Furious Insolence: The Social Meaning of Poetic Inspiration in the 1590s

Abstract

'Insolence' is a socially difficult word; while the modern of impudence does not become common until the end of the seventeenth century, the pride the term denotes is nevertheless presumptuous in all people but those of the very highest rank. The editors of the OED solve the difficulty of Spenser's furious insolence by discovering a positive meaning of insolence, exultation, for which the passage cited above is the only quoted instance (Insolence, definition 2).2 They derive this meaning from another unique example, Puttenham's description of Sir Walter Ralegh's style as loftie, insolent, and passionate. There the OED editors, prefacing their conjecture with a question mark, offer the meaning swelling, exulting: in a good sense (Insolent, definition 4). But the more conventional meaning of 'insolence' makes in Spenser's lines. If the excellence of the queen inspires