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Spenser's Muiopotmos in Relation to Chaucer's Sir Thopas and the Nun's Priest's Tale
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Muiopotmos has long been a puzzle to the readers of Spenser. A poem of fantastic beauty built upon a trifle as a subject, a light and fanciful story of over four hundred lines with no apparent lesson or moral, Muiopotmos is altogether so unlike “our sage and serious Spenser” that critics have been baffled in their efforts to account for it.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1910
References
page 640 note 1 Blackwood's Magazine, November, 1833 (Vol. 34).
page 640 note 2 Church's Spenser's Faerie Queene, i, p. xxv.
page 641 note 1 North American Review, April, 1875 (Vol. cxx, p. 365).
page 641 note 2 Craik's Spenser and His Poetry, iii, p. 172.
page 641 note 3 Child's Spenser, p. xxxv.
page 641 note 4 Morris's Spenser, p. xlvi.
page 641 note 5 Dictionary of National Biography (Vol. 53, Article on Spenser).
page 642 note 1 Grosart's Spenser, iv, p. lxx.
page 643 note 1 Spenser asks Lady Carey in the dedication of Muiopotmos, “of all things therein … to make a milde construction.” This, however, does not imply that the poem has an ulterior meaning. In these words Spenser is simply asking Lady Carey to accept graciously and to judge charitably the verses he is offering.
page 645 note 1 Spenser mentions Sir Thopas by name twice, once in F. Q., 3–7–48, and again in the Present State of Ireland, 3056 (Grosart's Spenser, Vol. ix). He also uses elsewhere words and phrases which from their context give almost conclusive evidence of being imitated from Sir Thopas.
As to the general popularity of Sir Thopas in Spenser's time, Warton states (Observations on F. Q., i, p. 73) that the poem was sung to the harp in the age of Queen Elizabeth.
page 645 note 2 Points, most of which, it must be admitted, might also be had in common by many other heroes of romance. This fact, however, in no way invalidates the resemblances here.
page 647 note 1 Cf. Thopas' attire:
His shoon of Cordewane,
Of Brugges were his hosen broun,
His robe was of ciclatoun,
That coste many a jane. (21 ff.)
page 647 note 2 Of course such stock romance phrases could of themselves argue little as to source. These passages have significance only as a part of other evidence.
page 650 note 1 It is commonly assumed that Chaucer here makes use of the conventional list as a burlesque on The Squire of Low Degree.
page 650 note 2 Lowell says of this passage (North American Review, April, 1875, p. 367, note), “ It is a pretty reminiscence of his master Chaucer, but is also very characteristic of Spenser himself.”
page 650 note 3 And, indeed, this change of character is not such a transformation, after all. Chaunticleer and Thopas have many traits in common. Naturally both are surrounded by the mock-heroic atmosphere.
page 650 note 4 It is not necessary to outline the points of similarity between Muiopotmos and the Nun's Priest's Tale. The imitation is unmistakable.
page 650 note 5 This discussion occurs, it should be noted, in exactly that part of the Nun's Priest's Tale from which Spenser obviously draws his other material, and relates itself to the situation parallel to the one in Muiopotmos.
page 651 note 1 The following lines may also have been suggested by Chaucer:
For thousand perills lie in close awaite
About us daylie, to worke our decay; (221–2)
Compare the Nun's Priest's Tale,
As gladly doon thise homicydes alle,
That in awayt liggen to mordre men. (404–5)
page 652 note 1 This is prima facie evidence that Spenser had a fox in mind in this description of Aragnoll.
page 652 note 2 Principall = princely.
page 653 note 1 Cf Jeremiah 9–1.
page 653 note 2 The imitation here is unmistakable. Aside from the practical identity between the second lines of the couplets, the rhyming words ending in -aunce will be noted.
page 654 note 1 Cf. Daphnaida, where Spenser gets the name Alcyon from Alcyone, mentioned in the Book of the Duchess which Spenser is there imitating. See my discussion of this point in Pub. Mod. Lang. Asso., December, 1908, pp. 658–9.
page 655 note 1 Mr. Reed Smith has proposed the theory that Spenser got the butterfly from Ovid's story of Arachne, which story is told in Muiopotmos to explain the enmity between Clarion and Aragnoll.