| |
Venus in Spenser’s An Hymne in Honovr of Beavtie
by Christopher A. Plaisance
Introduction
In 1596, the renowned English poet, Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599) published the Fowre Hymnes (hereafter referred to as Hymnes),[1] a series of poems dedicated to four different subjects: Love,[2] Beauty,[3] Heavenly Love,[4] and Heavenly Beauty.[5] Though better known for his Neoplatonic opus, The Faerie Qveene,[6] Spenser’s Hymnes have been the subject of a great deal of sensitive scholarship over the last hundred years. All four of the hymns are theological in nature, representing, as Frances Yates notes, ‘the clearest statement of the poet’s Neoplatonism’, whose ‘basic structure is that of an Hermetic ascent and descent through the spheres of the universe’.[7] They are ὕμνοι (hymnes) in the classical Greek sense, and Spenser may have either taken the term directly from Hellenic sources, or borrowed it from Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585), who had revived it only a few years prior on the Continent.[8] They are philosophically informed literary paeans in honour of the gods Cupid and Venus, similar at once to the Orphic Hymns of late antiquity as well as the ‘philosophic canzoni’ of Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255–1300) and Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542).[9]
Though published together within one volume, Spenser prefaces the collection with a disclaimer, noting that the first two hymns, An Hymne in Honovr of Love and An Hymne in Honovr of Beavtie (hereafter abbreviated as Of Love and Of Beavtie respectively) were composed ‘in the greener times of my youth’ and were representative of views ‘of Loue and beautie’ which he no longer held in middle age.[10] He then positions the latter two hymnes, An Hymne of Heavenly Love and An Hymne of Heavenly Beavtie (hereafter abbreviated as Of Heavenly Love and Of Heavenly Beavtie respectively), as a way ‘to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme’ the prior hymns, ‘making instead of those two Hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie, two others of heauenly and celestiall’.[11] However, since the early nineteenth century, the relationship between the four poems comprising the Hymnes has been divided between two camps.
While it ‘seems certain’ that the hymns Of Love and Of Beavtie were written before 1580, during Spenser’s time at Cambridge University,[12] scholarly consensus is divided as to whether Spenser intended the hymns to be read, as the preface indicates, as two pairs of disjunctive works, or as a unified whole. The latter position originates with Jefferson Fletcher, who claims that the Hymnes ‘constitute one complete doctrinal poem’ which harmonises Neoplatonism and Calvinism.[13] In this way, Fletcher sees the first set of hymns as giving an incomplete account of Spenser’s poetic theology of love and beauty — an account which is completed by the complementary second set of hymns.[14] Variations on this position of the four hymns unified are offered by Charles Osgood,[15] Josephine Bennett,[16] and James Stewart.[17] Frederick Padelford presents the contrary position, that ‘while the earlier hymns are in complete accord with this neo-Platonic theory of love, the latter hymns are based upon Calvinistic doctrines that are squarely opposed to it and that admit of no compromise’.[18] This view of the Hymnes is shared by Evelyn Albright, who concluded that the first two hymns represent Spenser’s failed attempt to ‘build him a religion upon purely logical grounds’, while the latter pair represent his supervening of Platonism by ‘pure Christian faith and hope’.[19]
While it is not my intent to take a firm stance in this on-going dispute, it is worth noting for one important reason: the subjects of the hymns Of Beavtie and Of Heavenly Beavtie are both types of “Beauty”. For my purposes, it is immaterial whether or not Spenser himself viewed Beauty and Love as hypostases of Heavenly Beauty and Heavenly Love. My aim in writing this paper is to provide a specific exegesis of the second hymn, dedicated to Beauty — to inquire into the identity nature of the hymn’s subject and elucidate the philosophical and theological background that informs Spenser’s conception of Venus within the hymn. Although it may be true that Spenser intended the fourth hymn to complete the second’s image of Beauty, my goal is to look at the hymn as an isolated unit. As such, I make no pretence of providing a complete analysis of “Beauty” within the Fowre Hymnes, but rather a particular and specific exegesis of Beauty within the second hymn.
Spenser’s Sources
Spenser was considered one of the most learned men of his day, and, as Douglas Bush notes, such an appellation was among the highest tribute that was paid to poets during the Renaissance.[20] While it is now clear that Spenser’s Greek was not as good as the poet himself sometimes claimed,[21] it is obvious that he possessed a deep and penetrating knowledge both of classical mythology and philosophy (with much of the Greek material via Latin translations and interpretations) as well as the medieval and Renaissance traditions of mythography and philosophical commentary. And, while certain sympathies can be seen between Spenser and the likes of Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321),[22] Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375),[23] Alanus de Rupe (1428–1475),[24] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494),[25] Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529),[26] Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)[27] and John Dee (157–1609),[28] it is from the philosophical well of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) that Spenser drew most deeply.[29] Indeed, Ficino served a double influence on Spencer, both in terms of his original tracts such as De amore and the Theologia Platonica, but also his original Latin translation of the Platonis Opera omnia, which introduced Plato (427–347 BC) to Renaissance Europe.[30]
Before delving into Ficino’s influence on Spenser, however, a word must be said both about the traditions of medieval mythography which directly preceded Ficino’s Neoplatonic revival, as well as certain modern biases towards interpreting instances of Venus in medieval texts. As Thomas Hyde notes, the common goal shared by nearly all medieval handbooks on mythology was that of ‘translating the delusive fictions of the pagan poets into a world-view acceptable and meaningful to Christian readers’.[31] Drawing on pagan traditions following in the wake of Plato’s Symposium (to be dealt with in greater detail below), medieval commentators tended to present mythographies which contain not a single Venus and a single Cupid, but multiple Venuses and Cupids. We see this in the works of Bernard Silvestris (twelfth century), where there is a Venus who symbolizes wanton and inconstant sexuality, and another Venus who signifies the Empedoclean love that binds together the cosmos.[32] Boccaccio, in seeking to preserve what he perceived as a multiplicity of Venuses in antiquity distinguished three separate personages: one representing the planet Venus, a second who functioned as an allegorical exemplar of love, and a third who signified an historical immoral woman.[33] In the context of art history as well, scholars have distinguished three ‘common visual types’ of Venuses which can be categorised as: ‘Venus anadyomene (of the sea), Venus pudica (modest), and Venus genetrix (of procreation or fertility)’.[34]
As Theresa Tinkle explicates in excruciating detail, past scholarship has tended towards a false binarism in interpreting this multiplicity of medieval Venuses. Such readings have divided the multitude of medieval Venuses and Cupids into two groups symbolising two modes of love: earthly and heavenly.[35] However, ‘resolving the differences into bipolar oppositions […] misrepresents medieval (and classical) mythology’ by essentialising discrete mythologies into a meta-mythography that glosses over and misinterprets that which does not cohere to the binary model.[36] What this means for our analysis of Spenser’s Hymnes is that we must caution ourselves against interpreting his Love and Beauty as necessarily falling into step with any kind of meta-model that seeks to explain Venerean and Amorous multiplicity during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This is particularly important in that we ought not be overly tempted to see Spenser’s Beauty and Heavenly Beauty as necessarily representing an essentialised model of two Venuses, but rather analyse them so as to uncover the particular understanding of Beauty by Spenser.
Ficino’s De amore
Based on a banquet held by Ficino and his friends in Careggi on 7 November 1468 to celebrate Plato’s birthday,[37] Ficino’s De amore[38] fundamentally transformed the way in which Venus was received during the Renaissance. De amore was known in England as early as 1500 — as evidenced by a copy of Ficino’s Opera Platonis omnia found in Cambridge, as well as through the French translation of Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie (1541–1598) which was used both by George Chapman (c. 1559–1634) and Spenser.[39] The metaphysical model Ficino presents in De amore — and later works, such as the Theologia Platonica — is derived from Plato, Plotinus, Proclus (AD c. 412–485), and Pseudo-Dionysius (late fifth century AD).[40] Ficino’s world revolves around God, from whom emanate four worlds: Mind, Soul, Nature, and Matter.[41] Between God at the ontological centre and mankind at its outermost contingent edge, Ficino’s world is populated by a multitude of beings. In synthesising the pagan and Christian Platonists, he identifies the daemons of Plotinus and Proclus with Pseudo-Dionysius’ angels who are the ‘inferioris mundi gubernatores’ (lower world’s governors), and the gods of the pagan Platonists with Pseudo-Dionysius’ angels who are the ‘dei ministros’ (God’s ministers), making the differences between pagan and Christian Platonisms ‘uerborum potius est quam sententie discrepatio’ (a disagreement of words rather than opinion).[42]
In regards to the goddess with which this paper is concerned, Ficino’s theology draws directly on the portrayal of gods in the Symposium, where Plato distinguishes two Aphrodites and two Eroses.[43] He first speaks of a ‘πρεσβυτέρα καὶ ἀμήτωρ’ (elder and motherless) Aphrodite, the daughter of Uranus, whom he names the ‘Οὐρανίαν’ (heavenly) Aphrodite.[44] The second is a ‘νεωτέρα’ (younger) goddess, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, whom Plato names the ‘πάνδημον’ (vulgar) Aphrodite.[45] From this dyad of Aphrodites, he concludes that there exist two Eroses — one Heavenly, one Vulgar — which are the respective companions of the Heavenly and Vulgar Aphrodites.[46] Ficino adopts this Platonic theology, presenting Plato’s two Aphrodites as the ‘celestis’ (celestial) and ‘uulgaris (vulgar) Venuses.[47] Ficino, then, draws on Plotinus’ (AD 204–270) commentary on Plato’s Symposium in placing the two Venuses within his Neoplatonic metaphysical hierarchy. Plotinus is somewhat ambiguous as to the placement of the two Aphrodites. He clearly locates the Heavenly Aphrodite as being co-located at the level of Intellect (νοῦς) with her father Cronus,[48] and notes that another Aphrodite — not specifically distinguished as Heavenly or Vulgar — must be the ‘ψυχὴ τοῦ κόσμου’ (soul of the cosmos) if it is true that ‘ὁ κόσμος ἐστὶν ἐκ ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος’ (the cosmos consists of soul and body).[49] He further cements this identity between an Aphrodite and the Soul (ψυχή) hypostasis of the universe by ranking all of the male gods at the Intellect level, and all of the goddesses at that of the Soul, noting that ‘ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ Διὸς ἡ Ἀφροδίτη’ (the soul of Zeus is Aphrodite), here taking Zeus to be the Intellect.[50]
Ficino irons out this confusion by positing that Heavenly Venus ‘in mente est’ (is in the Intellect), and Vulgar Venus ‘in mundi anima ponitur’ (is placed in the World Soul).[51] Ficino’s theology is not, however, without its own ambiguities. At one point in De amore, he notes that ‘sint igitur due in anima Veneres: prima celestis, seconda uero uulgaris’ (therefore there are two Venuses in the Soul: the first celestial, the second vulgar).[52] As he has clearly indicated that one Venus is ‘in mente angelica posuimus’ (placed in the angelic mind) and another is located in the World Soul,[53] what are we to make of this? One explanation is that Ficino’s system encompasses three Venuses — a position not without historical precedent, as previously noted with Boccaccio. Another explanation is that the Heavenly Venus exists as an intermediary between the Mind and Soul, and the Vulgar Venus between the Soul and Nature. In this way we might say that both Venuses exist “within” the World Soul without necessarily contradicting the previous statements locating the Heavenly Venus within the Angelic Mind.
Apart from Ficino’s explicit reintroduction of Platonic and Plotinian theologies of Venus, one more aspect of De amore is of immediate import prior to examining Spenser’s Of Beavtie: the identification of Venus with Beauty. Ficino on the one hand defines Love as the ‘pulchritudinis desiderium’ (longing for beauty),[54] and on the other tells us that Love proceeds forth from Venus.[55] Eros’s descent from Aphrodite is clearly noted in Plotinus,[56] however, he does not define beauty within the context of his commentary on Plato’s Symposium. However, elsewhere in the Enneads, Plotinus identifies Beauty with the Good — which is identical with the One.[57] This system of relationships in which Beauty is identified with God, and Eros is that which strives to ascend towards Beauty is also found in Pseudo-Dionysius.[58] Like Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius identifies Beauty (καλοῦ) and the Good (ἀγαθοῦ), and specifically notes that all things ‘πὰσιν οὖν ἐστι τὸ καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν ἐφετὸν καὶ ἐραστὸν καὶ ἀγαπητόν’ (all things must desire, love, and regard with affection the Beautiful and the Good).[59] What is important to note here is that Ficino seems to follow suit in portraying Cupid as depending on Venus, defining Cupid’s nature as striving towards Beauty, and identifying Beauty with the Good. What we will see in Spenser is that he adopts certain aspects of Ficinian theology, but makes important changes as well.
Spenser’s Beauty
The subject of Spenser’s second poem is that to whom it is dedicated: Beauty. Spenser begins the poem by addressing it to the ‘great Goddesse, queene of Beauty, Mother of loue’.[60] As we have seen previously, Venus is the mother of Love — both the Heavenly Venuses and Cupids, as well as their Vulgar counterparts — in the theologies of the Platonists. This gives us an early identification of Venus as the ‘queene of Beauty’ in Spenser’s poetic theology. Throughout the poem, Spenser cements the identity of the subject as Venus, referring to her as the ‘Cyprian Queene’[61] and as Cytherea,[62] referencing the Homeric hymns describing Aphrodite as ‘Κύπριδος’ (Cyprian) and the ‘ἐυστεφάνου Κυθερείης’ (well-girdled Cytherea) — both referring to her cult centre on Cyprus.[63] While these epithets would have made it obvious to a learned audience that the hymn’s subject was Venus, Spenser makes this perfectly clear in the last three stanzas, equating the ‘great beauties Queene’ with ‘faire Venus’.[64] What this preliminary analysis shows us is that Spenser begins with a theology quite distinct from his Ficinian foundation. Rather than identify Beauty with God, he equates Beauty with Venus — a correspondence not seen in Plato, Plotinus, or Pseudo-Dionysius.
The identity between Beauty and Venus having been established, we can now examine the goddess’s nature and function within Spenser’s hymn. One of the primary roles played by Spenser’s Venus in the hymn is that of the pattern which shapes the world. Spenser describes Beauty both as the ‘goodly Paterne’ and the ‘wondrous Paterne’ cast by the ‘great workmaister’ in order to mould and fashion the world.[65] What Spenser appears to be saying in these two stanzas is that Venus is the means through which the Demiurge is able to shape the cosmos; she is the pattern by which his ordering faculty is imprinted upon the prima materia. Bennett identifies this doctrine, in which Venus is not ‘one of several archetypal Ideas’, but rather ‘the sum of the Ideas’ as one which is exemplified in Pico, but is a general feature of Renaissance Neoplatonism.[66] In this way, we can see Spenser’s Venus as not only being of the Intellect, but as the Intellect; she is, for Spenser, not one of the Forms, but the totality which is both comprised of them and at once supervenes over and contains them.
This identification, however, of the second hymn’s Venus as being one and the same as the emergent totality of the Forms runs counter to the notion that the first two of the Fowre Hymnes are addressed to Ficino’s Vulgar Cupid and Venus while the latter two are dedicated to their Celestial counterparts. Rather, what we see here is that the ‘greener’ hymn of Spenser’s youth speaks to a goddess closer to Proclus’ οὐράνιος (heavenly) Aphrodite, who is ‘τῇ πάσης ἁρμονίας καὶ ἑνώσεως ἄρρενος πρὸς θῆλυ καὶ εἴδους πρὸς ὕλην αἰτίᾳ’ (the cause of all joining and union both between the male and female, and between form and matter)[67] — she, who is the ‘demiurgic power that brings [the world] into harmony and unification’.[68] And, indeed, Spenser’s Venus of Of Beavtie is strikingly close to Ficino’s position that Beauty both ‘mentem idearum ordine decorat’ (decorates the mind with ideas) and also ‘materiam formis exornat’ (equips matter with forms) just as a ‘unus dei radius mentem, animam, naturam, materiamque illuminat’ (single ray of god illuminates mind, soul, nature, and matter).[69] And, in De amore as well, we see the view that the Mind — which, for Ficino, is the collective name for the Forms — is ‘modo Venerem uocant’ (sometimes called Venus) by the Platonists, particularly in its intellective function.[70] We see this additionally when Ficino speaks both of the Heavenly Venus whose function is to ‘diuinam pulchritudinem cogitandam’ (contemplate divine beauty) and the Vulgar Venus whose role is to ‘eamdem in mundi materia generandam’ (generate the same [beauty] in the material world).[71] In this way, while Ficino does not explicitly identify either Venus with Beauty, we can see how a hermeneut like Spenser would have connected the dots, conceiving of a demiurgic Venus who directly affects the impressing of intelligible Forms upon the prima materia.
The second aspect of the nature of Spenser’s Venus which I wish to analyse is her manifestation in the world’s beauty. As Terry Comito notes,[72] the Beauty towards which Spenser’s Love strives is not ‘an outward shew of things, that onely seeme […] as fond men misdeeme’.[73] This is a standard statement of Platonism in Spenser, which posits that Beauty, in and of itself, is not identical with the earthly instantiations which man finds beautiful. Rather, such Beauty is treated by Spenser as something which is ‘heauenly borne and cannot die’, being of the eternal realm of the Forms.[74] At this point in Of Beavtie, however, Spenser makes a curious identification. In this stanza, he describes the ‘heauenly’ Venus as ‘that faire lampe, from whose celestiall ray / That light proceeds, which kindleth louers fire’.[75] This seems, on its face, to be a standard description of Ficino’s Heavenly Venus — identifying her celestial vessel (the planet Venus) with that which inspires lovers to love: Beauty. Immediately following this stanza, Spenser paints the picture, which clarifies and deepens his view of Venus’ role in beautifying the world:
For when the soule, the which deriued was
At first, out of that great immortall Spright,
By whom all liue to loue, whilome did pas
Downe from the top of purest heauens hight,
To be embodied here, it then tooke light
And liuely spirits from that fayrest starre,
Which lights the world forth from his firie carre.[76]
What Spenser appears to be saying in this passage is that Venus, the ‘fayrest starre’, is to be seen as an ‘immortall Spright’ from whom ‘soule’ emanates. She is placed at ‘the top of purest heauens hight’, from whence all who live to love (that is, to aspire towards reintegrating themselves in Venus’ celestial manifold) didst descend. Her light is thus ‘embodied here’, in the material world by means of her ‘firie carre’ (i.e., the planet Venus) which ‘lights the world’. In other words, Spenser here presents a more or less complete picture of his Venus, portraying her as a Heavenly demiurge whose function is to mediate between the spiritual realm of the Forms — above the World Soul — and the concrete world of matter. This, then, seems to be a composite Venus who bears similarities both to Ficino’s Heavenly and Vulgar Venuses. On the one hand, Spenser’s Venus in Of Beavtie is clearly shown to be a goddess of the Intellect, much like Ficino’s Heavenly Venus. Yet, on the other hand, she is also the same figure who impresses the Forms upon matter — a function filled by Ficino’s Vulgar Venus.
Conclusion
To conclude, I have sought to demonstrate two things with this paper. One, that the subject of Spenser’s An Hymne in Honovr of Beavtie, Beauty, is none other than Venus. Two, that her cosmological function within Spenser’s poetic theology is fundamentally demiurgic. In undertaking this analysis, I have also striven to demonstrate the debt owed by Spenser both to antique philosophers such as Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus, as well as Renaissance Platonists like Ficino. From this research, however, emerged one rather surprising datum. The Venus in this particular hymn of Spenser’s does not appear to fully comport to any of the theologies of the men from which he drew. What seems to be the case is that while Spenser was keen to draw upon various Platonic theologies in the construction of his own Venerean theology, the resultant Venus is a singly syncretic figure which at once bears similarities to the bifurcated Heavenly and Vulgar Venuses of his intellectual heirs. While such a thesis is not, of itself, particularly striking when examining Of Beavtie on its own, I do believe that it has interesting ramifications for the study of the poem within the greater context of the Fowre Hymnes. For, if the Venus in Of Beavtie is not specifically identified with Ficino’s Vulgar Venus, but is rather a Venus both Heavenly and Vulgar at once, how are we to then view the subject of An Hymne of Heavenly Beavtie? This is not a question which can be addressed within the confines of the present essay, but is one whose asking ought be informed by the understanding of this Venus of Spenser presented here.
|
|
| |
Notes
1. Edmund Spenser, Fowre Hymnes, in Spenser: Poetical Works, ed. by J.C. Smith and E. de Selincourt, Oxford Standard Authors (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1970), pp. 585–99.
2. Edmund Spenser, An Hymne in Honovr of Love, in, Poetical Works, pp. 586–9.
3. Spenser, An Hymne in Honovr of Beavtie, in Poetical Works, pp. 590–3.
4. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly Love, in Poetical Works, pp. 593–6.
5. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly Beavtie, in Poetical Works, pp. 596–9.
6. Spenser, The Faerie Qveene: Disposed into Twelue Bookes, Fashioning XII Morall Vertues, in Poetical Works, pp. 1–406.
7. Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge 2004), p. 113).
8. Jefferson B. Fletcher, ‘Benivieni’s “Ode of Love” and Spenser’s “Fowre Hymnes”’, Modern Philology 8.4 (1911): 545–60, p. 545).
9. Fletcher, ‘Benivieni’, p. 545; Philip B., Rollinson, ‘A Generic View of Spenser’s “Fowre Hymnes”’, Studies in Philology 68.3 (1971): 292–304, p. 292.
10. Spenser, Fowre Hymnes, p. 586.
11. Spenser, Fowre Hymnes, p. 586.
12. Jefferson B. Fletcher, ‘A Study in Renaissance Mysticism: Spenser’s “Fowre Hymnes”’, PMLA 26.3 (1911): 452–75, p. 452.
13. Fletcher, ‘Benivieni’, p. 546.
14. Fletcher, ‘A Study’, p. 452–3.
15. Charles G. Osgood, ‘Spenser’s Sapience’, Studies in Philology 14.2 (1917): 167–77, p. 167: ‘The sympathetic reader finds ultimately in the four hymns neither a contradiction nor a mere philosophical or theological document, but the confession of a profoundly sensitive and serious man, revealing the course of his spiritual development’.
16. Josephine Waters Bennett, ‘The Theme of Spenser’s “Fowre Hymnes”’, Studies in Philology 28.1 (1931): 18–59, pp. 48: ‘What Spenser wrote was not four separate hymns, divided into two pairs, and lacking any essential connection with each other, but rather a single, carefully constructed poem, in four parts’.
17. James T. Stewart, ‘Renaissance Psychology and the Ladder of Love in Castiglione and Spenser’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56.2 (1957): 225–30, p. 225: ‘The hymns themselves show an unbroken progression’.
18 Frederick Morgan Padelford, ‘Spenser’s Fowre Hymnes’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 13.3 (1914): 418–33, p. 418. See also: Frederick Morgan Padelford, ‘Spenser’s Fowre Hymnes: A Resurvey’, Studies in Philology 29.2 (1932): 207–32, pp. 207, 232.
19. Evelyn May Albright, ‘Spenser’s Cosmic Philosophy and His Religion’, PMLA 44.3 (1929): 715–59, p. 725.
20. Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition of English Poetry, revised edn (New York: W.W. Norton 1963), p. 90.
21. Bush, Mythology, p. 97.
22. Fletcher, ‘A Study’, p. 456.
23. Bush, Mythology, p. 94; T.P. Harrison, ‘Spenser and Boccaccio’s “Olympia”’, Studies in English 14 (1934): 5–30, p. 6.
24. Albright, ‘Spenser’s Cosmic Philosophy’, p. 720.
25. Bennett, ‘The Theme’, pp. 21, 26.
26. Stewart, ‘Renaissance Psychology’, p. 225.
27. Ronald B. Levinson, ‘Spenser and Bruno’, PMLA 43.3 (1928): 675–81.
28. Yates, The Occult Philosophy, p. 112.
29. Sears Jayne, ‘Ficino and the Platonism of the English Renaissance’, Comparative Literature 4.3 (1952): 214–38, p. 217; Carol V. Kaske, ‘Neoplatonism in Spenser Once More’, Religion & Literature 32.2 (2000): 157–69, p. 167.
30. Bush, Mythology, p. 92.
31. Thomas Hyde, The Poetic Theology of Love: Cupid in Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press 1986), p. 29.
32. Theresa Tinkle, Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Poetry, Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996), p. 16; Bernard Silvestris, The Commentary on the First Six Books of the “Aeneid” of Vergil Commonly Attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, ed. by Julian Ward Jones and Elizabeth Frances Jones (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1977), i.ll.10–15.
33. Tinkle, Medieval Venuses, p. 68; Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, ed. and trans. by Jon Solomon, I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2011), iii.22; Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women, ed. and trans. by Virginia Brown, I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2001), vii.1–11.
34. Tinkle, Medieval Venuses, p. 80.
35. Tinkle, Medieval Venuses, p. 9.
36. Tinkle, Medieval Venuses, pp. 39–40.
37. James A. Deverux, ‘The Textual History of Ficino’s De Amore’, Renaissance Quarterly 28.2 (1975): 173–82, p. 173.
38. The book’s full title is Commentarium in Convivium Platonis de amore, but was given the title De amore by Ficino ‘in two of the three lists of his own works which he left’, and it is by this name which the work is generally known. Sears Jayne, ‘Introduction’, in Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, trans. by Sears Jayne (Woodstock: Spring Publications 1985), pp, 1–34, p. 1.
39. Jayne, ‘Introduction’, pp. 21–2.
40. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Under the Mantle of Love: The Mystical Eroticisms of Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno’, in Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, ed. by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal, Aries Book Series (Leiden: Brill 2008), pp. 175–207, p. 178.
41. Marsilio Ficino, Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, de l’Amour, ed. and trans. by Pierre Laurens, 2nd edn., Les Classiques de l’Humanisme (Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2012), i.3, ii.3.
42. Ficino, De l’Amour, vi.3.63v–64r.
43. Hanegraaff, ‘Under the Mantle’, pp. 180–1; Hyde, The Poetic Theology, p. 94.
44. Plato, Symposium, in Platonis opera, ed. by John Burnet, 5 vols., Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1900–7), ii, pp. 172–223, 180d.
45. Plato, Symposium, 180d–e.
46. Plato, Symposium, 180e.
47. Ficino, De l’Amour, vi.7.72r, ii.7.17r.
48. Plotinus, Enneads, 6 vols., ed. and trans. by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann 1966–88), iii.5.2.15ff.
49. Plotinus, Enneads, iii.5.5.11–3.
50. Plotinus, Enneads, iii.5.8.18–21.
51. Ficino, De l’Amour, ii.7.17v.
52. Ficino, De l’Amour, vi.7.72r.
53. Ficino, De l’Amour, ii.7.17v.
54. Ficino, De l’Amour, i.4.6v.
55. Ficino, De l’Amour, vi.5.66r.
56. Plotinus, Enneads, iii.5.3.19ff.
57. Plotinus, Enneads, i.6.7.
58. John M. Rist, ‘A Note on Eros and Agape in Pseudo-Dionysius’, Vigiliae Christianae 20.4 (1966): 235–43, p. 242.
59. Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, in Corpus Dionysiacum, 2 vols., ed. by B.R. Suchla, G. Heil, and A.M. Ritter, Patristische Texte und Studien, 33 and 36 (Berlin: De Gruyter 1990–1991), i, pp. 107–231, 155.7.
60. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 15–6.
61. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 55.
62. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 260.
63. The Homeric Hymns, ed. and trans. by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, in Hesiod; Homeric Hymns; Epic Cycle; Homerica, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann 1995), pp. 286–464, v.1–6.
64. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 267–81.
65. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 29–42.
66. Bennett, ‘The Theme’, p. 32.
67. Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, 2 vols., ed. by Ernst Diehl (Leipzig: Teubner 1903–1906), i.34.15–7.
68. Tuomo Lankila, ‘Aphrodite in Proclus’ Theology’, Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 3 (2009): 21–43, p. 31.
69. Ficino, De l’Amour, ii.5.15v–16r.
70. Ficino, De l’Amour, ii.7.17r.
71. Ficino, De l’Amour, vi.7.72r.
72. Terry Comito, ‘A Dialectic of Images in Spenser’s “Fowre Hymnes”’, Studies in Philology 74.3 (1977): 301–21, p. 307.
73. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 90–1.
74. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 104
75. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 99–100.
76. Spenser, Of Beavtie, 106–12.
|
|