Visionary Spenser and the Poetics of Early Modern Platonism

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This book defines Platonism’s roles in early modern theories of literature, then turns to reappraise the Platonizing major poet Edmund Spenser. Platonic concerns and conceptions profoundly affected early modern English and continental poetics, yet the effects have had little attention. Literary Platonism energized pursuits of the sublime, and knowledge of this approach to poetry yields cogent new understandings of Spenser’s poetics, his major texts, his poetic vocation, and his cultural influence. By combining Christian resources with doctrines of Platonic poetics such as the poet’s and lover’s inspirational furies, the revelatory significance of beauty, and the importance of imitating exalted ideals rather than the world, he sought to attain a visionary sublimity that would ensure his enduring national significance, and he thereby became a seminal figure in the English literary “line of vision” including Milton and Blake among others. Although readings of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender typically bypass Plato’s Phaedrus, this text deeply informs the Calender’s treatments of beauty, inspiration, poetry’s psychagogic power, and its national responsibilities. In The Faerie Queene, both heroism and visionary poetics arise from the stimuli of love and beauty conceived Platonically, and idealized mimesis produces its faeryland. Faery’s queen, projected from Elizabeth I as in Platonic idealization of the beloved, not only pertains to temporal governance but also points toward the transcendental Ideas and divinity. Whereas Plato’s Republic valorizes philosophy for bringing enlightenment to counter society’s illusions, Spenser champions the learned and enraptured poetic imagination, and proceeds as such a philosopher-poet.