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Spenser's “Mutabilitie”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edwin Greenlaw
Edwin Greenlaw*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

Several recent articles have called attention once more to the problems presented by Spenser's Mutabilitie. Two of them, by Ronald B. Levinson and Evelyn May Albright, deal with certain portions of a series of three essays which I published several years ago, and concern Spenser's use of materials drawn from various sources on the general subject of what Mr. Grierson has called metaphysical poetry. Three others, by Miss Albright, H. M. Belden, and by Miss Albright in reply to Mr. Belden, raise questions concerning the dating of the poem and its relation to Harvey's criticism of the first draft of the Faerie Queene. Since with the single exception of the problem of historical allegory, no topic in Spenser criticism is of comparable interest just now, it is important to review the present state of the inquiry and to consider what remains to be done.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1930 , pp. 684 - 703
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1930

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References

1 “Spenser and Bruno,” PMLA XLIII, 675.

2 Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and his Religion,“ PMLA XLIV, 715.

3 SP XVII, 320; XVII, 439; XX, 216.

4 “Spenser's Reasons for Rejecting the Cantos of Mutability,” SP XXV, 93.

5 “Alanus de Insulis, Giles Fletcher, and the ‘Mutabilitie’ Cantos,” SP XXVI, 131.

6 “On the Dating of Spenser's ‘Mutabilitie’ Cantos,” SP XXVI, 482.

7 SP XX, 240.

8 Examples of this distortion are too numerous to cite. The curious reader, however, may compare with what I say such of Miss Albright's ideas as the following: 1. That I hold Spenser's gods (i.e. his personal religious faith) to be like those of Lucretius. 2. To imagine Lucretius praying the great Sabaoth God for rest (where the implication is that my evidence is intended to convey the impression that Spenser had become a disciple of Lucretius in his personal religious view). 3. That I seek to show that Spenser, like Lucretius, aims to overthrow superstition based on ignorance and that this involves also the assumption that Spenser adopted the beliefs of Lucretius on personal immortality. What is really at issue in the passage from my essay (page 461) from which she here quotes is that there is a difference between Lucretius and Ovid in theories of change; she does not quote my statement on page 462 which is vital to my argument. 4. Her repeated assumption that I identify Mutability, the adversary of Jove, with Spenser; e.g. “Here, as usual, Mr. Greenlaw attributes to Spenser allegiance to the materialistic Mutability.” Now as Miss Albright very well knows, “Spenser” in such passages is a shorthand reference to the way in which an incident or an idea is handled by the poet in a particular passage, not to his theology. 5. “Mr. Greenlaw does not notice that God is in the Garden” (an idea which is an obsession with her, for she refers to it three times). If she will look at the passage in Spenser she will see that God is not in the Garden, having departed. But this is a mere quibble; she may restore God to her Garden, if she desires, without in any way affecting the argument, which is that the description of the Garden contains elements taken from Lucretius. 6. The impossibility of harmonizing these beliefs (they are not beliefs, but facts) in the mind of a poet who is sane. But the materialistic belief, once more, is Mutability's. 7. “Mr. Greenlaw charges that Spenser like Lucretius aimed to depose God as creator and ruler of men.” But this is the argument of the poem; specifically, the argument of Mutability the Titaness; it has nothing to do with Spenser's religion. 8. After referring to the concluding prayer of Spenser's poem: “This is the poem which according to Mr. Greenlaw was designed to unseat God from his throne.” Comment is superfluous. Other illustrations could be given, were it worth while.

9 The Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, June, 1925.

10 “Spenser's Reasons for Rejecting the Cantos of Mutabilitie,” SP XXV, 93.