1 10 44 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/809/Toy_Knight.png 869cc69e49df469f77b2e7f899e0a8a4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Toy knight Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Bedroom Description An account of the resource Spenser had at least three children, two boys and a girl (see Tower House Bedroom: crib and fireplace). His second son, Peregrine, was born to Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. Presuming that Peregrine was born in wedlock, he would have been between 1-4 years old during the time portrayed in this hypothetical castle recreation (c. 1597-98). Like all children he must have had some toys, including hand-me-downs from his older brother Sylvanus. This toy knight is dressed for a tournament and is modeled after one made in Nuremburg, c. 1530, and now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Germany. It shows great care in craftsmanship (with some sharp edges). Literary Connections Spenser’s work focuses frequently on marriage and childbirth but not often on childhood. He was no Wordsworth. We should keep in mind, however, that for all its political, ethical and moral significance, The Faerie Queene is a long Arthurian romance about knights, ladies, magicians and monsters. It was written to entertain and not only to instruct. Like its predecessors in the romance tradition, such as Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (translated into English in 1591), parts of its action are fabulous, even ridiculous. Like this toy, the poem would have appealed to both children and adults on different levels. A curious moment occurs in Book I of The Faerie Queene when a child frightens his mother by wanting to play with the talons (“talants”) of a dead dragon: <blockquote> One mother, whenas her foolehardy chyld Did come too neare, and with his talants play Halfe dead through feare, her little babe reuyld, And to her gossibs gan in counsell say; How can I tell, but that his talants may Yet scratch my sonne, or rend his tender hand. (FQ I.xii.11.1-6) </blockquote> It is as if Spenser, with this word of caution, is breaking a fantastical spell that holds many a reader spellbound, like the child, throughout the dragon fight in the previous canto. The dragon is real, and the beast might still be dangerous. Likewise, Satan, or sin, might easily revive and will not be extinguished from the world until the end of time. Many threats will continue to plague the heroes in the poem. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Pia Maria Grüber (ed.), “Kurzweil viel ohn’ Mass und Ziel”: Alltag und Festtag auf den Ausburger Monatsbildern der Renaissance (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1994): 36, 38. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 326. Brenda M. Hosington and Anne Shaver, “The Faerie Queene, children’s versions.“ Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A.C. Hamilton (Toronto: Toronto UP, 1990), 289-91. Matthew Woodcock, “The Place of Arthur in Children’s Versions of The Faerie Queene.“ Arthuriana 13.2 (Summer 2003), 23-37. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/803/Crucifix_and_Desk.png eb219e727cdc91b6fe71e7d44fdce277 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Altar-table and crucifix Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Chapel Description An account of the resource Many tower houses had a private chapel. The east-facing window and layout of this room, including an “aumbry“ (a niche), suggests that it could have served as a chapel before Spenser took possession of the tower house. If so, then Spenser could have modified it for his own household use as a religious space. Spenser was a Protestant, but what kind of Protestant is open to debate. To what extent did he sympathize with the rituals and doctrine of the Anglican, or “high” church, which had parallels with the older, Catholic faith? By contrast, how “puritanical,” and therefore mistrustful of vestigial Catholic ceremonies and doctrine, was he? How much did he desire continued radical reform of the church following Lutheran or Calvinist principles? Furthermore, did he believe in structural as well as doctrinal reform in the church? To what degree for each? How did his opinions evolve? Was he a more hot-headed reformer as a young man, before he came to Ireland? Or was he sympathetic towards tolerant and syncretic religious practices? As he grew older, how did Ireland’s religious politics influence him? One could argue that his status as a minority English Protestant hardened his militant anti-Catholic and apocalyptic beliefs, a logical reaction to the threats he found surrounding him. He exhibits such beliefs in works he wrote as a young man, for example in his first publication (1569), a translation of the work of Dutch reformer Jan van der Noot. Spenser’s written works give us conflicting impressions concerning his beliefs and where he stood in relation to the current reform of England and Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic churches. We have therefore taken the controversial step of creating a modest but icon-filled chapel at Kilcolman. An image of the Christ hangs on the crucifix (many Protestants abhorred the idea of presenting an image of their god, preferring instead a plain crucifix), and a late-medieval mural of St Christopher brightens up the wall. It is imagined here as a visible remnant of the previous inhabitants of the same chapel, which Spenser chose not to white-wash. On the makeshift altar (a table and cloth) lies a Bible, chalice and crucifix. A cushion sits below for kneeling in prayer. Which Bible was Spenser reading? We leave that unspecified although he likely owned a copy of the Book of Common Prayer (1559) for worship purposes. Literary Connections Spenser seems to hate — he ridicules, satirizes and demonizes— the institution of the Catholic church, including the papacy, which he equates in The Faerie Queene Book I (for example) with the Whore of Babylon and the Antichrist. In this he follows the Calvinist commentary in the Geneva Bible (1560). He had political worries in this regard: the armies of the Catholic empire Spain regularly interfered in Ireland and the Netherlands, and tried to in England, a drama played out repeatedly in the allegories of Book V of The Faerie Queene and in other places in his poetry, such as the Orgoglio episode in Book I. Nonetheless, without censure or irony, Spenser includes Catholic imagery and ideas in his House of Holiness episode in Book I.x of The Faerie Queene. Here the Red Crosse Knight undergoes a scourging of the flesh. That hero, the hero of holiness, then becomes St George, a saint from the old liturgy, also the patron saint of England, who undergoes a symbolic crucifixion fighting against the Dragon in canto xi. Saints were redolent of Catholicism, and George becomes an icon or image of Christ himself as we read along. Spenser describes him in words, not images, but Spenser’s words are highly imagistic. The 1590 Faerie Queene included one woodcut, an image of St George defeating the dragon: in other words, a sort of icon (this woodcut can be found hanging on the bookshelf in his study upstairs). Spenser also appears to be anti-Catholic in his artistic temperament. At the end of Book II, for example, published in the same volume, the hero of temperance, Guyon, violently destroys the highly artistic, if luxurious and decadent, Bower of Bliss. Spenser therefore appears to promote iconoclasm (or image-destruction) at any cost: a radical Protestant idea. Ireland itself Spenser admires for once being a “holy-Island” that “florished in fame/ Of wealths and goodnesse, far aboue the rest” (The Faerie Queene VII.vi.37.7, 38.1-2), a compliment to its ancient status as an island famed for its saints and scholars, long before the Protestant Reformation occured. Yet in Spenser’s day Ireland had —from his point of view— degenerated to a bad condition, occupied by rebellious papists and no-good, feckless Protestant church appointees (as we hear in A View of the Present State of Ireland). For Spenser, the best cure for Ireland’s perillous spiritual condition was reformed, state-sponsored religion that would follow a political re-conquest and reformation of the country. Spenser would, presumably, uphold this religion at Kilcolman. In his poem, “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,“ Spenser’s alter-ego Colin Clout, having visited London (to the east) and returned to Kilcolman (in the west), enthusiastically describes to his fellow shepherds the “lookes“ of “Cynthia,“ i.e., Queen Elizabeth I, whom he saw at court. Her looks and favor inspire religious devotion in him, and he compares her to the sun shining from the “windowes of the east“: <blockquote> like beames of the morning Sun, Forth looking through the windowes of the East: When first the fleecie cattell haue begun Vpon the perled grasse to make their feast. Her thoughts are like the fume of Franckincence, Which from a golden Censer forth doth rise: And throwing forth sweet odours mounts fro thence In rolling globes vp to the vauted skies. (lines 604-11) </blockquote> Links: <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/</a> [accessed 10/30/12] [Harry Ransom Center exhibit on Gutenberg and the early printed Bible] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 33-50, 194-5, 208, 222-6, 326. Carol Kaske, “Introduction.” The Faerie Queene, Book One. By Edmund Spenser. Ed. Carol Kaske (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006), ix-xxix. John N. King, “sacraments.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A.C. Hamilton (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1990), 623-4. —, Spenser’s Poetry and the Reformation Tradition (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990). https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/812/Apples.png 7879af862bda74fc9efdbb1ebbc5c241 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Apples in a silver dish Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Parlor Description An account of the resource Many plantations and other estates had orchards for growing apples and other fruits. Examples of orchards recreated today according to early modern designs can be found at Barryscourt Castle, Co. Cork and also in the burgage plot (or backyard property) of Rothe House, Kilkenny (See also the description of the Bawn Area: garden). The Norris estate at Mallow, near Kilcolman, had an orchard, as did the planter William Herbert’s estate at Castleisland, Co. Kerry. Spenser’s orchard, if he had one, would likely have been situated outside of the bawn wall. Literary Connections In his sonnet sequence Amoretti (1595), which describes his courtship of his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, Spenser writes two adjacent sonnets admiring the breasts of his beloved. In the second of the two, 77, he imagines himself dining at a table fit for a prince. <blockquote>Was it a dreame, or did I see it playne, a goodly table of pure yvory: all spred with iuncats fit to entertayne the greatest Prince with pompous roialty? Mongst which there in a siluer dish did ly twoo golden apples of vnualewd price: far passing those which Hercules came by, or those which Atalanta did entice. Exceeding sweet, yet voyd of sinfull vice, That many sought yet none could euer taste, sweet fruit of pleasure brought from paradice By loue himselfe and in his garden plaste. Her brest that table was so richly spredd, my thoughts the guests, which would thereon haue fedd.</blockquote> The table is a metaphor for Elizabeth’s “breast,” or bosom. Spenser’s “thoughts” are imagined as “guests” (not as owners or occupants) who admire “two golden apples” that far surpass those found in mythological accounts. The reader is told that these apples are more wholesome than those that lead “to sinfull vice,” but that depends entirely on the attitude and behavior of those who possess them. In The Faerie Queene, golden apples have a similar ambiguous status, as both ideal objects to be admired and treasured as well as prized goods tainted with a darker, bloodier hue. In Book II, the Book of Temperance (a book that emphasizes the virtue of resisting the wrong kind of easily proffered fruit), they grow in the Garden of Proserpina: “golden apples glistering bright,/ That goodly was their glory to behold” (FQ II.vii.54.1-2). They are not wholesome: amongst these fruit is the golden apple thrown on Mount Ida by the goddess of Discord. Thus began the chain of events that led to the Trojan War: <blockquote>Here eke that famous golden Apple grew, The which emongest the gods false Ate threw; For which th’Idaean Ladies disagreed, Till partiall Paris dempt it Venus dew, And had of her, fayre Helen for his meed, That many noble Greekes and Troians made to bleed. (FQ II.vii.55.4-9)</blockquote> Because the Trojan warrior Paris chose the golden apple for Venus, the goddess of Love, he was rewarded by her with the love of fair Helen of Troy: a bitter reward in the end, for it caused discord and bloodshed between the Trojans and the Greeks. A lesson may be drawn here, in that many of the fruits offered to Spenser in Ireland, however beautiful, came with strings attached; his rewards there led to further discord and strife (see also the description of the Garden of Ate in The Faerie Queene IV.i.25). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Joan Heiges Blythe, “Ate.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 76. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 221. Richard McCabe, Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002): 77. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/810/Barrels.jpg 6aa9ac3366082d10398627ec8e36e3c2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Barrels Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Ground Floor Description An account of the resource All homeowners need places to store their goods, including food and drink. The bottom floors of tower houses, often the dampest and coldest areas in the building, were typically used for storage. Timber was a key export from the Munster plantation, and much of this timber was fashioned into barrel staves for use in the international wine trade. Sir Walter Raleigh gained a monopoly on all such exports out of Munster. His own plantation lands along the Blackwater River were some of the most heavily deforested, for this purpose and others. Timber would also have been used for shipbuilding, house-building and glassmaking. Many trees would also have been consumed in the iron mill industry that Raleigh helped to cultivate. In 1587, in a brief period of piracy (or opportunism, depending on the legal interpretation), Spenser captained a seized Spanish ship, loaded with many “pipes” (pipe-staves) of wine, and sailed it from the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry to Cork harbor. Literary Connections Spenser was apparently fond of wine, which would have been stored in barrels. The partying poet describes pouring it out “to all that wull” [i.e., “will”] in his wedding poem, “Epithalamion”: <blockquote> Now al is done; bring home the bride againe, Bring home the triumph of our victory… Make feast therefore now all this liue long day, This day for euer to me holy is, Poure out the wine without restraint or stay, Poure not by cups, but by the belly full, Poure out to all that wull, And sprinkle all the postes and wals with wine, That they may sweat, and drunken be withall. (242-3, 248-54) </blockquote> The party takes place in Spenser’s “home,” or Kilcolman, perhaps in the great hall of the building adjoining the tower house. The great hall was a public space and could accommodate more visitors than the parlors could. A “belly” here refers to the human stomach but also a pouch-like container for wine. The poet, in his metamorphic mind-set, imagines the house itself, like a person, joining in the revelry: the walls themselves “sweat” and are drunk with wine. All Kilcolman rejoices with the bringing home of the bride. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Nigel Everett, The Woods of Ireland: a history, 700-1800 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014). Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 210, 217. Thomas Herron, “Irish Archaeology and the Poetry of Edmund Spenser: content and context.” Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material culture, c. 1550-c. 1700 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 229-47: 229-32. Eileen McCracken, The Irish Woods Since Tudor Times (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971). Kenneth Nicholls, “Woodland cover in pre-modern Ireland.” Gaelic Ireland c.1250-c.1650, land, lordship and settlement. Ed. P.J. Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 181-206. Peter Rieman, “Silvan Matters: Error and Instrumentality in Book I of The Faerie Queene.” Spenser Studies 28 (2013), 119-43. William J. Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c. 1530-1750 (South Bend, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2006): 86-102. Andrew Zurcher, Spenser’s Legal Language: law and poetry in early modern England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007): 111-114. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/806/Bed.png eeb79f0b0678531e52ae7bc19cd24621 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bed Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Bedroom Description An account of the resource Spenser’s bed was the focus of much mental and physical activity. He fathered at least 3 children, two of them (a son and a daughter) perhaps conceived in Ireland. A possible fourth child, a baby, was rumored to have died in the flames when Kilcolman was sacked in 1598. Seen here is a four-poster with embroidered curtains. On it lies a small book (perhaps Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion). Literary Connections “To sleep, perchance to dream…” says Hamlet in his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Spenser’s own dreams must have factored somehow into his deeply visionary poetry. In his published correspondence (1580) with his Cambridge tutor Gabriel Harvey, Spenser refers to his work, Dreams, which is now lost if not incorporated under a different name in his works. He translates (and re-translates) the fifteen dream-poems or Songe of the French poet, Joachim Du Bellay, and publishes them as his Visions of Bellay along with other Visions in the Complaints volume (1591). These poems are deeply enigmatic with both political and apocalyptic strains in them. His poetry sometimes focuses on dreams as the spur to the imagination: in The Faerie Queene, evil spirits visit “Morpheus house” (Morpheus is the god of sleep) in search of a “fit false dreame” to torment the hero Red Crosse Knight with (FQ I.i.39 ff.) In the description of the “heauenly towre” that allegorizes the mind in the House of Temperance episode in Book II, we encounter the character Phantastes, who represents the fantastic imagination (see also Tower House Study: Desk). He has “a sharpe foresight, and working wit,/ That neuer idle was, ne once would rest a whit” (FQ II.ix.49.8-9). He imagines all sorts of <blockquote> ...idle thoughtes and fantasies, Deuices, dreames, opinions vnsound, Shewes, visions, sooth-sayes, and prophesies; And all that fained is, as leasings, tales, and lies. (FQ II.ix.51.6-9). </blockquote> In his wedding poem, “Epithalamion”, the bed is a framing device: the action begins and ends in bed, as his bride is awoken from her “bowre” with the rising of the sun (23) and returns to bed with her new husband that night. At the conclusion of his poem, Spenser invokes the “Genius” of the land (a guardian spirit) to protect the couple and send them children: <blockquote> And thou glad Genius, in whose gentle hand, The bridale bowre and geniall bed remaine, Without blemish or staine, And the sweet pleasures of theyr loues delight With secret ayde doest succour and supply, Till they bring forth the fruitfull progeny, Send vs the timely fruit of this same night. (398-404) </blockquote> He also imagines cupids fluttering around his bride’s body as she lies in her (their?) bed: <blockquote> The whiles an hundred little winged loues, Like diuers fethered doues, Shall fly and flutter round about your bed, And in the secret darke, that none reproues, Their prety stealthes shal worke, and snares shal spread To filch away sweet snatches of delight, Conceald through couert night. (357-63) </blockquote> The cupids resemble scattered leaves of his own love poetry, including the sonnet sequence he used to woo his wife. The sequence is entitled “Amoretti,” from Italian amoretti, meaning “little loves,” i.e., cupids. Cupids resemble children, who like poems are the fruit of his own invention, or “Genius,” that allow him to grab “sweet snatches of delight” at Kilcolman. Thanks to his genius and “geniall bed,” he will create children, or “fruitfull progeny” with Elizabeth Boyle. Without genius, wife or a bed, no children; without children and a strong house to put them in, no hold on the land, and no place to dream or write his poetry. Links: <a href="https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/To_Sleep,_Perchance_to_Dream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/To_Sleep,_Perchance_to_Dream</a> [accessed 1/30/18] [Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit, “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”] <a href="http://titania.folger.edu/dreams/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://titania.folger.edu/dreams/</a> [accessed 10/30/12] [Renaissance “Dream Machine” from Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit, “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Camille Paglia, “sex.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1990), 638-41. Carol Schreier Rupprecht, “dreams.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1990), 226-7. Lars-Håkan Svensson, “Morpheus.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1990), 480. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/792/Bellows.png 34c15db3f6bce07af40198b397530ca4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bellows Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource On the floor near the fireplace sits a bellows, for encouraging the fire. Spenser would likely have had a smithy on his Kilcolman estate, which would have employed similar tools. Iron-working debris predating Spenser’s occupation and presumably from the castle forge was found among the cellar in-fill under the Great Hall. Another bellows is in the Tower House Parlor. Literary Connections In Book IV of The Faerie Queene (1596), the hero Sir Scudamour encounters a blacksmith named Care. Care is described in a manner reminiscent of other descriptions of savage, unkempt, starving, criminal characters in Spenser’s poems and prose. Care could therefore be understood in the allegory as potentially Irish (compare with the description of Despair in FQ I.ix.33-36 and with the degenerated Timias who wears a “glib” in FQ IV.viii.12; IV.vii.40-43). Care resembles <blockquote> … a wretched wearish elfe, With hollow eyes and rawbone cheeks forspent, As if he had in prison long bene pent: Full blacke and griesly did his face appeare, Besmeard with smoke that nigh his eye-sight blent; With rugged beard, and hoarie shagged heare, The which he neuer wont to combe, or comely sheare. (FQ IV.v.34.3-9) </blockquote> Care’s smithy, furthermore, is an allegory for the sighing, pensive, care-worn body. Amid the machinery and clanging hammers is a pair of bellows, which function like lungs in the allegory. They blow so loudly that none can hear: <blockquote> And eke the breathfull bellowes blew amaine, Like to the Northren winde, that none could heare: Those Pensifenesse did moue; and Sighes the bellows weare. (FQ IV.v.38.7-9) </blockquote> “Sighes,” caused by worries, make the lungs work hard, like “bellows.” Spenser imagines these “bellows” blowing out cold, “North[er]n” winds. North is the traditional direction of dark and cold, and also (from Kilcolman) the Ballyhoura mountain range and the Glen of Aherlow, which was famous for its rebels and thieves (cf. View 137). To the north of the Munster Plantation lay the region of Thomond, Irish for “north Munster” (Tuath Mumhain) and home of the great O’Brien lordship. In A View of the Present State of Ireland, Spenser’s spokesman Irenius describes one of the O’Brien rebels of “Thomond… called Murrogh en ranagh, that is Morris of the ferne or waste wild places,” who allied himself with an “O’Neale” who came from the “North revolting,” and together they rebelled with great violence like a wind: “breaking forth like a sudden tempest [Murrogh] overran all Munster and Connaught, breaking down all the holds and fortresses of the English… he clean wiped out many great Towns” (View 15-16). Irenius is describing events involving Murrough O’Brien (d. 1383) in the late-fourteenth century (although he mistakenly places them in the fifteenth century), during the so-called “Gaelic resurgence” when Old English settlements lost much of their colonial territory to native Irish lordships. Spenser in 1596 was likewise deeply worried about a new threat, led by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, sweeping out of the North and joining forces with rebels in Munster, as they were to do in 1598 during the uprising that sacked Kilcolman and the plantation. Hugh O’Neill was thought to be the base-born son of a blacksmith. At Kilcolman, a northern wind blew very cold indeed and may have inspired his portrait of the blacksmith Care. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Thomas Herron, ”‘Goodly Woods‘: Irish Forests, Georgic Trees in Books I and IV of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene.” Quidditas: JRMMRA 19 (1998), 97-122. Eric Klingelhofer, Castles and Colonists: an archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010): 117. John Steadman, “Care.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1990), 135-6. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/813/Bellows.png 34c15db3f6bce07af40198b397530ca4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bellows Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Parlor Description An account of the resource On the floor near the fireplace sits a bellows, for encouraging the fire. Spenser would likely have had a smithy on his Kilcolman estate, which would have employed similar tools. Iron-working debris predating Spenser’s occupation and presumably from the castle forge was found among the cellar in-fill under the Great Hall. Another bellows is in the Ground Floor Parlor. Literary Connections In Book IV of The Faerie Queene (1596), the hero Sir Scudamour encounters a blacksmith named Care. Care is described in a manner reminiscent of other descriptions of savage, unkempt, starving, and criminal characters in Spenser’s poems and prose. Care could therefore be understood in the allegory as potentially Irish (compare with the description of Despair in FQ I.ix.33-36, and with the degenerated Timias who wears a “glib” in FQ IV.viii.12; IV.vii.40-43). Care resembles <blockquote>… a wretched wearish elfe, With hollow eyes and rawbone cheekes forspent, As if he had in prison long bene pent: Full blacke and griesly did his face appeare, Besmeard with smoke that nigh his eye-sight blent; With rugged beard, and hoarie shagged heare, The which he neuer wont to combe, or comely sheare. (FQ IV.v.34.3-9)</blockquote> Care’s smithy, furthermore, is an allegory for the sighing, pensive, care-worn body. Amid the machinery and clanging hammers is a pair of bellows, which function like lungs in the allegory. They blow so loudly that none can hear: <blockquote>And eke the breathfull bellowes blew amaine, Like to the Northren winde, that none could heare: Those Pensifenesse did moue; and Sighes the bellows weare. (FQ IV.v.38.7-9)</blockquote> “Sighes,” caused by worries, make the lungs work hard, like “bellowes.” Spenser imagines these “bellowes” blowing out cold, “North[er]n” winds. North is the traditional direction of dark and cold, and also (from Kilcolman) the Ballyhoura mountain range and the Glen of Aherlow, which was famous for its rebels and thieves (cf. View 137). To the north of the Munster Plantation lay the region of Thomond, Irish for “north Munster” (Tuath Mumhain) and home of the great O’Brien lordship. In the View, Irenius describes one of the O’Brien rebels of “Thomond… called Murrogh en ranagh, that is Morris of the ferne or waste wild places,” who allied himself with an “O’Neale” who came from the “Northe revolting,” and together they rebelled with great violence like a wind: “breaking forth like a sudden Tempest [Murrogh] overran all Munster and Connaught, breaking down all the holdes and fortresses of the English… he clean wiped out many great towns” (View 15-6). Irenius is describing events involving Murrough O’Brien (d. 1383) in the late-fourteenth century (although he mistakenly places them in the fifteenth century), during the so-called “Gaelic resurgence” when Old English settlements lost much of their colonial territory to native Irish lordships. Spenser in 1596 was likewise deeply worried about a new threat, led by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, sweeping out of the North and joining forces with rebels in Munster, as they were to do in 1598 during the uprising that sacked Kilcolman and the plantation. Hugh O’Neill was thought to be the base-born son of a blacksmith. At Kilcolman, a northern wind blew very cold indeed and may have inspired his portrait of the blacksmith Care. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Thomas Herron, “’Goodly Woods’: Irish Forests, Georgic Trees in Books I and IV of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene.“ Quidditas: JRMMRA 19 (1998), 97-122. Eric Klingelhofer, Castles and Colonists: an archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010): 117. John Steadman, “Care.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1990), 135-6. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/822/Bookshelf.png f3f9a9f5ab04651e77c12a3916fc127a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bookshelves Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Study Description An account of the resource It is unclear how large of a library Spenser had. Like the “Library” of Eumnestes in The Faerie Queene (II.ix.59.3), it may have been large and full of worm-holes, or small and well-cared for, or anywhere in between. It is hard to imagine Spenser writing The Faerie Queene and whatever else at Kilcolman without some recourse to books and manuscripts at hand, either in his own house or nearby at places like Mallow, the estate with large castle owned by the Norris family, who served as Presidents of Munster. Mallow was a long way to walk, however, to check up on a quotation (see Trade and Travel: Roads). Andrew Hadfield estimates that Spenser had 200-300 volumes in his working library (by comparison, an inventory of Munster planter Sir William Herbert’s seignory at Castleisland, Co. Kerry mentions “of sundry sortes great and little one hundred“ books). These would have been in various languages and of all kinds and genres, ranging from religious to legal tracts to popular and refined works of literature. The space for the conjectured study in our recreation is relatively small, so vertically stacked bookshelves (a design known in the late-sixteenth century) are used instead of shelves angled outwards from the wall (as one might find in a periodicals reading-room today, for example). The latter type were better for displaying the covers of books but the former could hold more. Contrary to modern-day practice, the majority of the books are arranged with their spines facing the wall. The reason for this is that many books were bound haphazardly by the owners, and titles of books were often written in ink on the page-ends of books, as opposed to being stamped onto the leather or vellum of the spines. There was a book trade in early modern Ireland, but how far it reached into the countryside is uncertain. Spenser travelled enough, including to London, and spent enough time in major Irish towns, such as Dublin, and earned enough money, to have amassed a good collection of books for a person of his social status. Many of these books would presumably have been burnt when the castle went up in flames in 1598. Losses may have included unpublished parts of The Faerie Queene. On the top shelf of one of the bookshelves are two objects with threatening significance. One, a skull, is the standard medieval momento mori or reminder of our final end. The other is a Spanish helmet (see Tower House Study: Helmet), the sort of trophy that Spenser could have bought or have picked up as a souvenir after one or another expedition by Spain landed on Irish shores (disastrously so). Spenser was a poet acutely conscious of worldly ruin and of his own mortality, while simultaneously hopeful that a decisive English Protestant victory over Spain (and other foreign Catholic forces) might finally be achieved. Spenser anticipates such a battle in The Faerie Queene, between “that great faery Queene and Paynim king,” which he promises to one day write about (FQ I.xi.7). Spenser’s epic has a godly, anti-Spanish, anti-papal, pro-English militaristic purpose. Ironically, that battle came to Kilcolman too soon, and his book was never finished. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford History of the Irish Book: Vol. III: the Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006). Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 226-30. A. Kent Hieatt, “The Projected Continuation of The Faerie Queene: Rome Delivered?” Spenser Studies 8 (1987), 335-42. Rev. Kieran O’Shea, “A Castleisland Inventory, 1590.” Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 15-16 (1982-3), 37-46. David Wilson-Okamura, “When Did Spenser Read Tasso?” Spenser Studies 23 (2008), 277-82. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/807/Chest.png 76f765205f140e088f78039f72e14f38 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chest Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Bedroom Description An account of the resource A good place to put money or other precious objects in a tower house was on the top floor, because that would be the hardest place for an invader or thief to reach. The metal chest here is of the kind with elaborate locking mechanisms. The chest is a Spanish model; Spenser could have purchased or salvaged similar models from the flotsam and jetsam washed up on Irish shores in the sixteenth century, including after ships from the Great Armada crashed there in 1588 (see also Great Hall: helmet, Spanish). In 1587, in a brief period of piracy (or opportunism, depending on the legal interpretation), Spenser captained a seized Spanish ship, loaded with wine, and sailed it from the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry to Cork harbor. Literary Connections Spenser's employer Arthur, Lord Grey wrote to Queen Elizabeth during the Desmond rebellion that the Spanish besieged at Smerwick had a ”coffer” in which they stored all their ”treasure.” It was duly seized and its contents of silver (“plate“) coins distributed among his men. The Munster Plantation offered Spenser himself significant opportunity in land, treasure and status. He, like his fellow New Englishmen, or like Guyon, the hero of Temperance who resists the snares of Mammon (in Book II of The Faerie Queene), had to be on guard against its corrupting influences. He also had to guard against thieves. The treasure inside the chest might remind us of Spenser’s bride, described in Amoretti 15 as containing “all this worlds riches that may farre be found.” Her lips are like “Rubies,” her eyes like “Saphyres,” and so forth, but most fair of all is “her mind adornd with vertues manifold.” In the following wedding poem, “Epithalamion,” we hear that “all her body” is “like a pallace fayre,/ Ascending vppe with many a stately stayre,/ To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre” (178-80). Elizabeth Boyle was herself a prize to be won. A chest lost at sea is fought over by two sons of “Milesio,” Amidas and Bracidas, in Book V of The Faerie Queene (the “Book of Justice”). Artegall, the hero of Justice, finds Amidas and Bracidas fighting over a <blockquote> … Coffer strong, Fast bound on euery side with iron bands, But seeming to haue suffred mickle wrong, Either by being wreckt vppon the sands, Or being carried farre from forraine lands. (FQ V.iv.5.1-5) </blockquote> The ensuing story involves a complicated legal matter, involving a dispute over land lost and found (land washed from one brother to the other by action of the sea), wives lost and found (the wife of one brother eloped with the other; the other wife floated back the other way), as well as treasure lost and found (the chest floated, accompanied by wife, from the one brother to the other). Artegall, acting as judge, resolves the dispute through the principle of salvage (or, put crudely, finders-keepers): to whom the land, treasure and wife goes, thanks to the action of the sea, so belongs the ownership of each: <blockquote> For what the mighty Sea hath once possest, And plucked quite from all possessors hand, Whether by rage of waues, that neuer rest, Or else by wracke, that wretches hath distrest, He [i.e., the Sea] may dispose by his imperiall might, As thing at randon left, to whom he list. (FQ V.iv.19.2-7) </blockquote> The episode has clear Irish significance in that Milesio was the legendary king of Spain who colonized prehistoric Ireland, according to Irish legend. His descendants were the Irish themselves. In Spenser’s poem, however, it is possible that one brother stands allegorically for Ireland and the other for England, Scotland and/or Wales. In either case, the resolution offered here indicates that Spenser fantasized about such a judgment being applied to his Irish situation. Artegall’s decision echoes the judgment of Dame Nature in The Faerie Queene Book VII (“The Mutabilitie Cantos”), which occurs on Arlo Hill, near Kilcolman: in that episode, Jove is allowed to keep the power that he took by force and is “confirm’d in his imperiall see,” or throne (FQ VII.vii.59.7). Spenser, by “imperiall might,” design and fortune, ended up with land, wife and treasure at Kilcolman, until the seas of fate took them all away again. Links: <a href="https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Lost_at_Sea:_The_Ocean_in_the_English_Imagination,_1550–1750" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Lost_at_Sea:_The_Ocean_in_the_English_Imagination,_1550–1750</a> [accessed 1/30/18] [Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit on “The Ocean in the English Imagination, 1550-1750”] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Robert A. Brinkley, “Bracidas, Amidas.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1990), 109. Arthur, Lord Grey. “Grey to the Queen, 12 November 1580,“ in Edmund Spenser, Selected Letters and Other Papers. Ed. Christopher Burlinson and Andrew Zurcher (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009): 13-27: 19. Clare Carroll, “Spenser and the Irish Language: the Sons of Milesio in A View of the Present State of Ireland, The Faerie Queene, Book V and the Leabhar Gabhála.” Irish University Review 26.2 (1996), 281-90. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 192-3. Richard A. McCabe, Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002): 122-7. Andrew Zurcher, Spenser’s Legal Language: law and poetry in early modern England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007), ch. 5 (“Justice, Equity and Mercy in The Legend of Artegall”) and especially pp. 111-114. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/805/Crib.png e770e04d62640d2071e3b39aadd03e6f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Crib and fireplace Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Bedroom Description An account of the resource Near the fireplace was a logical place to stay warm at all times of year in chilly Ireland. Spenser raised at least three children at Kilcolman: from his second marriage (in 1594, to Elizabeth Boyle), a son, Peregrine; from his first marriage (in 1579, to Machabeus Chylde), a daughter, Katherine, and a son, Sylvanus. Sylvanus and his descendants would end up inheriting Kilcolman. A crib was a hopeful sign that a landed gentleman’s name and property would be passed on to his heirs. (See also Bedroom: Toy Knight) Child mortality was a constant in the early modern period. Spenser’s contemporary, the writer Ben Jonson, reported that Spenser lost another child, a baby, in the destruction of the castle in 1598. How trustworthy this statement is is unclear. Jonson also said that Spenser died penniless, which is unlikely, and Jonson regularly focused on the death of children in his creative work. He may therefore have been embellishing an already dramatic story about the poet’s narrow escape during the uprising. A story, told by the antiquarian James Ware in his preface to Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland (1633), relates that a different sort of child, i.e., the unpublished remainder of The Faerie Queene, was lost in transit following the desertion of his castle. Literary Connections Children are an occasional feature of Spenser’s poetry. Some, like the infant Ruddymane in The Faerie Queene, appear in highly traumatic circumstances: Ruddymane is found playing in the blood of his dying mother, Amavia, who has stabbed herself (FQ II.i.39ff). Ruddymane, whose name means “red hand,” has been read by one of Spenser’s early commentators, John Upton, as alluding to the heraldic Red Hand of Ulster, and hence to the threat of violence and rebellion in the north (from whence soldiers came to sack Kilcolman, for example). Amavia, likewise, could evoke the Irish queen of the fairies (cf. Shakespeare’s “Queen Mab” in Romeo and Juliet). Ruddymane’s deceased father, Mordant, might glance at the English soldier, Captain Mordant, who according to state papers was reprimanded for bad behavior in Ireland in the mid-1580s. With the Ruddymane episode, is Spenser somehow allegorizing the bloody mess that Ireland was in? Other children, like the “thousand thousand naked babes” in the ever-fertile Garden of Adonis (FQ III.vi.32.3) or the cupids (or amoretti) in his courtship poems, Amoretti and Epithalamion, stand for erotic creativity and new life in Spenser’s work. For example, in “Epithalamion,” the “sons of Venus,” i.e., cupids, amoretti or “winged loves,” symbolize Spenser’s sonnets themselves, titled Amoretti. These cupids fly and “play” around his bedroom at Kilcolman on his wedding night, which the speaker hopes will stay silently peaceful and free from threat while the couple makes love: <blockquote> But let stil Silence trew night watches keepe, That sacred peace may in assurance rayne, And tymely sleep, when it is tyme to sleepe, May poure his limbs forth on your pleasant playne, The whiles an hundred little winged loues, Like diuers feathered doues, Shall fly and flutter round about your bed, And in the secret darke, that none reproues, Their prety stealthes shal worke, and snares shal spread To filch away sweet snatches of delight, Conceald through couert night. Ye sonnes of Venus, play your sports at will, For greedy pleasure, carelesse of your toyes, Thinks more vpon her paradise of ioyes, Then what ye do, albe it good or ill. All night therefore attend your merry play, For it will soone be day: Now none doth hinder you, that say or sing, Ne will the woods now answer, nor your Eccho ring. (“Epithalamion” 353-71) </blockquote> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Colin Burrow, Edmund Spenser (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996): 8. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 263-4. —. “Spenser, Edmund (1552?-1599).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online edition, 2008). Carol V. Kaske, “Amavia, Mortdant, Ruddymane.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1990), 25-7. Rory Sherlock, “The Later Medieval Fireplaces of County Cork.” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 105 (2000), 207-30. Roland Smith, “Irish Names in The Faerie Queene.” Modern Language Notes 61.1 (January 1946), 27-38.