Conference Report

Re-Viewing Edmund Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland

Case Western Reserve University, May 15-16, 2018

http://core.ecu.edu/engl/herront/Spenser-View/index.html

Spenserians, non-Spenserians, historians and one archaeologist gathered in Cleveland, OH for a two-day, multidisciplinary symposium focusing on Spenser’s longest piece of prose, A View of the Present State of Ireland.  The conference sought to address key questions about the work, such as 1) How does it relate to other administrative writings emanating from London and/or Ireland? 2) Where does it stand in relation to Spenser’s sources and to his poetry (particularly outside of Book V of The Faerie Queene)?  3) Where does it stand in relation to the poetry and prose of other writers?  4) What is its genre?  5) What was its practical, historical and literary impact on succeeding generations of authors and policy makers? And, finally, 6) What challenges do its many manuscript and published versions pose to scholars today?  It is fair to say that the conference raised more questions than it answered, and conversation was lively.

The conference opened with a private showing of early modern English portrait miniatures in the nearby Cleveland Museum of Art, including this stunner by Nicholas Hilliard of Sir Anthony Mildmay, Knight of Apethorpe, Northants, putting on (or taking off?) his armor: http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1926.554

Viewing the large miniature of Sir Anthony Mildmay in the Cleveland Museum of Art.  L-R: Maggie Vinter, Susan Oldrieve, and Trevor Joyce.

The fact that Mildmay did nothing distinguished in his entire life made a useful contrast to the strenuous efforts of Lord Deputy of Ireland Arthur, Lord Grey, the subject of the plenary talk that evening by senior Irish historian David Edwards (University College Cork). Edwards argued that Grey was ‘sacked’ because he did the opposite of what the Queen told him to do. The plenary was followed by a reception and entertaining poetry reading by Trevor Joyce, who recently ‘translated’ both Ruines of Rome and the Mutabilitie Cantos into modern verse (as Rome’s Wreck (2014), and Fastness (2018), respectively).

Most papers were of normal conference length (20-30 minutes) and grouped in panels (see program and abstracts), including time for open discussion.  The conference opened with a special talk by Jean Brink on the problems of the manuscripts and questions of attribution.  Brink wondered if View MSS with watermarks dating them post-1600 influenced policy on the Ulster Plantation. William Palmer’s paper established a critical foundation for our discussions as he delved into historiographical debate (Canny vs. Brady).  Brendan Kane argued against reading the scholarly career of Spenser’s first publisher, the Dubliner James Ware, as in any way apolitical, and Peter McQuillan considered the influence of Spenser’s text and New English ideas on 17th-century writeres in Irish. Nicholas Popper’s paper read the View in the context of policy-inflected English travel writing. Thomas Herron (organiser) and Karen Nelson further analyzed the text’s structure, introducing Aristotelian and Platonic principles/models to discussions of the systematic organization of the View.

Papers connected the View to other non-literary texts of the period, such as Katarzyna Lecky’s paper that used John Jones’s 1579 medical treatise on nursing to discuss colonialism and Ireland. Jean Feerick also considered how degeneration and bloodiness in the View reflected Elizabethan colonial practices and perspectives. Maggie Vinter traced how images of peace and leisure play a role in this highly martial text. Looking at soil as both a literal and figurative object, Ben Moran suggested that the potentials of Irish land motivated English endeavors in Ireland. Denna Iammarino (organiser) used the genre and practice of complaint (specifically pastoral complaint) to link the View to Spenser’s larger canon. Hannibal Hamlin, Susan Oldrieve, Maryclaire Moroney, Valerie McGowan-Doyle (organiser), Kevin O’Sullivan, Bridgette Slavin, and John Soderberg (the archaeologist) presided over panels and speakers.  Elizabeth Fowler offered closing reflections and, most heartening, Professor Tom Roche and Bo Smith joined the company for a conference-ending dinner in sumptuous circumstances in nearby L’Albatros restaurant. 
The colloquium was organized by Thomas Herron, Denna Iammarino, and Valerie McGowan-Doyle, who are a loosely affiliated group of literature and history scholars with connections to the Cleveland area who have a keen interest in early modern Ireland and Spenser’s work. It followed the format of a similar event on John Derricke’s Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne held at CWRU in 2016.  Re-Viewing the View was made possible through generous funding from the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the Writers House, and the Department of English at CWRU, and by Terrence J. Kenneally, Esq. Other sponsors were the International Spenser Society and the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS).  We hope to organise another such event focused on an important Ireland-related literary-historical text in 2020.

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