Seizing Flowers in Spenser's Bower and Garden

Abstract

“Seizing Flowers in Spenser's Bower and Garden” examines the role of the carpe diem topos and its implied materialism in Spenser's two renowned green places: the Bower of Bliss and the Garden of Adonis. Beginning with the Bower of Bliss, this essay observes the uncanny fact that the overheard invitation to “present pleasure chuse” makes no epistemological sense: since things do not actually decay or die in the Bower, the carpe diem imperative is essentially meaningless. That changes, however, when Guyon—responding to its provocative invitation—introduces time and death into the Bower, thereby becoming an agent of the very materialism he ostensibly reviles. Moreover, this materialism, along with the language of carpe diem, reappears in the Garden of Adonis: undermining the extent to which the Garden can function as the authentic or wholesome place against which the Bower can be compared (or for which it must be abandoned). In fact, both places are ultimately ruled—in part due to Guyon's actions—by the forces of “wicked Time.”