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goosemixtapes's review against another edition
no way was this of all things my 69th read of the year
okay updated review: i find that sonnet collections still escape me. though i'm with my professor that shakespeare's are even harder. if i were more interested in edmund spenser and in sonnet culture in general, i would comb back through these and pull together the Edmund Spenser BDSM Thesis, but i'm not so you'll just have to believe me that there's a lot about getting hurt emotionally... and EROTICALLY (not clickbait).
epithalamion is more daring, and more interesting to me for that reason. did you know there's an insane amount of astronomical bullshit in this poem? like, 24 stanzas for 24 hours and the sundown described in the poem comes exactly at the stanza matching the hour when the sun would have set in ireland in june that year. except really it's maybe 23.5 stanzas for the axial tilt of the earth (since that causes the seasons, and this poem is set on the solstice). that shit's crazy. i can appreciate that kind of obsessive mathematical structuring. even if spenser's writing is still, plainly, just not that fun for me to read.
supplemental reading from class: Catherine Nicholson's "Half-Envying" from Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene; Melissa Sanchez's "The Shame of Conjugal Sex" from Queer Faith
okay updated review: i find that sonnet collections still escape me. though i'm with my professor that shakespeare's are even harder. if i were more interested in edmund spenser and in sonnet culture in general, i would comb back through these and pull together the Edmund Spenser BDSM Thesis, but i'm not so you'll just have to believe me that there's a lot about getting hurt emotionally... and EROTICALLY (not clickbait).
epithalamion is more daring, and more interesting to me for that reason. did you know there's an insane amount of astronomical bullshit in this poem? like, 24 stanzas for 24 hours and the sundown described in the poem comes exactly at the stanza matching the hour when the sun would have set in ireland in june that year. except really it's maybe 23.5 stanzas for the axial tilt of the earth (since that causes the seasons, and this poem is set on the solstice). that shit's crazy. i can appreciate that kind of obsessive mathematical structuring. even if spenser's writing is still, plainly, just not that fun for me to read.
supplemental reading from class: Catherine Nicholson's "Half-Envying" from Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene; Melissa Sanchez's "The Shame of Conjugal Sex" from Queer Faith
debbie_likes_to_read_books's review against another edition
1.0
liked it better than Astrophel and Stella but did this TOO MUCH throughout September 2023-when this is up December 2023 I'm done and don't want to touch this again!!
shaunnow38's review against another edition
5.0
Lovely set of poems that runs the gamut between extreme expressions of love and beauty to ghastly, almost horrific images of violence, hatred, and mourning. The two extremes document both the tradition of love European love poetry and the psychological experiences of unrequitted love.
Spenser's sequence of sonnets is somewhat unique in that it has a "happy' ending. All of the torment the speaker experiences can be chalked up to feelings of unrequited love, but the courtship ends happily in a marriage. The sequence thus resolves, where so many refuse or are unable to.
More than this though, the poems of the Amoretti represent a significant and deeply interesting selection of European literature. The Amoretti not only document the specific courtship of Edmund Spenser to his future wife Elizabeth, they represent a work that subjects the natural world to the literary frame. Spenser relies so heavily on images of nature and animals (and their subsequent growth and decay), that to not view these works as vital texts of ecological poetry would be a disservice. They are excellent, because they present such a vivid image of a natural world in which love and life thrive and struggle to coexist. Spenser figures humanity as coeexisting, and even inhabiting the same natural hierarchies that we struggle so hard to exclude ourselves from.
For Spenser, the human is often animal, and the animal is humane and beautiful. He refigures classical mythology to fit within this frame, and, in doing so, presents a cohesive world of natural love, beauty, and artistry.
Strong recommend to those interested in nature poetry, Renaissance poetry, and poetics more generally. Spenser is a superb craftsman who hammers at the same themes over and over until they are wrought well and consistently.
Spenser's sequence of sonnets is somewhat unique in that it has a "happy' ending. All of the torment the speaker experiences can be chalked up to feelings of unrequited love, but the courtship ends happily in a marriage. The sequence thus resolves, where so many refuse or are unable to.
More than this though, the poems of the Amoretti represent a significant and deeply interesting selection of European literature. The Amoretti not only document the specific courtship of Edmund Spenser to his future wife Elizabeth, they represent a work that subjects the natural world to the literary frame. Spenser relies so heavily on images of nature and animals (and their subsequent growth and decay), that to not view these works as vital texts of ecological poetry would be a disservice. They are excellent, because they present such a vivid image of a natural world in which love and life thrive and struggle to coexist. Spenser figures humanity as coeexisting, and even inhabiting the same natural hierarchies that we struggle so hard to exclude ourselves from.
For Spenser, the human is often animal, and the animal is humane and beautiful. He refigures classical mythology to fit within this frame, and, in doing so, presents a cohesive world of natural love, beauty, and artistry.
Strong recommend to those interested in nature poetry, Renaissance poetry, and poetics more generally. Spenser is a superb craftsman who hammers at the same themes over and over until they are wrought well and consistently.
lucillemeeps's review against another edition
4.0
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Spenser's sonnets. I really enjoyed the complex narrative of the Faerie Queene and wasn't sure if a sonnet sequence would be as good. Some of the lines are really fantastic, and I loved how he turned a lot of the conventions of love poetry on their head. His beloved is a beautiful as the rest of the poets describe, but the qualities that Spenser praises the most are her sharp mind and confidence. Not your usual Petrarchian pretty face.
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