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Colin Clout, Edmund Spenser, English Renaissance, Niobe, Petrarch, Queen Elizabeth I, Sheep, Whitney
In 1595, Edmund Spenser published his long pastoral poem Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. It allegorically describes Spenser’s bitterness towards Queen Elizabeth I’s court as he sees himself as a literary exile in Ireland. Through his poetic persona as the shepherd Colin Clout, Spenser relates his experiences in Cynthia’s land that is a transparent allusion to Elizabethan England. His bitterness towards the queen’s court and her courtiers becomes apparent in the following lines describing Cynthia’s servants:
For either they be pufféd up with pride,
Or fraught with envy that their galls do swell,
Or they their days to idleness divide,
Or drownded lie in Pleasure’s wastyeful well. (lines 759-62)
The verbs ‘pufféd’ and ‘swell’ are metonyms for the Elizabethan courtiers’ vanity. They are so narcissistic their gall bladders are almost bursting with bitterness. The courtiers are redolent of the sheep -Continue reading>
