Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:06:18.937Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Not Defending Poetry: Spenser, Suffering, and the Energy of Affect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joseph Campana
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Early modern defenses of poetry, such as Philip Sidney's influential Defence of Poesy, respond to long-standing anxieties about the validity of poetry by asserting the primacy of its moral function. Sidney's heroic rhetoric locates poetry's “power” in its capacity to create iconic portraits (“speaking pictures”) of unchanging moral truths. Edmund Spenser departs markedly from Sidney's static moral vision of the function of poetry. Whereas Sidney privileges enargeia, or vividness, The Faerie Queene works consistently to disarm the heroic masculinity that violently produces enargeia as a form of iconic, moral clarity. Spenser's Legend of Temperance finds energeia, or vitality, in moments of suffering and in corresponding moments of sympathy. Through suffering, Spenser highlights the dense networks of affect and obligation that defy moral and visual clarity. For him, poetry resonates with the affective energies of corporeal experience, from which language derives its capacity to move.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 1: Special Topic: On Poetry , January 2005 , pp. 33 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. “Belief and the Suspension of Belief.” Literature and Belief. Ed. Abrams, . New York: Columbia UP, 1958. 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. “Lyric Poetry and Society.” Telos 20 (1974): 56–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alpers, Paul. The Poetry of The Faerie Queene. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1982.Google Scholar
Aristotle. The “Art” of Rhetoric. Trans. Freese, J. H. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1926.Google Scholar
Augustine. Confessions. Trans. Chadwick, Henry. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Bender, John. Spenser and Literary Pictoralism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Trans. Mitchell, Arthur. New York: Random, 1944.Google Scholar
Chapman, George. Ovids Banquet of Sence. London, 1595.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Margaret. Trials of Desire. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, Angus. Allegory. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1964.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “The Economic Problem of Masochism.” On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Penguin Freud Lib. 2. London: Penguin, 1991. 409–26.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine, and Greenblatt, Stephen. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gioia, Dana. “Can Poetry Matter?” Can Poetry Matter? Saint Paul: Graywolf, 2002. 1–21.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. “The Touch of the Real.” Gallagher and Greenblatt 20–48.Google Scholar
Gross, Kenneth. Spenserian Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Hagstrum, Jean H. The Sister Arts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1958.Google Scholar
Harington, John, trans. and ed. Orlando Furioso in English. London, 1591.Google Scholar
Horace. Satires, Epistles, [and] Ars Poetica. Trans. Fairclough, H. R. Loeb Classical Lib. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1926.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Jephcott, Edmund. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Hughes, John. “An Essay on Allegorical Poetry.” Penguin Critical Anthologies: Edmund Spenser. Ed. Al-pers, Paul. London: Penguin, 1969. 78–96.Google Scholar
Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.Google Scholar
Kane, Sean. Spenser's Moral Allegory. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1989.Google Scholar
Longinus. On the Sublime. Trans. Fyfe, W. H. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. Capital. Ed. Engels, Frederick. New York: International, 1967.Google Scholar
Matz, Robert. Defending Literature in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milton, John. Areopagitica. Prose Writings. London: Dent, 1958. 145–85.Google Scholar
Oruch, James. “Lost Works.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. Hamilton, A. C. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990.Google Scholar
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New York: Vintage, 1991.Google Scholar
Peters, F. E. Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon. New York: New York UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie. Introd. Baxter Hathaway. Kent: Kent State UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Quintilian. The Orator's Education: Books 6-8. Trans. Russell, Donald. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Read, David. Temperate Conquests: Spenser and the Spanish New World. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Sidney, Philip. A Defence of Poetry. Ed. Van Dorsten, J. A. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.Google Scholar
Spenser, Edmund. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition. Ed. Edwin Greenlaw et al. 11 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1932–57.Google Scholar
Steiner, Wendy. The Colors of Rhetoric. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato. Jerusalem Delivered. Trans. Fairfax, Edward. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.Google Scholar
Teskey, Gordon. Allegory and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Vickers, Brian, ed. English Renaissance Literary Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism. New York: Penguin, 2002.Google Scholar