Reflections of the Pléiade aesthetic in Edmund Spenser's minor poems

The sixteenth-century French writers known as the Pléiade provide an important background for understanding Edmund Spenser's philosophy of poetry. These poet-scholars viewed poetry as a serious vocation and so wrote extensively about what poetry ought and ought not to be. We know that Spenser was acquainted with their ideas in his schooling at the Merchant Taylors' School and that some of his earliest poems were translations of poems written by members of the Pléiade.

This study examines the relationship between Spenser's minor poetry and the ideas presented in the writings of the Pléiade's greatest spokesmen: Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, and Pontus de Tyard. These men regarded the poet as a figure who was chosen by God and whose song was a source of power and order in the affairs of men. Further, they believed that the poet's special status obligated him to polish the expression of his vision. They, therefore, de veloped extensive ideas on the poet's use of imitation (through what they called the "traducteurs," "translateurs," "paraphrastes," and the "imitateur") and of invention (with emphasis upon versification, imagery, and the selection of language).

These ideas are reflected in Spenser's poetry, especially in his minor poetry, which shows the development of his aesthetic philosophy. This study concentrates on the minor poetry from the late 1560's to the early 1590's, tracing the reflection of these concepts through three groups of poems: (1) poems of the late 1560's—"Visions of Bellay," "Visions of Petrarch," "Ruines of Rome," and "Visions of the Worlds Vanitie"; (2) poems of the late 1570's—The Shepheardes Calendar, "Prosopopoia," "Teares of the Muses," and "Virgils Gnat"; (3) poems of the late 1580's—"Muiopotmos" and "The Ruines of Time." The final chapter applies the philosophy of the Pléiade to Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, which was written during the time of Spenser's masterpieces. In examining Spenser's mature aesthetic, it becomes clear that, like the Pléiade, Spenser uses his philosophy of the vatic artist and his most refined imitative and inventive skills to resolve for his audience the tensions between life and art, the actual and the ideal.