lilla maria crisafulli - edmund spenser

Lilla Maria Crisafulli - Edmund Spenser
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per gli effetti della legge sul diritto d’autore (L. 22.04.1941/n. 633).
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2 THE FAERIE QUEENE .......................................................................................................................................... 4
3 LA COLONIZZAZIONE DELL’IRLANDA .................................................................................................................. 6
4 A VIEW OF THE PRESENT STATE OF IRELAND ..................................................................................................... 7
BIBLIOGRAFIA ............................................................................................................................................................14
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1 Il contesto politico e sociale di Edmund Spenser
L’ultima decade del regno di Queen Elizabeth I vede una Inghilterra fiera della sua nuova
aristocrazia scaturita prevalentemente dalla classe media e dall’intraprendenza dei propri sudditi.
Superata la guerra delle Due Rose, in Inghilterra si respira un clima di riconciliazione attorno alla
Regina che diviene il collante sociale, economico e politico dell’intera nazione.
Fedeli Cortigiani quali Philip Sidney, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, e Walter Raleigh
formano una nuova cavalleria a lei devota e intenta a compiere in suo nome sempre nuove e più
ardite imprese. Per la gloria di Queen Elizabeth I Francis Drake afferma il predominio marittimo
inglese sugli spagnoli. Con la sconfitta della ‘Invincible Armada’, l’Inghilterra conosce un periodo di
splendore navale, economico e artistico.
Il periodo è caratterizzato da:
un movimento artistico che riporta in auge i valori della ‘chivalry’ (cavalleria);
da uno spirito nazionalista e patriottico fortemente promosso dalla Riforma religiosa che il
padre di Elisabeth, Henry VIII aveva voluto;
un Rinascimento inglese che promuove le arti e i saperi.
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2 The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene è il capolavoro di Edmund Spenser. E’ una allegoria dell’ideale
cavalleresco e pastorale mentre la Regina delle Fate (the Faery Queen) rappresenta la stessa
Regina Elisabetta e la sua corte.
Nel suo poema Spenser idealizza in modo platonico l'Inghilterra ma i suoi modelli sono
prevalentemente italiani in particolare l’Orlando Furioso di Ludovico Ariosto e La Gerusalemme
Liberata di Torquato Tasso. Ma vi si trova anche l’influenza dei cicli dei romance cavallereschi
francesi.
The Faerie Queen viene scritto fra il 1590 e il 1596 e si compone di sei canti o libri, ogni canto
è dedicato ad una virtù. The Faerie Queen è uno dei poemi epici più lunghi in lingua inglese, in
esso Spenser adotta la cosiddetta stanza spenseriana, ispirata all’ottava italiana. Essa è composta
da nove versi, otto dei quali sono pentametri giambici, mentre il nono verso è più lungo, ed è un
alessandrino (cioè a dire un esametro giambico).
Scrive Keir Elam, “nella lettera che Spenser scrisse a Sir Walter Raleigh per indicargli una
chiave di lettura del poema allegorico The Faerie Queene (pubblicato nel 1590: canti I, II e III; e nel
1596: canti IV, V e VI), egli indica come modelli paritari per la poesia epica Omero e Virgilio, Ariosto
e Tasso. Tanto alto era il prestigio che la letteratura e la cultura italiane godevano presso la corte
inglese, che George Gascoigne, nel ciclo di poesie del "Green Knight" (incluso in The Posies,1575),
disse di ispirarsi ad un immaginario autore italiano di novelle, tal Bartello (con chiara eco del
novelliere Matteo Bandello). Spenser incarna quest'ansia di rinnovamento…quanto lo
svecchiamento di questa lingua fosse arduo, e quanto lavoro fosse necessario per staccarsi dalle
forme poetiche medievali, è testimoniato dalla ricchezza di trattati” [Si veda Keir Elam,
“Introduzione al Cinquecento” in Manuale di Letteratura e Cultura Inglese, a cura di Lilla Maria
Crisafulli e Keir Elam, Bononia University Press, 2009, pp 20]
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D’altra parte per Luca Manini The Faerie Queene è “La più grande opera poetica del
secolo … un'opera immensa, che è poema cavalleresco come 1’Orlando Furioso, poema epico-
nazionale come l’Eneide, poema eroico-religioso come la Gerusalemme Liberata; con essa
Spenser ha voluto dare all'Inghilterra quel poema epico che ancora le mancava, quello che
doveva celebrare la dinastia Tudor nella figura di Elizabeth I e la nuova religione anglicana. I primi
due libri, dedicati a San Giorgio, il Cavaliere della Rossa Croce, o della Santità, e al cavaliere della
Temperanza, Sir Guyon, sono i due più compatti e unitari; i due cavalieri, ricevuto da Gloriana,
regina delle Fate, un incarico, lo portano a termine, pur dopo smarrimenti ed errori; in questo, i
primi due libri ricordano la struttura chiusa e perfettamente conclusa del poema di Tasso. Ma già
dal terzo, la trama inizia a sfaldarsi, a sfilacciarsi; la guerriera Britomart, campionessa della Castità,
non conclude la propria impresa nei limiti del libro, e la continua nel quarto; il quinto, dedicato alla
Giustizia, nella figura ferrea di Arthegall, torna a una struttura chiusa, ma il sesto libro, il più diverso
dagli altri, si fa, poco a poco, poema pastorale, dal momento in cui l'eroe Calidore, campione
della Cortesia, perde di vista la propria impresa per amore di una pastorella arcadica... Il poema è
rimasto incompiuto; restano due canti di un ipotetico libro VII, intitolati alla Mutability, la quale, non
contenta di dominare il mondo terreno, vorrebbe dominare anche il mondo degli dèi, portandovi il
caos terreno.” [Luca Manini, “La poesia del Cinquecento” in Manuale di Letteratura e Cultura
Inglese, a cura di Lilla Maria Crisafulli e Keir Elam, Bononia University Press, 2009, pp. 71-72]
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3 La Colonizzazione dell’Irlanda
Se l'Irlanda subisce vari tentativi di invasione e di colonizzazione da parte dell’Inghilterra
a partire da William the Conquerore Henry II, è solo con Lord Arthur Grey de Wilton, nominato da
Queen Elizabeth I Lord Deputy of Ireland, che nel 1580 diviene colonia inglese. Lord Grey viene
inviato in Irlanda e posto a capo delle truppe inglesi con il fine di sottomettere l’Irlanda.
Edmund Spenser parte con le truppe inglesi come segretario di Lord Grey, e in seguito
deciderà di stabilirvisi fino a che una ribellione irlandese non lo costringerà a tornare in Inghilterra.
Conosce in Irlanda la sua seconda moglie, Elizabeth Boyle. L’esperienza della guerra di conquista
viene da Spenser riportata in A View of the Present State of Ireland (scritto fra il 1595 e 1596 ma
pubblicato solo nel 1633).
Spenser, come I suoi compatrioti crede che l’Irlanda sia una terra ancora selvaggia e che
sia compito della ‘civile’ Inghilterra educarne la popolazione anche con mezzi violenti e costrittivi.
In A View of the Present State of Ireland, il convinto protestante Spenser degli irlandesi condanna
sia la religione cattolica, sia i costumi che giudica primitivi, nonché il sistema giuridico. In
particolare la cosiddetta “Brehon Law” fondata su pratiche di giurisprudenza tradizionali e
tramandate, in alcuni casi, anche in forma orale, da generazione in generazione.
Fra le crudeli modalità che le truppe d’invasione inglesi adottano per sottomettere il popolo
irlandese vi è quello di assediarne i villaggi per ridurli alla fame. Espediente di cui anche Spenser
parla ampiamente nel suo saggio.
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4 A View of the Present State of Ireland
Il poeta Spenser che in The Fairie Queen idealizza in modo platonico l'Inghilterra e Queen
Elizabeth I, in A View of the Present State of Ireland, scritto in prosa elisabettiana, presenta, invece,
una cruda descrizione dell’invazione inglese dell’Irlanda. L’invasione viene raccontata attraverso
un dialogo fra due interlocutori di cui uno, Iren, è un colono/soldato inglese tornato in patria dopo
l’invasione, mentre l’altro, Eudox, è un inglese rimasto in Inghilterra a cui Iren riferisce le prodezze –
e le crudeltà – dei soldati inglesi. Dal dialogo scaturiscono le imposizioni colonialiste inglesi sugli
irlandesi quali: la necessità di abolire la lingua irlandese, di vietare i matrimoni misti, di combattere
costumi e tradizioni locali per imporre invece quelli inglesi. Descrive inoltre la tremenda carestia
subita dagli irlandesi per via dell'assedio inglese.
Le foreste irlandesi erano molto folte ed era li che gli irlandesi si rifugiano durante l'assedio
delle truppe inglesi durato molte settimane. Molti morirono di stenti e le comunità vennero
decimate dalla fame e dalla carestia. La sofferenza subita dagli abitanti del Sud Irlanda viene in
qualche modo testimoniata proprio dallo stesso Spenser che narra delle efferate strategie inglesi
per ridurre gli irlandesi alla sottomissione.
E’ nel castello di Kilcolmen che gli era stato donato per la sua dedizione all’Inghilterra, che
Spenser scrive il suo poema epico e cavalleresco, The Faerie Queene. Quando ribelli irlandesi
danno fuoco a Kilcolmen fino a distruggerlo interamente, Spenser, in fuga, è costretto a rientrare in
Inghilterra dove muore nel 1597.
Oggigiorno A View of the Present State of Ireland è considerato un testo fortemente carico
di ideologia colonialista perché di fatto rappresenta il genocidio del popolo irlandese.
Per un approfondimento sui contenuti e fini di A View of the Present State of Ireland di
Spenser si veda il sito della NNDB, dove si legge: “The View is not a descriptive work; there is nothing
in the style to indicate that it was written by a poet; it is an elaborate state paper, the exposition in
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the form of a dialogue of a minutely considered plan for the pacification of Ireland, written out of
zeal for the public service for the eyes of the government of the day. A very thoroughgoing plan it
is. After passing in review the history and character of the Irish, their laws, customs, religion, habits of
life, armor, dress, social institutions and finding "evil usages" in every department, he propounds his
plan of "reformation." Reformation can be effected only by the sword, by the strong hand. The
interlocutor in the dialogue holds up his hands in horror. Does he propose extermination? By no
means; but he would give the Irish a choice between submission and extermination. The
government had vacillated too long, and, fearing the cost of a thorough operation, had spent
twice as much without many way mending matters. Let them send into Ireland 10,000 foot and
1000 horse, disperse them in garrisons -- a complete scheme of localities is submitted -- give the Irish
twenty days to come in; if they did not come in then, give no quarter afterwards, but hunt them
down like wild beasts in the winter time when the covert is thin; "if they be well followed one winter,
ye shall have little work to do with them the next summer"; famine would complete the work of the
sword; and in eighteen months' time peace would be restored and the ground cleared for
plantation by English colonists. There must be no flinching in the execution of this plan -- "no remorse
or drawing back for the sight of any such rueful object as must thereupon follow, nor for
compassion of their calamities, seeing that by no other means it is possible to recover them, and
that these are not of will but of very urgent necessity." The government had out of foolish
compassion drawn back before when Lord Grey had brought the recalcitrant Irish to the necessary
extremity of famine; the gentle poet warns them earnestly against a repetition of the blunder.
Such was Spenser's plan for the pacification of Ireland, propounded not on his own
authority, but as having support in "the consultations and actions of very wise governors and
counsellors whom he had sometimes heard treat thereof." He knew that it was "bloody and cruel";
but he contended passionately that it was necessary for the maintenance of English power and
the Protestant religion. The method was repugnant to the kindly nature of average Englishmen;
from the time of Lord Grey no English authority had the heart to go through with it until another
remorseless zealot appeared in the person of Oliver Cromwell. That Cromwell knew the treatise of
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"the sage and serious Spenser", perhaps through Milton, is probable from the fact that the poet's
Irish estates were secured to his grandson by the Protector's intervention in 1657. These estates had
been granted to Spenser as his share in the redistribution of Munster -- 3000 acres of land and
Kilcolman Castle, an ancient seat of the Desmonds, in the north of the county of Cork. The
elaborate and business-like character of the View shows that the poet was no sinecurist, but
received his reward for substantial political services. He ceased to be secretary to the lord-deputy
when Lord Grey was recalled in 1582; but he continued in the public service, and in 1586 was
promoted to the onerous position of clerk to the council of Munster.
Amidst all the distractions of his public life in Ireland Spenser kept up his interest in literature,
and among proper subjects for reforn included Irish poetry, of which he could judge only through
the medium of translations. He allows it some merit -- "sweet wit", "good invention", "some pretty
flowers" -- but laments that it is "abused to the gracing of wickedness and vice." Meanwhile he
seems to have proceeded steadily with the composition of the Faerie Queene, translating his
varied experience of men and affairs into the picturesque forms of his allegory, and expressing
through them his conception of the immutable principles that ought to regulate human conduct.
He had, as we have seen, conceived a work of the kind and made a beginning before he left
England. The conception must have been very much deepened and widened and in every way
enriched by his intimate daily contact with the actual struggle of conflicting individuals and
interests and policies in a great crisis. Some four or five years later, being asked in a mixed
company of English officials in Ireland (as recorded in Lodowick Bryskett's Discourse of Civil Life) to
give offhand a short sketch of "the ethical part of moral philosophy" and the practical uses of the
study, Spenser explained to these simple-minded men that the subject was too intricate for an
impromptu exposition, but that he had in hand a work called the Faerie Queene in which an
ethical system would be exhibited in action. The respect paid by his official brethren to Spenser as a
man, "not only perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in philosophy, both moral and
natural", is an interesting item in his biography. Some years later still, when Spenser was settled at
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Kilcolman Castle, Sir Walter Raleigh found him with three books of the Faerie Queene completed,
and urged him to come with them to London. London accordingly he revisited in 1589, after nine
years' absence. There is a very pretty record of this visit in Colin Clout's Come Home Again,
published in 1595, but written in 1591, immediately after his return to Kilcolman. The incidents of the
visit, by that time matters of wistful memory, are imaged as a shepherd's excursion from his quiet
pastoral life into the great world. Colin Clout calls round him once again the masked figures of the
Shepherd's Calendar, and describes to them what he saw, how he fared, and whom he met at the
court of Cynthia, and how, through the influence of "the Shepherd of the Ocean", he was admitted
at timely hours to play on his oaten pipe in the great queen's presence.
How much is pure fiction and how much veiled fact in this picture cannot now be
distinguished, but it is undoubted that Spenser, though his chief patrons Leicester and Sidney were
now dead, was very graciously received by the great world on his return to London. Not only did
the queen grant him an audience, but many ladies of the court, several of whom he afterwards
honored with dedications, honored him with their patronage. The first three books of the Faerie
Queene, which were entered at Stationers' Hall on the 1st of December 1589, were published in
1590, and he was proclaimed at once with remarkable unanimity by all the writers of the time as
the first of living poets.” (accessed 15-July 2019)”
Per avere un esempio del dialogo fra I due interlocutori, Iren e Eudox, con cui Spenser
conduce il suo trattato irlandese, A View of the Present State of Ireland, si riporta qui di seguito due
brani significativi:
“IREN. You cannot but hold them sure to be very uncivil. Nor were they at the best that they
were of old, when they were brought in, they should in so long an alteration of time seem very
uncouth and strange. For it is to be thought that the use of all England was in the reign of Henry the
Second, when Ireland was planted with English, very rude and barbarous; so as, if the same should
be now used in England by any, it would seem worthy of sharp correction and of new laws for
reformation, for it is but even the other day since England grew civil. Therefore, in counting the evil
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customs of the English there, I will not have regard whether the beginning thereof were English or
Irish but will have respect only to the inconvenience thereof. And first I have to find fault with the
abuse of language; that is, for the speaking of Irish among the English, which as it is unnatural that
any people should love another's language more than their own, so it is very inconvenient and the
cause of many other evils.
EUDOX. It seemeth strange to me that the English should take more delight to speak that
language than their own, whereas they should, methinks, rather take scorn to acquaint their
tongues thereto. For it hath ever been the use of the conqueror to despise the language of the
conquered and to force him by all means to learn his. So did the Romans always use, insomuch
that there is almost no nation in the world but is sprinkled with their language. It were good
therefore, me seems, to search out the original cause of this evil, for the same being discovered, a
redress thereof will the more easily be provided. For I think it very strange that, the English being so
many and the Irish so few as they then were left, the fewer should draw the more unto their use.
IREN. I suppose that the chief cause of bringing in the Irish language amongst them was
specially their fostering and marrying with the Irish, the which are two most dangerous infections.
For, first, the child that sucketh the milk of the nurse must of necessity learn his first speech of her, the
which being the first inured to his tongue, is ever after most pleasing unto him, insomuch as, though
he afterwards be taught English, yet the smack of the first will always abide with him; and not only
of the speech, but also of the manners and conditions. For, besides that young children be like
apes, which will affect and imitate what they see done before them, especially by their nurses
whom they love so well, they moreover draw into themselves together with their suck even the
nature and disposition of their nurses. For the mind followeth much the temperature of the body,
and also the words are the image of the mind; so as they proceeding from the mind, the mind must
needs be affected with the words; so that, the speech being Irish, the heart must needs be Irish, for
out of the abundance of the heart the tongue speaketh. The next is the marrying with the Irish,
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which how dangerous a thing it is in all commonwealths appeareth to every simplest sense. And
though some great ones have perhaps used such matches with their vassals, and have of them
nevertheless raised worthy issue, as Telamon did with Tecmessa, Alexander the Great with Roxana,
and Julius Caesar with Cleopatra, yet the example is so perilous as it is not to be adventured. For
instead of those few good I could count unto them infinite many evil. And, indeed, how can such
matching succeed well, seeing that commonly the child taketh most of his nature of the mother,
besides speech, manners, and inclination, which are (for the most part) agreeable to the
conditions of their mothers? For by them they are first framed and fashioned, so as what they
receive once from them they will hardly ever after forego. Therefore are those evil customs of
fostering and marrying with Irish most carefully to be restrained, for of those two the third evil, that is,
* * *
IREN. The end will, I assure me, be very short, and much sooner than can be
in so great a trouble, as it seemeth, hoped for. Although there should none of them fall by the
sword nor be slain by the soldier, yet thus being kept from manurance and their cattle from running
abroad, by this hard restraint they would quickly consume themselves and devour one another. The
proof whereof I saw sufficiently exampled in these late wars of Munster, for, notwithstanding that
the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have
thought they should have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought
to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of
the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear
them. They looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they
did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them; yea, and one another soon after,
insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves. And if they found a
plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to
continue their withal; that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and
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plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast. Yet sure, in all that war there perished not
many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine which they themselves had wrought”.
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Bibliografia
Keir Elam “Introduzione al Cinquecento”, a cura di Lilla Maria Crisafulli e Keir
Elam, Manuale della Letteratura e Cultura Inglese, Bononia University Press,
2011, pp. 19-22
Luca Manini, “La poesia del Cinquecento” in Manuale di Letteratura e
Cultura Inglese, a cura di Lilla Maria Crisafulli e Keir Elam, Bononia University
Press, 2009, pp. 71-78.

lilla maria crisafulli - edmund spenser

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