Altra Musica and Pythagorean Number Symbolism as the Basics of Edmund Spenser’s “Minor Poems” Idiostyle

PDF: http://izv-oifn.ru/images/2017-1/22-33-burova.pdf
Absract: Edmund Spenser’s “minor poems” are regarded as a group of works demonstrating the most important characteristics of the poet’s idiostyle. Most of the poems possess the stylistic peculiarities of their own, yet they also demonstrate uniformity in Spenser’s regarding them as “songs”, which prompts us to discuss Spenser’s notion of altra musica and the ways he used to justify the kinship between his poetry and music. The Pythogorean idea of music as an exact science based on numerical relations also had a strong influence on Spenser and lead to his following some rules of geometry in structuring both his individual poems and collections of works. The article also treats Spenser’s partiality to number nine, which serves as a kind of his hallmark. These problems are discussed within a broad historical and cultural context, with the conclusion that Spenser’s “minor poems” style clearly reveals the poet’s bias towards Classicism, rather than Baroque.
Keywords: Edmund Spenser, the style of “minor poems” by Spenser, music, poetry, evolution of the idea of relations between music and poetry, song, altra musica, geometrical structure of the text, number symbolism.
Category: Vol 76, NO 1 (2017)
Pages: 22-33
Author: Irina I. Burova
Information about the author: Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor at the Foreign Literatures’ History Department of the St. Petersburg State University, 7–9 Universitetskaya Embankment, St. Petersburg, 199034 Russia i.burova@spbu.ru

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