Spenser's sporting muse : The playful use of imagery in relation to the metamorphsis of the lover in Spenser's Amoretti.

Abstract

This dissertation is a literary-historical study of Edmund Spenser’s under-rated sonnet sequence, Amoretti (1595), focusing on the poet’s playful manipulation of conventional imagery (largely Petrarchan) to reflect the progression of the poet/lover’s relationship with his beloved from the solipsistic to the interpersonal: that is, a relationship represented by variations on fixed erotic configurations to fluid, interactive conversations involving attitudes, understanding and emotion. Without denying the ultimately serious purpose of the sonnets, the study concentrates on the light-heartedness of the presentation, advertised as a “sporting” interlude in the midst of the composition of Spenser’s major work, The Faerie Queene. Not primarily ideological in focus, but rather of a critical evaluative kind, the work entails a systematic and comprehensive analysis of imagery concerning weaving, captivity and eyes within the Amoretti in three contexts: the genre of the Elizabethan sonnet sequence, Spenser’s other works and the Renaissance propensity for experiment or play of mind.