ADAB AL-RAFIDAYN vol.

(42) 1426 / 2005

Spenser's Concept of Love

in Amoretti
Tala’at Ali Quaddawi(*)

Spenser's Amoretti, published together with Epithalamion in

1595, is an Elizabethan love-sonnet sequence in which he expressed
his personal feeling to an unmarried woman, Elizabeth Boyle,
whom he later married and celebrated his marriage in
Epithalamion. Like other Renaissance sonneteers, Spenser imitated
the pioneer love-sonnet sequence poet, Petrarch. Yet Spenser's
Amoretti seems to have some features that are not to be found in
other love poems of his both predecessors and successors. The aim
of this paper is to consider Spenser's concept and values of love as
expressed in these love sonnets, Amoretti, and how they differ from
those expressed in other Renaissance love-sonnet sequences and
from those of Petrarch.
The Amoretti has been subject to some controversial views.
Critics differ as to the subject matter, lady's character, concept,
thought, feeling and mood revealed in these love poems.

(*) Department of Translation - College of Arts / University of Mosul

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Spenser's Concept of Love in Amoretti Tala’at Ali Quaddawi

C. S. Lewis emphasises the idea of marriage by saying that Spenser

is the "greatest among the founders of that romantic conception of
marriage which is the basis of all our love literature from
Shakespeare to Meredith"(1). Edwin Casady reads the sonnet
sequence in terms of the neo-platonic ladder. "The love," he says,
“moves from physical, earthly and mortal love to spiritual, heavenly
and immortal love”(2). Hallet Smith draws our attention to Spenser's
description of the lady's physical beauty and her spiritual qualities.
Ha adds that though marriage is not really mentioned in the
Amoretti, yet “the absence of conflict (pangs and restlessness) of
conscience as in Sidney's Astrophel and Stella and the similarity in
tone between the sonnets of the Epithalamion make the Amoretti
seem to be a celebration of a love affair which leads up to and
implies marriage."(3) J. W. Lever finds faults with and
inconsistencies in this sequence. He argues that Spenser's lady is
portrayed in two quite different ways. On the one hand, she is
characterised by being angelic, divine, humble and virtuous. On the
other hand, she is presented as crude, savage, deadly, tyrannical and
proud. Lever attributes this discrepancy in the second type of poems
to an earlier time in Spenser's life(4). Louis L. Martz gives a different
reading of the sequence from that of Lever. He says that the lady's
controversial attitude is one of the important conventions of courtly
and Petrarchan love. Courtly love relies on contraries, such as joy

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and fear, melancholy and happiness, smile and cry, separation and
union, cruelty and kindness, etc. Martz argues that the "sequence
(5)
does not end abruptly and no sonnet is irrelevant". W.C. Johnson
notes that the sonnets emphasise beauty rather than woman. Hence,
he adds, love rather than the woman is the real theme expressed by
the sequence. The lady's name, he adds too, is mentioned but once;
she is identified as one of those women called. Elizabeth in
sonnet 74.(6) R. W. Dasenbrock believes that Spenser's deviation
from the Elizabethan love sonnet form is deliberate. The lady, he
adds, is"Heaven itself, on Earth Unlike the Petrarchan lover,
Spenser's lover does not climb the Platonic ladder up to Heaven
where he finds rest and peace. Rest and peace are found in the
"sacred bond of marriage", not in death as it is true of Petrarch. In
Amoratti, he concludes, there is"no rise from physical to spiritual
love: the proper kind of physical love is spiritual.(7)
As far as Spenser's concept of love is concerned, the Amoretti
has some features that distinguish it from other sequences. In the
first place, most of Spenser's sonnets, like Petrarch's, show a strong
element of idealism: his lady's ideal and heavenly features are
celebrated,whereas earthly and mortal things are ignored. Second,
Spenser,as Reed W. Dasenbrock notes, was the first poet who
introduced the new and sacred concept of marriage into the
traditional and established concept of love.(8) Instead of

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transcending his lady by turning to heaven as Petrarch did, Spenser

turned to marriage which is for him a sacred refuge of stability, rest
and peace which reconcile the real to the ideal.Adulterous or infidel
love is criticised. Besides, Spenser's deliberate and conscious choice
of a form-abab bcbc cdcd ee-different from that adopted by other
Elizabethan sonnet sequences falls in with the new concept or type
of values he tries to reveal in the sequence. Form and content are
harmoniously fused. Finally, Spenser rejected the traditional fashion
of naming a sonnet sequence after or addressing it to the lady. Yet,
her personality, unlike, for example, that of Sidney's Stella, is more
portrayed and presented than the lover's.
Love, not the lady, is the actual theme in Spenser's Amoretti.
Also, the absence of the lady's name in the title of Spenser's sonnet
sequence suggests that the sequence is not meant to be about the
lover's lady. What enhances this suggestion is that we know nothing
about the lady of the Amoretti until we come to sonnet 74 in which
three women named Elizabeth are mentioned.(*) "The word 'love' as
a noun and a verb," as W. C. Johnson has calculated, "appears
forty-eight times in the Amoretti, in addition to once as 'loved‟,
once as 'love-affamished', ten times as 'lovely', nine times as „love‟s

(*) Sonnet 74 refers to Queen Elizabeth, his mother's namesake and that of his mistress Elizabeth

Boyle.

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and four times as 'loves'."(9) Spenser's sonnets are heavily influenced

by Plato and Petrarch. Unlike other sonnet sequences, the Amoretti
does not tell the details or events of a story. It deals with the purity
and the inspiration of the poet's love. Love enlightens his soul. His
beloved is endowed with divine power; her beauty is heavenly and
it represses or calms the stormy physical and base desires. She is the
image of the Maker's beauty; her beauty is likened to heaven's light
and it relieves the lover's soul. She is not a mistress whose suitor is a
servant dying for a smile or a kiss from her. Love in Spenser is not
erotic or lustful. He thought of love as aspiration to the perfect
beauty which was God. This principle is neo-platonic. Pure and
transcendent love seems dominant in the Amoretti.Chastity and
spirituality replace carnal love. Spenser is not concerned with the
pleasures of sensuality. He disapproves of sensual indulgence which
can reduce a man to a beast and lead him up to a state of
degradation. Man for Spenser should have virtues that raise him
above his animal nature.Though sex makes the sequence pleasant to
read, yet Spenser's purpose is not the praise of sensual love. The
type of love Spenser expresses, R. D. Trivedi notes, was " real and
not pretended." He adds that it was also pure because it was
expressed to an unmarried woman, not as was the case with Sidney's
love which was expressed to a married woman".(10)

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Below are some examples from the sonnets of Spenser's

sequence about the type of love he seeks. The lover "defends
(his lady's pride) as the shield of innocence" in sonnet 6. In sonnet
5, lines 13-14, the lover says that it " Was neuer in this world ought
worthy tride, / without some spark of such self-pleasing pride"(*).
Pride provokes in the lover spiritual passion for it is spiritual beauty.
In sonnet 7, lines 5-8, her eyes influence his soul:
For when ye mildly looke with louely hew,
then is my soule with life ana loue inspired
but when ye lower, or looke on me askew,
then do I die, as one with lightning fyred.
In sonnet 8 her eyes repress and calm down the stormy passion
in the lover. This divine element in the lady is "manifest in her
physical beauties as wall as in the qualities of her mind".(11) The
lady's looks are angelic, spiritual and Christian; they are not sensual
as Cupid's darts. Lever notes that “mental esteem, not physical
desire, is the primary impulse which unites virtuous lovers. love
leads to sacramental marriage".(12) Lines 5-11 of sonnet 8 read:
Thrugh your bright beames doth not the blinded guest,
shoot out his darts to base affections wound:
but the Angels come tolead fraile windes to rest

(*) These and other subsequent lines are from Spenser: Poetical Works, ed. J. C. Smith and
E. De Selincourt (OUP, 1966).

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in chast desires on heauenly beauty bound.

You frame my thoughts and fashion me within,
you stop my toung, and teach my hart to speake,
you calme storme that passion did begin.
In sonnet 13, lines 4-5, she is "most goodly temperature.../
Myld humblesse mixt with awfull maiesty." Her character is made
up of both majesty and humility. Smith says that she "looks upon
the earth and remembers that she is mortal".(13) In sonnet 15, line
14, "her mind adornd with vertues manifold". In sonnet 17 we note
her "sweet eye-glaunces" (line 9) and her “charming smiles”
(line 10) and "Angels face" (linel). Though the poet's emphasis is
on the physical beauties of the lady, yet he avoids licentiousness
Spiritual qualities are fully presented. In sonnet 21 her beauty
awakens reverence and represses all base desires:
she to her loue doth lookers eyes allure:
and with sterne countenance back again doth chace.
their looser lookes that stir up lustes impure.
(Lines 6-8)
The qualities of "pride and weekness mixt by equall part" are
the source of chasening the desires aroused by others' looks.
She is so able to attract the eyes of others.Sonnet 22 endows
the lady with semi-divine qualities. The services of love are
likened to religious rites. Love is "not a physical passion but a

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mental state".(14) His heart must be clean so as she might accept

him, "in flames of pure and chaste desires". In sonnet 34 Spenser's
ship, unlike Petrarch's, reaches the harbour safely, as the lines
quoted by Lever show: (15)
Yet hope I well, that when this storme is past
my Helice the lodestar of my lyfe
will shine again, and looke on me at last,
with louely light to cleare my cloudy grief.
(Lines 9-12)
In other words, the harbour of Spenser's ship signifies
consummated marriage and stability , whereas that of Petrarch's ship
signifies restlessness. Sonnet 43 celebrates her "deep wit". Sonnet
49 mentions that both lover and beloved are like ships that reach the
end (harbour, unity, marriage). In sonnet 61 she is the image of the
Maker's beauty. The lover adores her divine essence; the beauty he
loves is divine. She is the embodiment of spiritual qualities. Sonnet
62 shows the two lovers exchaning love directly and without any
pretence. In sonnet 64 his estimate of the lady's beauty, Dasenbrock
notes, is as pure and chaste as his appreciation of the beauty of
flowers(16). Sonnet 66 says that his beloved's beauty is a "heavenly
beam". Her presence delights his soul. In sonnet 67 "rational love
is happier than sensual".(17) Sonnet 68 is the "Easter sonnet". The
lover-poet, Dasenbrock says, appreciates the divine origin of love,

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as represented by “Christ's sacrifice for man and prays that he and

his beloved should be able to heed the lesson Christ taught and love
(18)
spiritually". Sonnet 69 says that his verse shall immortalise his
love which is adorned with honour and chastity. Accordingly, the
beauty of his beloved shall be immortalised,and so shall their
spiritual love. In sonnet 72, her beauty is similar to heaven's light
and restores his soul to its pure, chaste place:
OFt when my spirit do spred her bolder winges,
In mind to mount up to the purest sky:
it down is weighed with thought of earthly things
and clogd with burden of mortality,
Where when that souerayne beauty it doth spy,
resembling heauens glory in her light:
drawne with sweet pleasures bayt, it back doth fly,
and unto heauen forgets her former flight.
(Lines 1-8)
In sonnet 75 appears "the idea of sacred marriage which
Spenser introduces into love poetry. Both love and the lady are
made sacred in marriage. In sonnet 76, Dasenbrock says, Spenser is
less concerned with the subject of the lady's breasts than with his
thoughts about them. Her breasts, he continues,are “‟fraught with
vertues richest tresure‟” ( line 1). They are " 'the bowre of blisse, the
paradice of pleasure,/ the sacred harbour of that heuenly spright' "

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(lines 3-4) .(19) In sonnet 88 he sees the image of the heavenly ray in
her. When he thinks of her, his soul is consolidated:
Ne ought I see, though in the clearest day,
when others gaze upon theyr shadowes vayne:
but th‟onely image of that heauenly ray,
whereof some glances doth in mine eie remayne
Of which beholding the Idea playne,
through contemplation of my purest part:
with light thereof I doe my selfe sustayne,
and thereon feed my loue-affamisht hart.
(lines 5-12)

The sonnets in Spenser's Amoretti are more concerned with

the state of mind of both the poet and the lady than with the details
of the lover's love affair.(20) Don M. Ricks argues that the poet wins
her favour and finds both her and love as “ sources of pleasure and
enlightenment”. Spenser's lady, he adds, differs from other ladies in
that she is won over and obtainable to her lover. It is not because
she accepts his wooing at the end but because the lover becomes
worthy of her love and acceptable.(21) This is why she does not
repulse him nor change her mind throughout the sequence. She
waits for the opportunity when he becomes worthy of her love.

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The change in the poet's own condition or tone ties in with the
change in the use of the devices. Metaphors of war and defeat, for
example, are used earlier in the sequence and are later replaced by
those of peace and victory.This can be evidenced in sonnet 14, line
1, where the siege metaphor, "Retourne agayne my forces late
dismayd,/ Unto the siege by you abandon'd quite", is replaced'in
sonnet 62, lines 1-4, by the huntsman metaphor, who captures his
deer, which signifies the lover's success in his love or in winning
his lady's favour:
The weary yeare his race now hauing run,
The new begins his compast course anew:
with shew of morning mylde he hath begun,
betokening peace and plenty to ensew.
The lover-poet's lady is likened to wild animals on the one
hand. She is "more more cruell and more saluage wylde,/ then either
Lyon or the Lyonesse (Sonnet 20, lines 1-2). The poet is the lamb
that gives in to the lion's power. On the other hand, she is likened to
the deer and the honey bee, "Your selfe unto the Bee ye doe
compare" ( sonnet 71, line 2). This serves the lover's state of mind
when he is first rejected and disappointed and later when he is
happy.
In the sonnets of the Amoretti, Spenser rejects physical,
earthly and mortal things in favour of spiritual, heavenly and

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immortal ones. Like Petrarch, he desires to transcend love. Petrarch

achieves peace by joining his mistress in heaven, after her death.
Whereas Spenser realises union by joining her not in death but in
marriage.Marriage in Spenser's sequence replaces Petrarch's
restless, unconsummated love. The union of marriage is a sacred
refuge leading to peace and stability and condemning adulterous
love.

Notes

1. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love; A Study in Medieval

Tradition (1936; rpt. Oxford: OUP, 1953), P-360.
2. Edwin Casady, "The Nee-Platonic Ladder in Spenser's
Amoretti," Philological Quartely, 20 (1941), p.295.
3. Hallet Smith, Elizabethan Poetry ( Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1952),pp. 169-70.
4. J. W. Lever, The Elizabethan Love Sonnet ( London: Methuen,
1956), pp. 97-102.
5. Louis L. Martz. "The Amoretti; 'Most Goodly Temperature'," in
Form and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund
Spenser, ed., William Nelson (1961; rpt. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1967), p.150.

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6. W. C. Johnson, "Amor and Spenser's Amoretti," English Studies,

Vol.54,No.3 ( June 1973), p.217.
7. R. W. Dasenbrock, "The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's
Amoretti." PMLA, Vol.100, No.1 (Jan. 1985) p.38,
note 14, p. 48
8. Ibid.
9. "Amor and Spenser's Amoretti", p.213
10. R. D. Trivedi, A Compendious History of English Literature,
1985 edn. ( Delhi: Roopak Pinters, 1976),p.69
11. Hallett Smith, Elizabethan Poetry, p. 168
12. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet, p.98
13. Elizabethan Poetry, p.166
14. Lever, The Elizabethan love Sonnet, p.107.
15. Ibid,, p.121
16. "The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti", p.38
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., p.44.
20. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet, p.96
21. "Persona and Process in Spenser's 'Amoretti‟", ARIEL, 3:4
(Oct. 1972), p. 5.

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‫‪Spenser's Concept of Love in Amoretti‬‬ ‫‪Tala’at Ali Quaddawi‬‬

‫ملخص‬

‫مفهىم سبنسر عن احلب يف اًمىرتـّي‬

‫طلعت علي قداوي‬

‫(*)‬

‫يهذف هذا الثحث إلً دراسح هفهىم وقين الحة لذي الشاعز‬
‫ادهىنذ سـپنسز في هتىاليح قصائذ الحة الوسواج ‘اهىرتي’‪ ،‬وميف‬
‫يختلف هذا الوفهىم وهذه القين عن تلل التي تعثز عنها هتىالياخ‬
‫قصائذ الحة األخزي في عصز النهضح وعن تلل لذي الشاعز‬
‫تتزارك‪.‬‬

‫(*) قسن التزجوح – مليح اآلداب ‪ /‬جاهعح الوىصل‪.‬‬

‫‪98‬‬