39 10 581 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/25/798/Narwhal_horn.png 32c2d88cae4b7303f4d584a6ffd0b5e6 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 Narwhal, i.e., "unicorn" horn Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource The spiral horn from the narwhal was sometimes mistaken in the Middle Ages and Renaissance for a more fantastic object, a unicorn horn. Spenser’s New English contemporary on the Munster plantation, Sir William Herbert, lists a ’unicorn horn’ in the inventory of his household goods at Castleisland, Co. Kerry, a residence formerly owned by the earl of Desmond. Literary Connections Unicorns are a quintessential fantasy-animal of the middle ages, both then and now, and are often associated with virgins and/or princesses in peaceful garden settings, as in the famous tapestries now in the Cloisters museum in New York. Surprisingly, however, the beast appears in the Bible as a violent animal (Job 39.12-15), beaten only by its enemy, the lion. Spenser uses this idea in an epic simile describing the battle of Guyon, the hero of Temperance, with the wrathful villain Pyrochles, in Book II of The Faerie Queene. Guyon is compared to a treed lion, and Pyrochles to a unicorn that charges the tree and sticks its horn into it, thus trapping itself and so becoming a “feast” for the lion: <blockquote> Like as a Lyon, whose imperiall powre A prowd rebellious Vnicorne defyes, T’auoide the rash assault and wrathfull stowre Of his fiers foe, him [i.e., the Lion] to a tree applyes, And when him ronning in full course he spyes, He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast His precious horne, sought of his enimyes Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast, But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast. (FQ II.v.10) </blockquote> Guyon wins the day, and the moral is that wrathful behavior will undo itself, no matter how great its powers. The passage also has a political dimension in that Guyon is associated with the “Lyon,” a symbol of both the English monarchy and (in this stanza) “imperiall power.” Against it, the unicorn becomes “prowd rebellious.” This description suits any Irish rebel —or any rebel at all— from Spenser’s point of view. As Clarence Steinberg has written, both Pyrochles and his equally angry brother Cymochles have Irish characteristics. They could allegorize Irish rebels in particular; they certainly capture the essence of the “prowd” wrath of Spenser’s enemies. Spenser mentions the narwhal in The Faerie Queene but calls it a “Monoceros.” It appears in a list of dreadful sea-monsters that were transformed from men into fish-shapes by the evil witch, Acrasia: <blockquote> Most vgly shapes, and horrible aspects,… Bright Scolopendraes, arm’d with siluer scales, Mighty Monoceros, with immeasured tayles. (FQ II.xii.23.1, 8-9) </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: Jonathan Bouchier, “Spenser: Description of Fishes.” Notes and Queries 93 (March 1896), 228-9. Rev. Kieran O’Shea, “A Castleisland Inventory, 1590.” Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 15-16 (1982-3), 37-46. Clarence Steinberg, “Atin, Pyrochles, and Cymochles: on Irish emblems in The Faerie Queene.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971), 749-61. John Webster and Richard Isomaki, “Pyrochles, Cymochles.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 574-5. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/799/Elizabeth_I_portrait.png d2e1b594f6fa1362c1c29b2df2110410 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 Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource This oil portrait is copied from a painting currently owned by the Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo, North Carolina. It is a variant of the famous Ditchley portrait and was probably painted in the 1590s by the studio of Marcus Gheeraerts the younger. There is no evidence that Spenser owned such a portrait. If he did own one like it, he may have displayed it in a semi-public place, as a demonstration of his property, taste and political connections. In the early modern period, public display of paintings was unusual, and so the painting hangs here, in the Ground Floor Parlor, rather than in the more public Great Hall. Picture galleries existed in early modern Ireland, for example at Ormond Castle, Carrick-on-Suir, whose attached Elizabethan mansion was built in the 1560s by Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond and cousin of Queen Elizabeth I. Ormond’s castle at Kilkenny also held paintings in the early modern period. Paintings were typically hung alongside tapestries (such as those in the house of Busyrane and viewed by the heroine Britomart in The Faerie Queene III.xi). For this reason a tapestry also hangs in this room (Ground Floor Parlor: Tapestry). It is questionable whether or not a mid-level functionary and new landowner such as Spenser could afford such luxury items, but it is possible. A painting of Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen,” would call attention to Spenser’s complex relationship with his monarch. She was his patron and employer. In 1590, after Spenser visited the court and presented his poetry there, the queen granted him a sizeable pension of 50 pounds per annum. In Ireland, Spenser served as administrator of his estate on behalf of the English crown, and therefore any authority he had ultimately emanated from the queen in London. Enter the parlor and you not only met Spenser’s family, but a likeness of her majesty as well. Literary Connections Spenser paints a complicated picture of Queen Elizabeth in his poetry. The queen was a powerful patron and subject of his work. She is allegorized as “Gloriana” or the inspirational Fairy Queen of The Faerie Queene (Great Hall: Mantelpiece on this website), and she is praised elsewhere in fulsome terms in his poetry (in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe”, for example). In Book I of The Faerie Queene, the main hero of the epic, Prince Arthur, sees Gloriana in a dream vision and is inspired towards virtuous action on her behalf: <blockquote> Whiles euery sence the humour sweet embayd, And slombring soft my hart did steale away Me seemed, by my side a royall Mayd Her daintie limbes full softly down did lay: So fayre a creature yet saw neuer sunny day. Mostly goodly glee and louely blandishment She to me made, and badd me loue her deare; For dearely sure her loue was to me bent, As when iust time expired should appeare. But whether dreames delude, or true it were, Was neuer hart so rauisht with delight, Ne liuing man like wordes did euer heare, As she to me deliuered all that night; And at her parting said, She Queene of Faries hight. ...From that day forth I lou’d that face diuyne; From that day forth I cast in carefull mynd, To seeke her out with labor, and long tyne,… (FQ I.ix.13-15) </blockquote> Simultaneously, Spenser’s satiric nature led him to criticize the queen and her court. Elizabeth appears to be satirized for her pride and worldly decadence in the figure of “Lucifera,” who rules over the House of Pride earlier in Book I: <blockquote> High aboue all a cloth of State was spred, And a rich throne, as bright as sunny day, On which there sate most braue embellished With royall robes and gorgeous array, A mayden Queene, that shone as Titans ray, In glistring gold, and perelesse pretious stone; Yet her bright blazing beautie did assay To dim the brightnesse of her glorious throne, As enuying her selfe, that too exceeding shone. (FQ I.iv.8) </blockquote> This portrait hanging in the ground-floor Parlor captures some of that same ambiguity: it shows the richly adorned Queen Elizabeth in all her splendid majesty but, uncharacteristically for such a portrait in this period, it does not hide her age. The mortal corruption of her flesh and her vanity is evident: wrinkles, veins, jewels and lace all command our attention. Like Oliver Cromwell in a later age, she has been painted “warts and all,” but with a difference. Links: <a href="http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/making-art-in-tudor-britain/tudor-and-jacobean-painting-production-influences-and-patronage-december-2010/extended-abstracts-and-videos/the-manteo-portrait-of-queen-elizabeth-i.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/making-art-in-tudor-britain/tudor-and-jacobean-painting-production-influences-and-patronage-december-2010/extended-abstracts-and-videos/the-manteo-portrait-of-queen-elizabeth-i.php</a> [Abstract of paper by Sara N. James and Larry E. Tise, “Case Study: A portrait of Elizabeth I at Manteo.” Presented at the conference, Tudor and Jacobean Painting: Production, Influences and Patronage. National Portrait Gallery, London, December 2, 2010.] 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: Douglas Brooks-Davies, “Lucifera.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 441-2. Christopher Burlinson, Allegory, Space and the Material World in the Writings of Edmund Spenser (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), ch. 3 (“Galleries: Space, Mythography, and the Object”). Jane Grogan, Exemplary Spenser: visual and poetic pedagogy in The Faerie Queene (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), ch. 2 (“Spenser’s Gallery of Pictures”). W.H. Herendeen, “Gloriana.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 333-4. Brendan Kane and Valerie McGowan-Doyle (eds), Elizabeth I and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014). Anna Riehl, The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/800/Raleigh_Portrait.png f6d85688b123adc4a49044e242a75d84 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 Portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource This oil portrait is copied from one currently hanging in the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It is thought to have been painted in the 1590s. There is no evidence that Spenser owned such a portrait. He did, however, paint a complicated picture of Sir Walter Raleigh in his poetry. Raleigh was a fellow planter in Munster and a powerful patron and subject of his work, notably The Faerie Queene. (See Spenser and Raleigh) It is conceivable that Spenser would have owned a likeness of Raleigh and wished to display it in a semi-public space, so as to remind himself and others of his powerful patron. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/801/Spinning_wheel.png f212a11349bba8182ac6219595cc08df 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 Spinning Wheel Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, would likely have lived at Kilcolman with him from the time they married, on June 11, 1594 (the date identified in his wedding poem, “Epithalamion”). If so, she would have managed many aspects of the household and performed domestic tasks there. She may also have prepared food and been in charge of any gardens on the estate. One main industry of housewives at the time was to spin yarn out of clumps of wool. We do not know if Boyle would have done this or would have left such work to her servants. Spinning was considered “women’s work” and there was plenty of wool to spin at Kilcolman: pastoral by-products such as wool and leather were economic staples of the Munster plantation. Another spinning product was linen. Linen was widely worn in Ireland but manufactured there only in limited quantities in the sixteenth century. The industry grew by leaps and bounds in later centuries, however, particularly in the north. Literary Connections While spinning by the warmth of the fire, a woman might gossip, share news or tell fantastic “old wives’ tales,“ including literary ones. Spinning activity appears in Spenser’s poetry. In Book V of The Faerie Queene, the Amazon Radigund defeats Artegall, the hero of Justice. Radigund dresses him in an apron and “womans weeds” (V.v.20.7) and places him into a “long large chamber” (V.v.21.3) with many other male captives to spin linen (not wool) yarn: <blockquote> There entred in, he round about him saw Many braue knights, whose names right well he knew, There bound t’obay that Amazons proud law, Spinning and carding all in comely rew, That his bigge hart loth’d so vncomely vew. But they were forst through penurie and pyne, To doe those workes, to them appointed dew: F or nought was giuen them to sup or dyne, But what their hands could earne by twisting linnen twyne. Amongst them all she placed him most low, And in his hand a distaffe to him gaue, That he thereon should spin both flax and tow; A sordid office for a mind so braue. So hard it is to be a womans slaue.… (FQ V.v.22-3) </blockquote> Artegall is modeled allegorically, in part, on Arthur, Lord Grey, Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1580-82 and Spenser’s patron there during those years. Spenser thought that Grey’s efforts at hard-line reform in Ireland were frustrated by backbiting enemies at court and by the English government’s vacillating and conciliatory policies towards the Irish. The Queen, from Spenser’s point of view, was prone to compromise, change policy and be too merciful towards her enemies. She was also stingy (or financially prudent to a fault). Various court factions were able to take advantage of her fickle behavior in this regard and thereby frustrate Grey’s reforms. At the time, a changeful mind and excessive mercy were seen as womanly weaknesses, shared by the queen. By contrast, Grey, a hard-liner, was not allowed to be “manly” enough for long enough to thoroughly reform the country. Some critics see this dilemma acted out allegorically in the above passage. Artegall, a.k.a. Lord Grey, and other brave knights have been reduced to effeminate captivity (spinning linen) thanks to the queen’s interference in and obstruction of their efforts at reforms in Ireland. In this case Radigund represents a negative allegorical portrayal of the Queen, who virtually emasculates her would-be warriors. In Spenser’s prose tract, A View of the Present State of Ireland, Irenius describes the native Irish custom of women directing “all things, both at home and in the fields,” a custom supposedly picked up from their Spanish (Gaulish) ancestry. Irenius states this immediately after noting the Irish custom of wearing shirts and smocks colored with saffron, a habit which also came from Spain: such Spanish shirts are made of linen (View 61). Links: <a href="https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Housewife%27s_Rich_Cabinet:_Remedies,_Recipes,_%26_Helpful_Hints" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Housewife%27s_Rich_Cabinet:_Remedies,_Recipes,_%26_Helpful_Hints</a> [accessed 1/30/18] [Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit on women’s household occupations and materials] 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: Judith H. Anderson, “Artegall.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 62-4. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 220-221, 325. Mary Ellen Lamb, The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson (NY: Routledge 2006), esp. ch.’s 3 and 7. Willy Maley, Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (London: Macmillan, 1997): 87-88. Gervase Markham, The English Housewife. Ed. Michael R. Best (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1986). M. McAuliffe, “The lady in the tower: the social and political role of women in tower houses.” The Fragility of Her Sex? Medieval Irish women in their European context. Ed. C.E. Meeks and M.K. Simms (Dublin, Four Courts Press: 1996), 153-62. Richard McCabe, Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002). Andrew Murphy, But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us: Ireland, Colonialism, and Renaissance Literature (Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1999): 82-5. Carol Schreier Rupprecht, “Radigund.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 580-1. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/802/Tapestry.png 2492e8e5f5f701a0a5ef17a140f30f85 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 Tapestry Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource Many well-to-do Elizabethans, like other Europeans, would have had tapestries on their walls, both for decoration and for the purpose of keeping their rooms warm. Many tapestries were woven in France and the Netherlands. We do not know the true extent of Spenser’s household goods or “disposable income,” nor whether or not he could afford such luxuries. Odds are that the cost of setting up the basics of a household at Kilcolman would have devoured most if not all that he had. Wealthy patrons like Raleigh or his neighbors the Norrises, who built huge house at Mallow, County Cork, would have had more to invest in their household goods. The tapestry here is a generic example of one that displays a pastoral/wooded landscape. Another tapestry, with floral motifs, hangs in the Tower House Parlor. Literary Connections Tapestries might tell stories derived from myth, legend and literature. In a well-known episode in Book III, canto xi of The Faerie Queene, the heroine of chastity, Britomart, enters the evil House of Busyrane and travels through a room decorated with many gold- and silk-threaded tapestries depicting amorous scenes: <blockquote> For round about, the walls yclothed were With goodly arras of great maiesty, Wouen with gold and silke so close and nere, That the rich metall lurked priuily, As faining to be hidd from enuious eye; Yet here, and there, and euery where vnwares It shewd it selfe, and shone vnwillingly; Like to a discolourd Snake, whose hidden snares Through the greene gras his long bright burnisht back declares. And in those Tapets weren fashioned Many faire pourtraicts, and many a faire feate, And all of loue, and all of lusty-hed, As seemed by their semblaunt did entreat; And eke all Cupids warres they did repeate, And cruell battailes, which he whilome fought Gainst all the Gods, to make his empire great; Besides the huge massacres, which he wrought On mighty kings and kesars, into thraldome brought. Therein was writt, how often thondring Ioue Had felt the point of his hart percing dart, And leauing heauens kingdome, here did roue In straunge disguize, to slake his scalding smart; Now like a Ram, faire Helle to peruart, Now like a Bull, Europa to withdraw: Ah, how the fearefull Ladies tender hart Did liuely seeme to tremble, when she saw The huge seas vnder her t’obay her seruaunts law. (FQ III.xi.28-30) </blockquote> Busyrane’s majestic tapestries tell the same kinds of stories as the epic itself. They stress the power of love and desire (or “Cupids warres”) to conquer all. Links: <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/70007568" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/70007568</a> [accessed 10/30/12] [famous unicorn tapestries in the Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY] 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: Christopher Burlinson, Allegory, Space and the Material World in the Writings of Edmund Spenser (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), ch. 3 (“Galleries: Space, Mythography, and the Object”). Michael L. Donnelly, “tapestries.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 677-8. Jane Grogan, Exemplary Spenser: visual and poetic pedagogy in The Faerie Queene (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009): 117-126. 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/25/804/Mural_St_Christopher.png ff10915a1cdf03f483e64d7f56926313 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 Mural of St Christopher Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Chapel Description An account of the resource On the west wall, facing the window, is a mural of St Christopher carrying the boy Jesus across the river. At his foot is a snake, representing sin and the devil, who is trodden underfoot. St Christopher does not appear in the Bible but was popularized in late-medieval Europe by the Golden Legend of saints’ lives, written by Jacobus de Voragine in the mid-13th century. Artistic representations of Christopher appeared at the time in many countries, England and Ireland included. No traces of wall paintings have been found at Kilcolman. This example is copied from a late medieval English mural, currently in St Peter’s and St Paul’s Church in Pickering, North Yorkshire, England. Any such mural at Kilcolman, had it existed, would not, presumably, have been commissioned by Spenser himself. More likely, it would have been a hold-over from previous, Catholic tenants such as the Desmonds, who as members of the “Old English” ethnic group claimed English and Welsh ancestry. Religious murals are known to have been painted in Irish tower houses, and a few tantalizing remnants survive today. For example, St Christopher with the Christ child is portrayed along with other images (including an ecclesiast, probably Bishop Colman) in a mural at the tower house of Ardamullivan, Co Galway. The tower house was held by a cadet branch of the O’Shaughnessy dynasty. T. Crofton Croker describes (in 1824) fragments of frescoes he found in ruined Buttevant Friary (in Doneraile, near Kilcolman), which Spenser owned in 1598: “Some traces of fresco painting are yet to be seen on the wall of one or two recesses in the nave:—a patchwork halo of red and yellow, confined by a strongly marked black outline, and part of an orange-coloured ladder with a bit of green drapery, however the antiquary may regard them, did not give my companions very high ideas of the state of excellence attained by the monastic professors of this art in Ireland.“ Irish saints typical for the Munster region in the medieval period would have included Patrick and Finbar. Kilcolman was named after St Colman of Cloyne, who flourished in the late sixth/early seventh century A.D. A small ruined church, Templetaggart Church, which may or may not be associated with St Colman, stands 1720 yards south of the castle, on the far side of the lake/bog. The fields to the north and northwest of the castle also held medieval churches named after the saint. Photo credit: Jackie Selby Brooks 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: T. Crofton Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland (London: John Murray, 1824): 115. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 219, 222. Karena Morton, “A Spectacular Revelation: Medieval Wall Paintings at Ardamullivan.” Irish Arts Review Yearbook 18 (2002), 104-13. —, “Irish medieval wall painting.” Medieval Ireland: the Barryscourt Lectures I–X. Ed. J. Ludlow and N. Jameson (Kinsale: Gandon Editions, 2004), 313-49. —, "Illustrating History." Irish Arts Review (Spring 2010), 96-101. David Newman Johnson, “Kilcolman Castle.” The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 416-22: 419. 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. 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.