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Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and his Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Evelyn May Albright*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago

Extract

In spite of the fact that Spenser, less than three years befor his death, published An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie and An Hymne of Heavenly Love, which show a mixture of strongly Christian elements with Platonic idealism, there has been a tendency of late to classify Spenser as pre-eminently pagan, or even atheistic. A moderate view is that of Denis Saurat, who, in his “Les idées philosophiques de Spenser,” concludes that religion was necessary to Spenser's temperament but impossible to his intellect. He credits Spenser with no systematic cosmogony or reasoned agnosticism; and, though he quotes Professor Greenlaw on Spenser's interest in contemporary scientific thought, he does not seem inclined to rate it so highly. Spenser, as Saurat depicts him, is by temperament a pagan: though he has a sincere desire for religious faith, he has at the same time an intellectual inability to believe.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1929 , pp. 715 - 759
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 715 Yearbook of the New Society of Letters at Lund, 1924-25.

Note 2 in page 715 Edwin Greenlaw, “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” Studies in Philology, XVII (1920), 320-59; “Spenser and Lucretius,” Ibid., 439 ff.; and “Some Old Religious Cults,” Ibid., XX (1923), 216 ff.

Note 3 in page 715 “Spenser's Reasons for Rejecting the Mutability Cantos,” Stud. in Philol., April, 1928. An objection to my dating of these cantos is made by H. M. Beiden, in “Alarms de Insulis, Giles Fletcher, and the ‘Mutabilitie’ Cantos,” Stud. in Philol., XXVI (1929), pp. 142-44; but the passages in “Mutability” which he quotes are from an obviously patched-in addition, which may be as late as 1589. A later date than 1589 is not required for the passage quoted from Colin Clout, as I shall show in a reply to Mr. Belden's objections.

Note 4 in page 716 Book V, I think, may replace what the Mutability cantos were once designed for, but with more pointed reference to individual policies in Ireland.

Note 5 in page 717 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII (1920), 440-1.

Note 6 in page 718 Stud. in Philol., XVII, 459.

Note 7 in page 719 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 439.

Note 8 in page 719 “Some Old Religious Cults in Spenser,” Stud., in Philol., XX, 216 S.

Note 9 in page 720 Stud. in Philol., XX, 216.

Note 10 in page 720 Ibid., XVII, 340.

Note 11 in page 721 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 455.

Note 12 in page 722 Not yet published.

Note 13 in page 723 “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 339.

Note 14 in page 725 I use the translation of H. A. J. Munro, which seems to me sufficiently literal for this discussion. The passages can be easily located in the original.

Note 15 in page 727 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 447 and 444.

Note 16 in page 728 “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 340.

Note 17 in page 729 “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 340.

Note 18 in page 729 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 447.

Note 19 in page 731 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 448-50.

Note 20 in page 733 My account of his system is based chiefly upon the fragments of Empedocles as edited by Henry Stein, Empedoclis Agrigentini fragmenta, 1852; by Simon' Karsten, Empedoclis . . . . carminum reliquiae: de vita ejus . . . ., 1838; and by John Burnet, in Early Greek Philosophy, 1908, 238 ff. There are many other accounts accessible. I quote in this paper passages from Burnet's translation of the Fragments (1908 edition), having compared them with Stein's and Karsten's texts. The numbering of the fragments is that of Diels.

A fifteen-page survey at the close of Karsten's text will give an idea of the use of Empedocles by later writers.

Note 21 in page 734 Cf. Diog. VIII, 77 (R. P. 162); Suidas, s. v. Empedokles. Cf. Diels, “Ueber die Gedichte des Empedokles,” Koenigl. Akad. Berlin, Sitzungsb., 1898, pp. 396 ff.; and John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1908), pp. 238 ff.

Note 22 in page 742 On Empedocles's account of the creation of living forms, we have the doxographical tradition and the Aristotelian interpretations (as in the Treatise on Plants) to help out the fragments. The text of Aetios is quoted in part by J. Burnet in his Early Greek Philosophy. Aetios gives the clearest view of the four stages of life in accordance with the dominance of love and strife. I have not presented this because it is not in Spenser.

Note 23 in page 745 Aristotle is teleological, and objects to views such as Empedocles's and Lucretius's which make Chance rule combinations. His criticism of Empedocles's principle of survival of the fittest is in his Physics, B, 8, 198b29 and his De Part. An. A, 1, 640 a19.

Note 24 in page 747 There is but one approach to atomism in Empedocles, and that is undoubtedly by an unconscious implication where, in Fragments 17 and 34, he describes the movements of the elements as “running through each other.” According to Aristotle, Empedocles explained mixture as due to symmetry of the “pores.” As like bodies tend to have like “pores,” like bodies can mingle more readily. I have spoken of the “mixture” of elements as being taken over by Spenser in the early Hymne of Love, 91 ff., and elsewhere. It is possible that the need of selecting “likes” as mates expressed in the early Hymne of Beautie, 190 ff. may be due to Empedocles, as Fragments 22 and others in Empedocles have to do with the harmony of mating and mixing “likes.”

Note 25 in page 747 “Spenser and Bruno,” PMLA, XLIII (1928), 679.

Note 26 in page 749 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 461.

Note 27 in page 750 In fragment 101, Empedocles, in connection with his discussion of the senses, uses the dog tracking by scent.

Note 28 in page 750 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Stud. in Philol., XVII, 445.

Note 29 in page 755 In his conception of God he is a little like Empedocles and more like the stoics. The stoic God is a diety which permeates the world as a creative fire, an all-pervading breath, the soul and reason of all (Justus Lipsius, Physiologia stoicorum, Antwerp, 1610). Lipsius himself emphasizes wisdom as a chief attribute of God, in his Constancy.

Note 30 in page 756 “Some Old Religious Cults in Spenser,” Stud. in Philol., XX (1923), 216 ff.

Note 31 in page 758 “Spenser and Lucretius,” p. 453.