Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University. / Typescript. Library has photocopy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1896. / Prefatory note signed: A.S.C. [i.e. Albert S. Cook].

This thesis examines the genre of epic, and particularly Milton’s Paradise Lost. It argues that it is only in attending to the contextual interactions within Paradise Lost that its full meaning can be comprehended. It demonstrates that the poem not only narrates the Fall, but actively performs its consequences in its thematic and linguistic structures, which continually stress the impossibility of approaching perfect (divine) totality. Chapter one outlines the theoretical response to epic, read as a petrified genre in contrast to the newness, openness and linguistic flexibility of the novel. It then challenges these assumptions through a reading of the invocation to book III of Paradise Lost. The chapter closes by examining seventeenth-century writings on epic, demonstrating that Milton’s contemporaries saw the epic as defined by the possibility of didactic intervention into its context. Chapter two examines the forms of the epic metaphor, which serve as a temporal link between the ‘mythic’ past of epic and contemporary events. It then shows that the nationalistic impulse of epic was a method by which the mythic past of a country was deployed as an exemplary narrative for the present. The chapter closes by considering the ways in which shifts in national conception were mapped onto the epic. Chapter three outlines Paradise Lost’s thematic engagement with the concept of representation. It focuses on the twin images of the music of the spheres and the Tower of Babel, used in Paradise Lost to represent man’s relationship with God. It argues that the poem uses these tropes to explore the linguistic effects of the Fall. Both these images are deployed to suggest that postlapsarian expression is too open and ambiguous to properly portray divinity. Chapter four moves that discussion to a linguistic level, arguing that the poem is characterised by indeterminacy. It argues that Paradise Lost calls into question the possibility of expressing perfect truth in fractured, postlapsarian language. It shows that punning is the mark of fallen creatures in the poem, and suggests that the poem’s own puns exploit this category to linguistically question its own status as representation through performances of ambiguity. The conclusion synthesises these local readings of Paradise Lost into a reading of the poem as a whole. It argues that these individual instances demonstrate the poem’s continual reflexive concern over its theodicean project. By continually expressing ambiguity, at the level of imagery and language, Paradise Lost draws attention to its status as postlapsarian art, and the consequent impossibility of approaching the divine perfection exemplified by the celestial music or prelapsarian language.

This thesis began with the desire to understand the gold ivy painted green that entwines the crystal fountain in Spenser's Bower of Bliss. Although this artificial vegetation struck me as an example of what twentieth-century critics would call "kitsch", I somehow felt that the poet himself was viewing his creation as an object of beauty. In order to test this feeling I began my research by examining the use of the terms "art" and "nature" in Elizabethan writing, for it seemed to me that in the definition of and the relationship between these two terms lay a key to Spenser's esthetic. The artist here has tried to make an artificial substance appear to be natural; reading the Elizabethan critics I found that such attempts at artistic deception were almost unanimously applauded. Spenser's age could not have formulated its esthetic intuitively, however, and in order to understand its historical perspective I have examined the relationship between "art" and "nature" in important historical periods before the Renaissance. Here it was found that at times when painting is dominant, as in the Renaissance, art's imitation of nature is understood naturalistlcally, and a convention of literary pictorialism arises. In the writings of the critics of the Italian Renaissance, art is praised for its approximation to nature, and the poet, like the painter, is admired for his accurate pictures. Turning to the Elizabethan critics I found an esthetic similar to that expressed by the Italian writers. A common philosophy lies behind this esthetic. It is believed that to imitate nature with accuracy is to reproduce in art the harmony of God's creation. In performing this imitation man the artist is demonstrating his relationship to God the Artist. It was found further that the Elizabethan environment also demonstrated the delight in art's ability to deceive that is expressed by the writers of the period. And we find in their surroundings, in visual support of the critical theories, that the Elizabethans are not only delighted when art appears to be nature, but that they are also delighted when nature appears to be art. Looking finally at Spenser's scenes, we find his period's esthetic exemplified. He bases his idea of the beautiful on the conception of a world made up of order and variety. He praises verisimilitude in art, delighting to see art appear to be nature. He also delights when he sees a natural scene that resembles art. In addition he describes with pleasure situations in which art and nature are in friendly competition, or, perhaps the most delightful relationship of all, situations in which art and nature play complementary roles. One of Spenser's characteristically Renaissance traits is his ability to separate ethics and esthetics. This point has often been overlooked for the gold ivy painted green has been dismissed in some previous criticism not as esthetically poor, but ethically, as evil. Rather, in Elizabethan eyes, It is basically an esthetic good and can be used by the poet to create a number of effects. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Fantasies about warrior women circulated in many forms of writing in early modern England: travel narratives such as Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of Guiana (1595) portray Amazon encounters in the New World; poems like Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) depict women's skill with a spear; and the plays of Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and others stage the adventurous feats of women on the battlefield. In this dissertation, I analyze the social anxieties that emerge when warrior women threaten gender hierarchies in the patriarchal society of early modern England. The battlefield has traditionally been a site for men to prove their masculinity against other men, so when male characters find themselves submitting to a sword-wielding woman, they are forced to reimagine their own masculine identities as they become the objects acted upon by women. In their experience of subjectivity, these literary warrior women often allude to the historical Queen Elizabeth I, whose reign destabilized ideas about gender and power in the period. Negative evaluations of warrior women often indicate anxiety about Elizabeth as an Amazon-like queen. Thus, portrayals of warrior women often end with a celebration of patriarchal dominance once the male characters have successfully contained the threat of the warrior woman through marriage or death. I argue that these depictions of containment indicate a common desire to maintain patriarchal superiority during and after Elizabeth's reign.

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Critics frequently, sometimes irresponsibly, label Spenser's poetry "emblematic" because of the appearance of either striking allegorical figures or moral assertions. This thesis establishes a standard for the application of the term "emblematic": first, by defining those elements which characterize emblems; second, by examining the emblem's cultural milieu; and third, by analyzing the "emblem patterns" that appear in The Faerie Queene. The study concludes that these "emblem patterns" transform the two essential elements of emblems to a literary treatment: the emblem engraving takes the form of a poetic description of allegorical figures or scenes; the didactic poem is condensed to an explicit moral statement. These "emblem patterns," then, can be regarded as reasonable criteria for labelling Spenser's poem "emblematic."