The Spenserian Enchantments of Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence"

Abstract

In 1882 Edward Dowden wrote a remarkable essay in which he praised the aims of Spenser's poetry because they resembled the aims of Wordsworth's poetry. He describes Spenser's conception of poetry in terms that echo Wordsworth's The Prelude: At such times poetry aims at something more than to decorate life; it is spoken of as if it possessed some imperial authority, a power to bind and loose, to sway man's total nature, to calm, to regulate and restrain, and also to free, to arouse, to dilate the spirit-power not to titillate a particular sense; but to discipline the will and mould a character. In such a tone of high assumption speaks of poetry.'' Dowden's emphasis on the discipline and soul-making power of Spenser's poetry opposes the mood of most eighteenthand nineteenth-century criticism of Spenser. For Wordsworth's own generation, as for the century before him, the serious didactic intentions of Spenser's allegory seemed overwhelmed by the dazzling hedonism of his poetic style. Hazlitt made the notorious accusation that is moved more by his love of beauty than by love of truth.2 John Hamilton Reynolds agreed, declaring that, above all else, Spenser's mind approved of sensual delight,-it sanctioned every kind of pleasure.3 Dowden accepted that had an extraordinary appetite for sheer beauty, that he had to satiate his senses with ... loveliness, but he insisted that also understood the temptations and seductions of beauty, the risks of his own fervid imagination. is to be honored for avoiding a Puritan horror of the sensibility to beauty, and for exploring the ways that the lower parts of our nature might be utilized for higher purposes: Spenser was almost as free as Wordsworth from aesceticism in its evil sense, and for the same reason as Wordsworth. To and to Wordsworth it could not seem desirable to put out the right eye, because to both the eye was an inlet of divine things for the uses of the spirit.' '4 Dowden helped to begin the long and arduous process-now perhaps complete-of overturning the critical conception of as the poet's poet. Hazlitt's confectioner of a paste of rich and honeyed words, like the candied coat of the auricula,''5 derived from eighteenth-century readers. Modern criticism, beginning with C. S. Lewis, has been concerned to unify Spenser's sensibility, to complement Lewis's list of epithets-Elfin, Renaissance, Courtly, voluptuous, Italianate, decorative-with another list: English, Protestant, rustic, manly, churchwardenly, domestic, thrifty, honest.6 But in our haste to find a reconciliation