Sample Teaching Assignment: Amoretti 65 (Written by Thomas Herron 5/30/13)

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1 Centering Spenser: A Digital Resource for Kilcolman Castle Sample Teaching Assignment: Amoretti 65 (Written by Thomas Herron 5/30/13) This assignment has two parts and purposes: 1) EXPLORATION: to experience portions of the Centering Spenser website. 2) INTERPRETATION: to analyze a sample of Spenser s creative writing, from his sonnet sequence Amoretti (published 1595), while incorporating what you learn from the Kilcolman castle website (and associated links). You will be guided through this process below. For part 2, specific questions are given for you to answer in writing. Part I: Exploration Please explore the website and fully read the contents of 1) Overview 2) Spenser Biography (click on the link here to the biography provided on the Edmund Spenser On-Line website). Pay particular attention to the parts about Ireland. 3) Timeline (OPTIONAL) 4) Kilcolman a) Once you have clicked on Kilcolman, you will see a map of Munster, the Irish province where Spenser lived as an English colonist (a plantation settler) from ca Click on the big red button in the middle, under the map name that reads Kilcolman. b) Click on the dark yellow button with an image of a castle on it. c) Click on and read about the various aspects of Kilcolman Castle ( Location Description, Settlement History etc.) d) Click on the photo gallery of Kilcolman castle and sample the photos. This is what Kilcolman looks like today. e) Click on 3D castle recreation and explore the various tours, stills and object descriptions. This is a close approximation to what Kilcolman would have looked like in Spenser s time. It contains a tower house (the tall stone building), a great hall (the long building next to it) and (between them) a parlor built in the Tudor- era, half- timbered style. The parlor was built by Spenser himself. The other buildings (tower house and great hall) were already in situ when he occupied Kilcolman in the late 1580s. Next to the housing complex is a large walled yard with a pleasure garden inside part of it.

2 Only part of the tower house remains standing today. The computer reconstruction rebuilds both it and the other buildings, following the floor plan discovered during archaeological excavations (carried out under the direction of Prof. Eric Klingelhofer in the 1990s). The tours take you in through the gate of the outer wall (or exterior bawn ), past the pleasure garden, through another, interior wall (or interior bawn ), etc. Part II: Interpretation The following is the 65 th sonnet in Spenser s sonnet sequence, Amoretti. SONNET 65 THE doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre loue, is vaine That fondly feare to loose your liberty, when loosing one, two liberties ye gayne, and make him bond that bondage earst dyd fly. Sweet be the bands, the which true loue doth tye, without constraynt or dread of any ill: the gentle birde feeles no captiuity within her cage, but singes and feeds her fill. There pride dare not approch, nor discord spill the league twixt them, that loyal loue hath bound: but simple truth and mutuall good will, seekes with sweet peace to salue each others wound. There fayth doth fearlesse dwell in brasen towre, and spotlesse pleasure builds her sacred bowre. Some words in Sonnet 65 are difficult or archaic. Here are glosses/translations: misdeeme = misjudge earst = first salve = to heal or cure brazen = strong, bold, and/or brassy The sonnet sequence was published in 1595, along with Epithalamion, Spenser s wedding poem to his second wife, the Englishwoman Elizabeth Boyle. In the sonnet sequence, Spenser charts the pleasures, pitfalls, ecstasies and anxieties of wooing his wife- to- be and (among other things) persuading her to come to Kilcolman to live with him. She married him in 1594 in Munster and settled with the poet at Kilcolman, until they lost their home to rebellion in Sonnet 65 occurs in the sequence just after (in #64) he lists his beloved s many beautiful features, comparing them to various beautiful, sweet- smelling flowers (see also Object Description: Garden), and soon before #67, wherein his bride is finally

3 goodly wonne with her owne will beguiled like a chased and tamed deer (see also Object Description: Deerskin). SONNET 64 COMMING to kisse her lyps, (such grace I found) Me seemd I smelt a gardin of sweet flowres: that dainty odours from them threw around for damzels fit to decke their louers bowres. Her lips did smell lyke vnto Gillyflowers, her ruddy cheekes, lyke vnto Roses red: her snowy browes lyke budded Bellamoures her louely eyes lyke Pincks but newly spred, Her goodly bosome lyke a Strawberry bed, her neck lyke to a bounch of Cullambynes: her brest lyke lillyes, ere theyr leaues be shed, her nipples lyke yong blossomd Iessemynes, Such fragrant flowres doe giue most odorous smell, but her sweet odour did them all excell. SONNET 67 LYKE as a huntsman after weary chace, Seeing the game from him escapt away: sits downe to rest him in some shady place, with panting hounds beguiled of their pray. So after long pursuit and vaine assay, when I all weary had the chace forsooke, the gentle deare returnd the selfe-same way, thinking to quench her thirst at the next brooke. There she beholding me with mylder looke, sought not to fly, but fearelesse still did bide: till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke, and with her owne goodwill hir fyrmely tyde. Strange thing me seemd to see a beast so wyld, so goodly wonne with her owne will beguyld. In #68 the speaker celebrates Easter (including the sacrifice of Jesus Christ). In #69, he celebrates the success of his loves conquest gotten at last with labour and long toyle. SONNET 69

4 THE famous warriors of the anticke world, Vsed Trophees to erect in stately wize: in which they would the records haue enrold, of theyr great deeds and valarous emprize. What trophee then shall I most fit deuize, in which I may record the memory of my loues conquest, peerelesse beauties prise, adorn'd with honour, loue, and chastity. Euen this verse vowd to eternity, shall be thereof immortall moniment: and tell her prayse to all posterity, that may admire such worlds rare wonderment. The happy purchase of my glorious spoile, gotten at last with labour and long toyle. In sonnet 65, however, the speaker (Spenser) is still trying to convince his bride to accept him and the bond of marriage, which is alluded to in the word bands (like a wedding band, or ring; note also the echo of the word banns, or an announcement of betrothal). With these bonds, and ring, he is trying to capture her and bind her to him [the meaning of line four is ambiguous, however: is she or is he the person who is fleeing the bondage of marriage? Perhaps both of them are?]. She still doubts, however, whether or not he should be her husband. Questions Here are some sample questions for you to answer, so as to enrich your understanding of Sonnet 65 with the backdrop of Kilcolman Castle in mind. Feel free to draw comparisons with the other sonnets listed here and with Amoretti and Epithalamion as a whole. 1) In what ways might Spenser be alluding to his castle complex at Kilcolman in Sonnet 65? Please list, and explain, specific images by line #. 2) What sense do you get of Spenser s social status from the website, from his life and from the castle images in particular? How might understanding his social status make a difference to our understanding of the poem? Do any details from the poem allude to Spenser s social status? 3) Spenser was an English, Protestant planter surrounded by Catholic Irishmen, some of whom he would have replaced when occupying Kilcolman and its surrounding lands. Spenser was granted over 3,000 acres there after the Desmond rebellion in the early 1580s made the land available for confiscation by the English government [see Conflict: Desmond Rebellion]. Some of the locals, in turn, helped to burn him out of Kilcolman when rebellion occurred in Munster in 1598 [see Conflict: Destruction of the Munster Plantation].

5 How does our understanding of this poem and the wooing process including any reluctance from his bride!- - change once we better understand their positions in Ireland as newcomers, surrounded by potentially hostile natives? 4) If the discord and peace mentioned in Sonnet 65 (lines 9 and 12) include political discord and peace, how might this change or enhance our understanding of the poem? What other potentially political words do you see in this poem? 5) Is the image of the bird in a cage in the center of the poem a good or a bad one? A dark or a bright one? How/why? What is the poet trying to tell his bride with this image? Would you find it attractive yourself? Why/why not? 6) What if the bride Spenser is wooing here is read as a metaphor for Ireland itself, that is, the country he is currently occupying and colonizing? How does that change our understanding of what the poem is trying to do or say? 7) Why put the adjective spotlesse in the last line? 8) What does this poem have to do with fayth and why, do you think?

The Second Coming. William Butler Yeats, 1921

The Second Coming. William Butler Yeats, 1921 The Second Coming William Butler Yeats, 1921 Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,