Visionary Spenser and the Poetics of Early Modern Platonism
Oxford Scholarship Online August 24, 2017 Kenneth Borris
This book argues that Platonism profoundly shaped early modern literary theory and the poetics of Edmund Spenser, a connection often overlooked. It contends that Spenser combined Christian thought with Platonic doctrines—such as inspirational furies, beauty's revelatory power, and idealized imitation—to pursue a visionary sublimity aimed at enduring national significance. The study reappraises The Shepheardes Calender through Plato's Phaedrus and reads The Faerie Queene as projecting Elizabeth I into a Platonic ideal pointing toward transcendental Ideas. Spenser emerges as a seminal figure in an English literary 'line of vision' including Milton and Blake, championing poetic imagination over philosophy.