14 10 581 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/16/186/DSC_0352.JPG 137322efbe58224278d734bb9bb8de8d 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 BHL Kusinagar 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 226 Subject The topic of the resource 226 Description An account of the resource Kusinagar: Pawa Nagar Cunda Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Derek F. Maher Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kushinagar/DA Pawa Nagar Cunda Stills/DSC_0352.JPG Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 5/29/2016 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/16/187/DSC_0345.JPG 2b9003e09022497c06fe3fb2b6b020b2 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 BHL Kusinagar 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 227 Subject The topic of the resource 227 Description An account of the resource Kusinagar: Ramabhar Stupa Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Derek F. Maher Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kushingar/DA Ramabhar Stupa Stills/DSC_0345.JPG Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 5/29/2016 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/16/188/DSC_0347.JPG 18b3080984699297c493c8f4afb35ebe 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 BHL Kusinagar 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 227 Subject The topic of the resource 227 Description An account of the resource Kusinagar: Ramabhar Stupa Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Derek F. Maher Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kushinagar/DA Ramabhar Stupa Stills/DSC_0347.JPG Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 5/29/2016 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/788/Shella-na-gig.png 0a29cd20639d5eb220e1f533e8a25c21 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 Sheela-na-gig Subject The topic of the resource Bawn Area Description An account of the resource The sheela-na-gig is a “female exhibitionist figure” carved in stone and found most often in the walls of medieval Irish and British buildings, usually castles or churches. Over one hundred are known to exist in Ireland, roughly twice the number as in Britain. They typically show grimacing old women holding their vulvas. Their purpose and symbolism is unknown, although various theories include warnings against the sin of lust; warding off of evil (hence functioning like a gargoyle on a church); fertility symbols; and charms to assist with childbirth (Manning). Our sheela-na-gig at Kilcolman is modeled on a sandstone carving found buried in a dungeon (in the seventeenth century or before) at Glanworth Castle, Co. Cork. Glanworth was the second-most-important center of the Roche family, after Castletownroche, Co. Cork. The date and ultimate provenance of the Glanworth specimen is unknown. Another sheela-na-gig figure is known from Castletownroche, and one has been found in the wall of the tower house at Fantstown, near Kilmallock, Co. Limerick. The Fantstown specimen is located in the north-eastern corner of the tower house and is evident as one approaches the main doorway. This sheela-na-gig greets a visitor entering the main gate of the bawn, or outer-wall enclosure of the castle complex. We imagine that Spenser or the previous occupants of the castle, such as Sir John of Desmond, intended the sculpture to ward off evil, including enemies. Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth, had a son with the poet and could also have appreciated any association of the sculpture with the pains of childbirth. Literary Connections When night falls over the newlywed couple in Spenser’s wedding poem, “Epithalamion”, the speaker calls out on various demons of the night (including the Irish “Pouke”) not to disturb them in the comfort of their castle, as they make love (“Epithalamion” 334-52). According to Hugh MacLean and Anne Lake Prescott, “Spenser’s strategy” at this “liminal moment of sexuality,” a time of “transition and initiation,” is “to evoke and then shoo away grotesque fantasy figures” (641). For similar reasons, the poet earlier compares his bride to Medusa (“Epithalamion” 190) who “astonisht” onlookers at her wedding (with a pun in astonisht on turning to “stone”). Read one way, their alarm at her charm is a means of dispelling any potential ill will that the townspeople might bear towards the bride, for they clearly admire her beauty, as well. Read another way, Spenser is himself frightened by specters of female sexuality; it is something that must be overcome if he is to prosper and flourish in Ireland. The most famous hag in Spenser’s oeuvre is surely the witch Duessa (her name, implying duplicity, is also an Irish name, meaning “little black one”), who is stripped and whose shame is exposed in Book I.viii of The Faerie Queene: <blockquote> Such as she was, their eies might her behold, That her misshaped parts did them appall, A loathly, wrinckled hag, ill fauoured, old, Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told. Her crafty head was altogether bald, And as in hate of honorable eld, Was ouergrowne with scurfe and filthy scald; Her teeth out of her rotten gummes were feld, And her sowre breath abhominably smeld; Her dried dugs, lyke bladders lacking wind, Hong downe, and filthy matter from them weld; Her wrizled skin as rough, as maple rind, So scabby was, that would haue loathd all womankind. (FQ I.viii.46.6-47) </blockquote> She is monstrous, with animal-like feet and other “filthy feature” that is “open showne”(stanzas 48-49). The imagery comes from the Bible (cf. Isaiah 3.17, 24) and other places and again presents to the reader a haunting specter of female sexuality gone bad, since Duessa had earlier appeared as a beautiful seductress. Her scabbiness here indicates age and disease, including syphilis or perhaps leprosy, a disease that afflicted the unfaithful Cressida in medieval legend. She is allowed to wander off into the wilderness by the heroes of holiness Arthur and Red Crosse Knight, from whence she will later return to cause more confusion. Duessa is not a sheela-na-gig, but like the one we’ve posted next to Spenser’s bawn gate, she represents a grotesque portrayal of female sexuality. She must be grappled with, comprehended and evaded if the Englishman is to prosper in Ireland. Links <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig</a> (accessed 11/29/12) [Wikipedia entry on sheela-na-gigs] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Jørgen Andersen, The Witch on the Wall: medieval erotic sculpture in the British Isles (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1977): 130, 146. Barbara Freitag. Sheela-na-gigs: unraveling an enigma (London: Taylor and Francis, 2004). Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 263-4. Hugh MacLean and Anne Lake Prescott (eds), Edmund Spenser’s Poetry. 3rd ed. (NY: Norton, 1993). Conleth Manning, The History and Archaeology of Glanworth Castle, Co. Cork: Excavations 1982-4. Archaeological Monograph Series 4 (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009): 91-3 and back cover. Judith Owens, “The Poetics of Accommodation in Spenser’s ’Epithalamion,’” Studies in English Literature 40.1 (2000), 41-62. Rory Sherlock, “Newly Recorded Figurative Carvings on Tower Houses in County Limerick.” North Munster Antiquarian Journal 44 (2004), 15-23: 15-16. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/797/Map_of_Munster.png 112148bd6c4ac363e27d44f461b3f137 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 Map of Munster Plantation Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource Spenser the administrator would have taken a keen interest in the extent and progress of the Munster plantation. As a government official, he was intimately familiar with Ireland’s lawcourts, including those concerning property rights. As one of the main grantees, or “undertakers,“ of the plantation, he received over 3,000 acres of land around Kilcolman. He was himself embroiled in legal controversy over these lands, most notably with his powerful Old English neighbor, Lord Roche. This map, contemporary to Spenser’s time on the plantation, indicates the locations of plantation holdings and their undertakers, as well as pre-existing places and lordships. The size and shape of this map indicates its origin as calf-skin, or vellum, which is stored in a folded position but is shown here hung on the wall. For an example of a contemporary map by Francis Jobson with Spenser’s and Raleigh’s names listed on it, click here. Literary Connections In Spenser’s prose tract, A View of the Present State of Ireland (c. 1596), Eudoxus spreads out a map of Ireland in order to better comprehend where his partner in conversation, Irenius, wishes to place military garrisons for the defense of the realm. Such garrisons would allow the government to better control the countryside: <blockquote>though perhaps I am ignorant of the places, yet I will take the map of Ireland before me and make my eyes in the meanwhile my schoolmasters to guide my understanding to judge of your plot. (View 99)</blockquote> Spenser’s poetic imagination has been described as “cartographic” in many particulars, in both method and subject matter. To give only one example, after the huge dragon is killed at the climax of Book I, canto xi of The Faerie Queene, most of the rescued townspeople gather around the beast in shock and awe, <blockquote> Whiles some more bold, to measure him nigh stand, To proue how many acres he did spred of land. (FQ I.xii.11.8-9) </blockquote> The killing of the dragon has close analogies with the defeat of rebels in Munster, followed by the attainder and plotting out of their lands with the help of maps. Links: <a href="https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Mapping_Early_Modern_Worlds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Mapping_Early_Modern_Worlds</a> [accessed 1/30/18] [Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit on maps] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Rudolf Gottfried, “Irish Geography in Spenser’s View.” English Literary History 6.2 (1939), 114-37. Bernard Klein, Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Swen Voekel, “From Irish Countries to English Counties: State Sovereignty and Territorial Reorganization in Early Modern Ireland.” Archipelagic Identities: Literature and Identity in the Atlantic Archipelago, 1550-1800. Ed. Philip Schwyzer and Simon Mealor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 92-112. William J. Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland, c. 1530-1750 (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/786/Garden_bower_and_tower.png 0323e17355c337eddd3ea330dec6da47 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 Garden, bower, and tower Subject The topic of the resource Bawn Area Description An account of the resource No traces of a garden have been found at Kilcolman. Very little of its bawn area has been excavated, however, and so something may yet be found comparable to what exists at Barryscourt, Co. Cork; Rothe House, Kilkenny; and Drimnagh Castle, Dublin (minus the moat). It is almost certain that Spenser had some form of kitchen garden for growing fruit, vegetables and herbs (see Bawn area: kitchen, Tower House Parlor: apples). Spenser also likely had an orchard somewhere on his estate. It is possible that he had a pleasure garden as well, such as that pictured here. This garden has symmetrically designed, interlaced or “knotted” hedges according to Elizabethan patterns. The small, vine-laden arbor (or bower) for sitting and admiring the view of the garden, with its central sundial, is modeled on that at Kenilworth in England (the lavish estate of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, Spenser’s sometime patron). Some details are taken from the garden-arbor structures in the weird dream-allegory Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) of Francesco Colonna. As was conventional, the garden is situated so that its patterns can also be appreciated from above, by those standing on the bawn wall or looking out of the north-facing windows of the tower house, or from its ramparts. Literary Connections Spenser in his literary works is clearly enamored of gardens, which were places of great beauty and status in Elizabethan England, as they are in The Faerie Queene. They are places of art and contemplation, for thinking in and on. The deeply philosophical and mythological “Garden of Adonis” is the centerpiece of Book III of The Faerie Queene, the Book of Chastity. [“Chastity” for Spenser did not indicate virginity only, but rather the virtues of fertility under proper, loving (including wedded) circumstances.] A decadent and licentious garden with fountains in it, the Bower of Bliss, appears at the conclusion of Book II and is destroyed by Guyon, the hero of Temperance. Both the Garden of Adonis and the Bower of Bliss (as well as others) have been read by critics as having Ireland-related allegorical significance: in the former, we see an emphasis on seeding, the life-cycle and creative fertility, which may reflect Spenser’s own ideals as a “genius” creating art on his newly won plantation. In the latter, we see the sad consequences of trading heroic action for sensual, enervating ease: of living for the moment and enjoying your surroundings (including love poetry) far too much. Doughty knights must remain virtuous, armed and vigilant. In Spenser’s Amoretti #89, the final sonnet in the sequence, the poet imagines himself as a dove (a “Culuer“) missing its mate. She is beautiful and he longs for sight of her. Her “sweet aspect“ inspires both God and man to be with her: “Whose sweet aspect both God and man can moue,/ In her vnspotted pleasauns to delight.“ A “pleasauns“ in this case signifies both the pleasure area of a garden and “pleasantness“ more generally. Should the poet not have the sight and use of his love’s figurative pleasure garden, he complains, “Dark is my day, whyles her fayre light I mis,/ And dead my life that wants such liuely blis.“ (Amoretti 89.11-14). In Amoretti 64, dubbed the “garden sonnet” by critics, Spenser in a blazon, or poetic catalog on his mistress’ fair parts (a trope familiar also from the Song of Solomon in the Bible), compares his new bride, Elizabeth Boyle, to a garden: <blockquote>Comming to kisse her lyps, (such grace I found) Me seemd I smelt a gardin of sweet flowres: that dainty odours from them threw around for damzels fit to decke their louers bowres. Her lips did smell lyke vnto Gillyflowers, her ruddy cheeks lyke vnto Roses red: her snowy browes lyke budded Bellamoures, her louely eyes lyke Pincks but newly spred, Her goodly bosome lyke a Strawberry bed, her neck like to a bounch of Cullambynes: her brest lyke lillyes, ere theyr leaues be shed, her nipples lyke yong blossomd Iessemynes: Such fragrant flowers doe giue most odorous smell, but her sweet odour did them all excell.</blockquote> The sonnet immediately precedes #65, wherein Spenser compares his bride to a “gentle birde… within her cage” that “singes and feeds her fill,” once she has entered into her engagement “bands” with him. The “cage” brings his house or tower to mind. Birds are also attracted to gardens, and some gardens, like Kenilworth, had aviaries in them. The same “bondage” has captured the poet and tied him to her. They are a pair of love-birds. Spenser closes Sonnet 65 with a rhyming couplet, wherein a reference to a “brasen towre” is rhymed with “sacred bowre”: <blockquote>There fayth doth fearlesse dwell in brasen towre, and spotlesse pleasure builds her sacred bowre. (Amoretti 65.13-14)</blockquote> Spenser envisions both tower and bower side by side: a “bower” could refer to an inner apartment in a mansion, including bedrooms and boudoirs (see Oxford English Dictionary q.v. “bower”), or to a place in a garden, such as an “arbor” or “place closed in or overarched with branches of trees, shrubs, or other plants” (Oxford English Dictionary q.v. “bower”; see also the reference to the “bowre” in 64.4, above, and to the “Bower of Bliss,” the pleasure garden in The Faerie Queene II.xii). Tower and bower here function as a mutual unit, like man and wife: the sonnet couplet brings the couple to mind. Similarly, Sonnet 64 (the garden sonnet) appears adjacent to Sonnet 65 (the tower sonnet): another coupling. Figuratively, the poet would himself correspond with the strong, masculine and sheltering hard tower (“brasen” connotes both bold and brassy), which is full of “fayth” that is “fearlesse.” His bride, correspondingly, would be the chaste or “spotlesse” and “sacred” “bowre” of “pleasure” that he anticipates enjoying on his wedding night. In that garden-room he and she will grow children. Alternatively, it could be that Spenser sees his bride as the tower as well as the bower. In “Epithalamion”, the wedding poem that follows Amoretti, the poet returns to the use of the blazon to describe his bride. He compares her features to jewels, fruit [“Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,/ Her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte” (“Epithalamion” 173-4)] and flowers, and her “snowie necke” is <blockquote> ...lyke to a marble towre, And all her body like a pallace fayre, Ascending vppe with many a stately stayre, To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre. (Epithalamion 177-80) </blockquote> The poet follows Song of Solomon 7.4 in comparing her neck to a tower. The “bower” here in turn is clearly a room at the top of the tower. As in Sonnet 64, it could easily be perfumed with garden flowers, since it is the “sweet” “seat” of her “honor” and “chastity.” It is her mind, but also, in the poet’s mind, quite possibly a bedroom (see Tower House Bedroom). In Spenser’s poetry, towers and garden bowers, like bride and groom —all sites of fertility and creativity— accompany and blend into one another. Links <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili%20http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hypne2pg.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hypne2pg.jpg</a> (both accessed 12/6/12) [Wikipedia entries with illustrations for Colonna’s text] <a href="http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenilworth-castle/things-to-see-and-do/elizabethan-garden/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenilworth-castle/things-to-see-and-do/elizabethan-garden/</a> (accessed 1/24/18) [English Heritage website for Kenilworth Castle, including recently restored Elizabethan Gardens there] 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: Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980): 173ff. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 221, 305, 325-6. John Dixon Hunt and Michael Leslie, “gardens.” The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 323-5. Benjamin Myers, “The Green and Golden World: Spenser’s Rewriting of the Munster Plantation.” English Literary History 76 (2009), 473-490. —. “Pro-War and Prothalamion: Queen, Colony and Somatic Metaphor Among Spenser’s ‘Knights of the Maidenhead.’” English Literary Renaissance 37.2 (2007), 215-49. Anne Lake Prescott and Andrew Hadfield (eds), Edmund Spenser’s Poetry, 4th edition (NY: Norton, 2013): 652n. Amy Tigner, Literature and the Renaissance Garden from Elizabeth I to Charles II: England’s Paradise (Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2012). https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/787/Kitchen.png 5b253dedc986da8ae86ad28fc762f397 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 Kitchen Subject The topic of the resource Bawn Area Description An account of the resource Archaeologist Eric Klingelhofer suggests that a kitchen building may have been attached to an interior bawn wall (also hypothetical) that runs roughly SW-NE between the Tower House and the east bawn wall. A small kitchen building is therefore recreated at the intersection of this interior wall and the east bawn wall. A covered servants’ corridor runs between the kitchen and the Great Hall. It is almost certain that Kilcolman also had some form of kitchen garden for growing fruit, vegetables and herbs (see Bawn area: garden and Tower House Parlor: apples). Literary Connections Spenser’s House of Temperance, an allegory for the human body (see also Tower House Study: desk and Tower House Privy), has a huge kitchen, symbolizing the stomach: <blockquote> It was a vaut ybuilt for great dispence, With many raunges reard along the wall; And one great chimney, whose long tonnell thence, The smoke forth threw. And in the midst of all There placed was a caudron wide and tall, Vpon a mightie fornace, burning whott, More whott, then Aetn’, or flaming Mongiball: For day and night it brent, ne ceased not, So long as any thing it in the caudron got. But to delay the heat, least by mischaunce It might breake out, and set the whole on fyre, There added was by goodly ordinaunce, An huge great payre of bellowes, which did styre Continually, and cooling breath inspyre. About the Caudron many Cookes accoyld, With hookes and ladles, as need did requyre; The whyles the viaundes in the vessel boyld They did about their businesse sweat, and sorely toyld. (FQ II.ix.29-30) </blockquote> Links <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/schools/key-stage-3/tudor-kitchens-revealed/%20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/schools/key-stage-3/tudor-kitchens-revealed/</a> (accessed 1/30/18) [the kitchens of the Tudor palace, Hampton Court, near London] 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): 221, 325-6. Eric Klingelhofer, “Edmund Spenser at Kilcolman Castle: the archaeological evidence.” Post-Medieval Archaeology 39.1 (2005), 133-54. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/789/Helmet_Spanish.png 93bfc0dca59029f25e9617a8e41fadaf 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 Helmet, Spanish Subject The topic of the resource Great Hall Description An account of the resource When the great Spanish Armada was defeated by the English and blown away from the English Channel in 1588, many of its ships sailed homeward by first travelling north, rounding Scotland and Ireland, then travelling out into the open Atlantic on their way southwest to Spain. Many did not arrive, crashing on Irish shores in frightful weather, with thousands of sailors and soldiers lost. Spenser was in Ireland to help administer in the aftermath of the disaster, which offered considerable spoils to the victors (see also Tower House Bedroom: Chest). This helmet, or morion, could represent a trophy and souvenir from that period or from an earlier battle, the siege of Smerwick, Co. Kerry in 1580, which involved both Spanish and Italian troops fighting under the banner of the pope. Another helmet is located in the Tower House Study. Literary Connections The lengthy battle between Prince Arthur and the evil, tyrannical Souldan in Book V.viii of The Faerie Queene has long been read as an allegory for the English defeat of the Armada, and more recently as an allegory combining these events in Ireland as well. The hero of Justice, Artegall, helps mop up the Souldan’s men and drive his frightful wife, Adicia, “like an enraged cow” off into the woods (FQ V.viii.46.1). Both strength of arms and God’s grace help them to victory. Like an ancient Roman general, Arthur takes the Souldan’s armor and shield as a trophy or “eternall token” of his victory: <blockquote> Onely his shield and armour, which there lay, Though nothing whole, but all to brusd and broken, He vp did take, and with him brought away, That mote remaine for an eternall token To all, mongst whom this storie should be spoken, How worthily, by heauens high decree, Iustice that day of wrong her selfe had wroken, That all men which that spectacle did see, By like ensample mote for euer warned bee. (FQ V.viii.44) </blockquote> Links: <a href="http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/S108200/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/S108200/index.html</a> (accessed 11/8/12) [contemporary account in Spanish by Armada survivor Francisco de Cuellar, published on the CELT website of electronic texts] <a href="http://www.sligoheritage.com/ArchSpanishArmada.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.sligoheritage.com/ArchSpanishArmada.htm</a> (accessed 11/8/12) [photographs of Armada wreck sites in Co. Sligo and (unattributed) translation of de Cuellar’s account] 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: Vincent Carey, “Atrocity and History: Spenser and the Slaughter at Smerwick (1580).” Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland. Ed. David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007), 79-94. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 195. Thomas Herron, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): ch. 9. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/790/Mantelpiece.png b511518086bdc46de2abc833ba2b92ea 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 Mantelpiece Subject The topic of the resource Great Hall Description An account of the resource This great oak mantelpiece is fancifully modeled after two different early modern wall-pieces found in situ in Ireland today: 1) the allegorical figures in plaster wainscoting in the Long Gallery of Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, commissioned in the 1560s by the house’s owner, Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, and 2) the undated oak mantelpiece in Sir Walter Raleigh’s house at Myrtle Grove, Youghal, Co. Cork. In the Long Gallery at Carrick-on-Suir, the wainscoting running around the room shows the allegorized figures of Justice (holding a sword) and Equity (holding a scale) alternating with busts of Queen Elizabeth I and King Edward VI. In the parlor at Myrtle Grove, a (West-)English-style oak mantelpiece shows the allegorical figures of Faith, Hope and Charity amid other detail-work. The recreated mantelpiece at Kilcolman shows the paired figures of Faith (holding an anchor, an emblem of hope) and Justice (holding a sword). Both are modeled closely on the plaster figures at Carrick-on-Suir. In between them is the rose, a symbol of the English monarch. The rose connotes the Tudor family lineage as well as Queen Elizabeth herself, whose portrait is in the parlor next door. The Great Hall was used mainly for important gatherings and ceremonial occasions. Spenser, a Protestant and lord of the manor (both owner and administrator), would conceivably have administered justice in this room, including arbitration over minor disputes between his tenants and other business on the plantation, all administered in the name of the English crown. Business conducted in front of the mantelpiece would have reminded supplicants of English law, religion and power in Munster. Literary Connections The rose was the Tudor family badge and an apt symbol for the queen’s beauty. In The Faerie Queene, Elizabeth is described in allegorical guise as Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, “that glorious flowre,” from whence her name: “Therefore they Glorian call that glorious flowre,/ Long mayst thou Glorian liue, in glory and great powre” (FQ II.x.76.8-9); she is “that goodly glorious flowre… sprung of the auncient stocke of Princes straine” (FQ IV.viii.33.6-7). Elizabeth was closely associated with other flowers as well, such as the lily, a symbol of virginal purity (Elizabeth never married and carried the sobriquet “The Virgin Queen”), and the fleur-de-lis, either the lily or the iris. The fleur-de-lis in royal English heraldry connoted imperial power. It is figured on the queen’s scepter in portraits, for example, and was a stock symbol of the French monarchy. Elizabeth, like her forbearers, claimed monarchy over England, Wales, France and Ireland. It is interesting in this regard that the Irish word for “iris“ is gloiriam, also spelled gloriam in the early modern period (according the Dictionary of the Irish Language): a word close to glorian. The sword is a symbol of Justice. Artegall, the principal hero of Book V of The Faerie Queene, the Book of Justice, is introduced along with his sword, “Chrysaor, that all other swords excelled” (FQ V.i.9.8). With it, Artegall dispenses a rough justice to villains who oppose him. Queen Elizabeth is allegorically figured in the book as Mercilla, who must not let her sword (i.e., the sword of state) grow rusty out of disuse and excessive mercy. The 1596 edition of The Faerie Queene shows an anchor on its title page, an emblem of hope (anchora spei). The anchor was also the emblem of printer Richard Field. (The title page of the 1596 edition can be seen open on the desk in the Tower House Study.) The character of Speranza (her name meaning “hope”) offers her “siluer anchor” to the sinful hero Red Crosse Knight in Book I.x.22.2-3 of The Faerie Queene. Visitors to the Great Hall recreated here, who were loyal to Queen Elizabeth, would find symbols of faith, hope and justice to comfort them amid the turmoil surrounding Kilcolman. Links: <a href="http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/south-east/ormondcastle/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/south-east/ormondcastle/</a> (accessed 1/30/18) [Carrick-on-Suir town council website on Ormond Castle] 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: Jane Fenlon, “The Decorative Plasterwork at Ormond Castle—a unique survival.” Architectural History 41 (1998), 67-81. —, Ormond Castle (Dublin: Stationary Office, 1996). A. Bartlett Giamatti, “Elizabeth and Spenser.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 238-42. Anna Riehl, The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Mats Rydén, “flowers.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 310-11. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/791/Mether.png 42052c23daf9026c3f5ad78146b8084f 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 Mether Subject The topic of the resource Great Hall Description An account of the resource On the main banqueting table in the Great Hall sits a “mether,” which is a four-sided, four-handled Irish drinking vessel carved of wood. See also the methers in the Tower House Parlor. An example from the 16th century with the provenance “Kilcolman, Co. Cork” is currently in the Limerick Museum. Other objects on the table here, in the Parlor and in the Tower House Parlor, are modeled after Tudor-era facsimiles in wood and pewter found at Barrycourt Castle, Co. Cork. Links: <a href="http://museum.limerick.ie/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/213" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://museum.limerick.ie/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/213</a> (accessed 12/5/2013) [The mether in the Limerick Museum] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU