Baleful Bookes and Other Stuff

Recently I started reading Edmund Spencer’s “The Faerie Queen,” an epic poem of biblical proportions published in 1596. I bought a 1912 imprint of a volume of the poetical works of Spenser, entitled “The Oxford Spencer.” How that conjurs up images of professors wearing their mortarboards while lecturing in lecture halls with oak paneling and paintings of Tudor monarchs high on the walls.

This is one of those works that high school students sometimes have to read, and college students in Freshman English. You read exactly what you are assigned and after that the book becomes a bookend or a doorstop. However, there are riches to be found. Explore this blog entry: https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/review/item/48.1.5/

What I am enjoying about it is that it hasn’t been adapted by modern media. What I mean is there is no film version. You couldn’t do a film of it anyway. It’s far too long. And, it's allegorical. To try to film it would be to destroy the allegorical nature of it. It's confined to print, and that's a good thing. The nice thing about this edition is that the original spelling is retained. Some may remember an earlier post in which I wrote about the joys of reading 16th century English. This is another good example. Since this has not been adapted to modern media (other than being able to find the whole thing online) there are no media pictures to influence my reading of the story. I recently read a book on the Battle of Gettysburg. Throughout my reading I could see and hear bits from the movie done about 25 years ago. Same with Lord of the Rings. It would be impossible to read it now without seeing Ian McKellan as Gandalf and Elijah Wood as Frodo.

That’s not all bad. The Lord of the Rings films are superb, but as films they are limited in scope in the way that a book is not. That’s the thing with Spenser. There was no film at that time. All he had was print. I’m sure that somewhere along the line someone published abridged editions with fancy illustrations, but if so, none of those images have the staying power of a well-done movie.

So, I have this 107 year old volume, in very good condition, and that’s it. And I am loving it.

When those accursed messengers of hell,
That feigning dreame, and that faire-forged Spright°
Came to their wicked maister, and gan tell
Their bootelesse paines, and ill succeeding night:
Who all in rage to see his skilfull might
Deluded so, gan threaten hellish paine
And sad Proserpines wrath, them to affright.
But when he saw his threatning was but vaine,
He cast about, and searcht his baleful bookes againe. (I.2.2)

The imagery is wonderful and would be spoiled by illustrations or other media that tried to capture Spenser’s masterful use of language in a picture. It seems that to a good extent we have lost the ability to develop mental pictures from literature based solely on words. Maybe not, and I would be happy to be proved wrong. Older language such as this was written with that in mind--that the reader would naturally develop pictures in their head of what the scenes looked like. After all, people had been reading such poetry for centuries, and none of it was written with the hope that a major studio would buy the film rights. Having said that, despite its adaptation to film I'm quite sure that Tolkien did not have film in mind when he wrote the trilogy.

It should be obvious that I love English from this period. Jonson, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, all of it. It feeds me in a way that other language does not.

Back to my baleful bookes.

...one louing howre
For many yeares of sorrow can dispence:
A dram of sweet is worth a pound of sowre....