C. Hamilton, The Structure of Allegory in the Faerie Queene (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), p. 203; Arnold Williams, pp. 55–56, 79. Alpers' trenchant analysis, pp. 292–96, seems somewhat to overstress Spenser's presumed suspension of judgment. Maurice Evans, “Courtesy and the Fall of Man,” ES, 46 (1965), 209–20, is more persuasive.

50 See Works, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London: 1885–96), i, 270–72; ii, 329–35.

51 Mark Rose, Heroic Love: Studies in Sidney and Spenser (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1968), p. 139.

52 See Ronald S. Berman, “Shakespeare's Alexander: Henry v,” CE, 23 (1962), 532–39, esp. on the play's affinities with JC. For other conventions involved in Henry's fifth-act metamorphosis see my “Petruchio's Wooing Dance: Male Superiority in The Taming of the Shrew,” forthcoming in Shaks.

53 On Shakespeare's tragic criticism of the heroic image in disintegration see esp. Reuben A. Brower, Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971); also Matthew N. Proser, The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965); R. Marienstras, “La Dégradation des vertus héroïques dans Othello et dans Coriolan” EA,1 (1964), 372–89 ; Eugene M. Waith, “Manhood and Valor in Two Shakespearean Tragedies,” ELH, 17 (1950), 262–74.

54 In addition to Steadman see esp. Stanley Fish, “Standing Only: Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost,” CritQ, 9 (1967), 142–54.

55 In addition to Cottaz see esp. R. O. Sayce, The French Biblical Epic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955).

56 In addition to Stegmann see Serge Doubrovsky, Corneille et la dialectique du héros (Paris: Gallimard, 1963).

57 See Alison I. T. Higgins, Secular Heroic Epic Poetry of the Caroline Period (Bern: A. Francke, 1953), p. 9; Ruth Nevo, The Dial of Virtue: A Study of Poems on Affairs of State in the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, N. J. : Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 15–17, et passim. In my “Neglected Continental Parallels for Dryden's Mac Flecknoe,” forthcoming in SEL, I have explored other sources of the mock-heroic sensibility.

58 See Waith, Heroic Drama in England, p. 131 and Ch. iii, for an account of these tendencies at work in Jacobean and Caroline drama; also Arthur Kirsch, Drydens Heroic Drama (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965).

59 “Dedication to Examen Poeticum” (1963), in Poetical Works, ed. George R. Noyes (Boston: Houghton, 1909), p. 386. For ampler treatment of Dryden's attitude toward heroism see my “Dryden and the Disintegration of Renaissance Heroic Ideals,” Costerus, vii (1973), 195–222; also “Dryden's Ambivalence as a Translator of Heroic Themes,” forthcoming in HLQ; and “Shifting Concepts of Heroism in Dryden's Panegyrics,” forthcoming in PLL.