Spenser: One Day I Wrote Her Name

Ø  In A View of the Present State of Ireland, Spenser argued that Ireland would never be totally ‘pacified’ by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence.

Ø  Amoretti is a sonnet cycle that describes his courtship and eventual marriage to Elizabeth Boyle.

Ø  The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets, along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics and Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage.

Ø  The sonnets of Amoretti draw heavily on authors of the Petrarchan tradition, most obviously Torquato Tasso and Petrarch himself

Ø  Amoretti breaks with conventional love poetry in a number of ways. In most sonnet sequences in the Petrarchan tradition, the speaker yearns for a lover who is sexually unavailable. Not only is there a conflict between spiritual and physical love, but the love object is often already married; it is an adulterous love. “Spenser’s innovation was to dedicate an entire sequence to a woman he could honorably win”. Elizabeth Boyle was an unmarried woman, and their love affair eventually ended in marriage.

Ø  He represents the Protestant conception of marriage, celebrating it as a sanctuary in which two people can find peace and rest in a mutual love covenant, in which spiritual and physical love can exist in harmony rather than as contraries.

Ø  With these exceptions, the correspondences run through Sonnet 75, which falls on April 7, the Sunday after Easter.

Spenser wrote his sonnets with the rhyme scheme: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE

The major innovation of the Spenserian sonnet is the couplet at the end.

The poem is written in iambic pentameter.

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,

The line’s first two syllables is a spondee.

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”

“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

The sonnet no. 75 (One Day I wrote Her Name…) derives its singular belief from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, where he claimed to have found permanence in the monument created by art. Spenser begins the sonnet with an archetypal yet straightforward and obsessive and symbolic act on the part of a lover:

“One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away…”

Undeterred, the poet tried for the second time, but in the same way, his second attempt was futile. Seeing her name thus being repeatedly wiped out, the beloved reminded him that he was trying to immortalize a mortal thing, as her name, she would also one day be wiped out from this world:

“Vain man”, said she, “that dost in vain assay”

A motal thing so to immortalize…”

Unusually for a Renaissance lady, the beloved has been given a voice here, and she seems to understand the symbolic and archetypal significance of the waves leveling the sand. The evidence of the destructive properties of time available in the natural world has been grafted onto the context of the human world by the beloved. Not only that, she reproaches the lover for this. This provides the poet with the intellectual necessity to answer her in the sestet.

In the sestet, the lover hurries forth to silence the beloved and resolve the tensions created in the octave. Typical of a Renaissance poet, the answer lies in the Neo-Platonic idealization of the beloved. The speaker starts with a belief in the Renaissance alchemy that baser elements naturally perish in the dust. For Spenser, however, “baser things” symbolize the earthly things subject to decay and death. What he seeks to immortalize is not the physical beauty of the beloved, but those spiritual qualities which provide the beloved with spiritual beauty. The poet is hopeful that his verses will be able to eternize the memory of the beloved’s beauty and transfigure her into a heavenly being.

“…you shall live by fame

My verse your virtues write your glorious name.”

Thus, he thinks that he will be successful in preserving her name even after the world is destroyed in the Apocalypse.

The most important assertion, however, comes in the concluding line, in which the poet wants to use this kind of idealization as a way to preserve and immortalize their love. He hopes further that this will help them to transcend their mundane existence and find a permanent place in the divine scheme of things:

“Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Ans. Spenser begins Sonnet No. 65 with a simple yet archetypal, obsessive, and symbolic act on the part of a lover. One day, in the presence of his beloved, he wrote the name of his beloved on the seashore in the hope that he would be able to immortalize her name. But he very tragically found it being washed away by the waves. He tried for the second time. But in the same way, his second attempt was futile.

2. Why did the beloved rebuke the poet?

Ans: One day, in the presence of his beloved, he wrote the name of his beloved on the seashore in the hope that he would be able to immortalize her name. But he very tragically found it being washed away by the waves. He tried for the second time. But in the same way, his second attempt was futile. Seeing her name thus being repeatedly wiped out, the beloved reminded him that he was trying to immortalize a mortal thing, as like her name, she would also one day be wiped out from this world. Unusually for a Renaissance lady, the beloved has been given a voice here, and she seems to understand the symbolic and archetypal significance of the waves leveling the sand. The evidence of the destructive properties of time available in the natural world has been grafted onto the context of the human world by the beloved.

3. How does the poet-lover answer the beloved’s questionings about his attempt at immortalizing her name?

Ans: The speaker begins with a belief in Renaissance alchemy, which posits that baser elements naturally perish in the dust. For him, however, “baser things” symbolize the earthly things subject to decay and death. What he seeks to immortalize is not the physical beauty of the beloved, but those spiritual qualities which provide the beloved with spiritual beauty. The poet is hopeful that his verses will be able to eternalise the memory of the spiritual beauty of the beloved and transfigure her into a heavenly being. Thus, he will be successful in preserving her name even after the world is destroyed in the Apocalypse. The poet ultimately seeks to employ this kind of idealization as a means of preserving and immortalizing their love; for, in accordance with Platonic belief, the realization of the spiritual beauty of the beloved will lead them to the realization of the supreme beauty of God. He hopes further that this will help them to transcend their mundane existence and find a permanent place in the divine scheme of things.

A.    The principle of change inherent in nature that causes merciless mutations to everything in this world.

2.     Who put forward the solution of immortality through artistic representation to the paradox of mutability and mortality

A.    Ovid [Metamorphosis]

3.     Why did many Renaissance artists take refuge in the Neo-Platonic philosophy as an escape from mutability and mortality?

A.    It provided a clean way out of the clutches of time or the temporal by giving supremacy to the spiritual over the physical.

4.     “Vain man”, said she, “that dost in vain assay”/ A motal thing so to immortalize…” What is so striking about the lines?

A.    Unusually for a Renaissance lady, the beloved has been given a voice here

5.     “Vain man”, said she, “that dost in vain assay”/ A motal thing so to immortalize…” How is the chain of thought justified here?

A.    The evidence of the destructive properties of time available in the natural world has been grafted on to the context of the human world by the beloved.

6. “Let baser things devise/ To die in dust.” What is the belief implicit here?

A.    A belief of the Renaissance alchemy that baser elements naturally perish in the dust.

7.     What are the beliefs that take the speaker out of his crisis finally?

A.    Ovidian belief and Neo-Platonic belief

8.     “later life renew.” Refers to

A.      The attainment of the heavenly sphere through a belief in Neo-Platonic philosophy

9.     Which poets had a great influence on Spenser in Amoretti?

A.    Torquato Tasso and Petrarch

10.   Politically Spenser had

A.    an imperialistic attitude [Refer to his Pamphlet]

11.     What is unconventional about Spenser’s Amoretti?

A.    In Amoretti, Spenser celebrates his love for the unmarried woman and the sequence ends with a happy marriage

12.    What kind of religious love did Spenser believe in?

A.    Protestant conception of marriage

13.    What metrical rhyming variation from the traditional Petrarchan model is noticed in Spenser’s sonnets?

A.    Final couplet

14.   “…made my pains his prey.” What is the figure of speech?

A.    Metaphor

15.     “Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay.” What is the metrical composition here?

A.    The first foot is a spondee and the other feet are in iambic