Spenser and Animal Life, Colloquium hosted by the University of Sussex and Goldsmiths, University of London
18th June 2021 (online)
Organisers: Rachel Stenner (Sussex) and Abigail Shinn (Goldsmiths)
Horses, lions, apes, butterflies, sheep, and aqueous creatures of many forms populate Spenser’s landscapes and poetic worlds - from the romance geography of The Faerie Queene to the pastoral realm of The Shepheardes Calender and beyond. Despite its panoply of non-human life, though, Spenser’s oeuvre has so far been neglected by animal studies. Led by scholars such as Erica Fudge, Laurie Shannon, Bruce Boehrer, and Karen Raber, this is a critical and philosophical approach that has lately gained much traction in early modern scholarship. Spenserians have brought posthuman approaches more broadly into dialogue with the poet’s works, namely in the special edition of Spenser Studies entitled Spenser and ‘The Human’ (2015, ed. Ayesha Ramachandran and Melissa E. Sanchez). And some important representative writings exist, Joseph Loewenstein’s 2007 essay ‘Gryll’s Hoggish Mind’, being key. But are we right to think that Spenser has ‘virtually no affective’, but instead a ‘highly theoretical’, engagement with fauna?[1] What might that theoretical engagement look and sound like? What are the affect and the effect of the animal in Spenser’s work? How do we position animal life in Spenser’s thought and his creativity? These are the questions that the colloquium ‘Spenser and Animal Life’ explored on 18 June 2021.
In papers ranging from fungi and insects, to sheep and wings, contributors brought Spenser into conversation with a broad spectrum of animal life. Bethany Dubow (Cambridge) and Namratha Rao (York) considered how we might think with plants when reading Spenser, looking at the topics of ‘Spenser’s Toadstool Poetics’ and ‘Thinking with Plants’ respectively. Plants evince a ‘lack of restraint’ in Spenser’s work, displaying a coexistent artifice and instinct, in Rao’s words, while Dubow points out that fungi’s unpredictability is linked to the ‘fungal growths’ of alliteration in The Faerie Queene. Jonny Thurston (Michigan State) in ‘Ravenous Race: Nature versus Nurture and Spenser’s Faerie Queene’ explored how animals, particularly horses, are coded as gendered and interracial progeny in The Faerie Queene. Raphael Lyne (Cambridge) in ‘Spenser’s Wings’ considered the numerous representations of winged beings in Spenser’s work, how he evokes the feeling of having wings, of weight in flight, and frequently depicts wings with a metallic sharpness. Conor Wilcox-Mahon (Cambridge) in ‘Courses and Coursers in The Faerie Queene’ connected the movements of various coursers to the teleological momentum of the poem, arguing that the courser bears both the knight and the reader. Richard Danson Brown (Open University) in ‘Scorned Little Creatures?: Insects and Others in Complaints (1591)’ described the Complaints as ‘a world bristling with vitality’ and argued that Spenser’s Irish gnats were formidable opponents, vexatious in the extreme, but also bearers of ‘experiential memory’. Abigail Shinn (Goldsmiths), in ‘Spenser’s “apish crue”: Aping in Prosopopoiea or Mother Hubberds Tale’ explored the mimetic body of the performing ape as a commentary on the distortion of prosopopooeia. Kat Addis (NYU), in ‘The Erotic Politics of Hunting in Spenser’s Amoretti, Sonnet 67’ emphasised how Spenser evokes the brutal intention of a literal hunt in the sonnet, observing that unlike Petrarch and Wyatt, Spenser incorporates hunting dogs into his poem, bringing a frightening realism to the image of the beloved as prey. Andrew Hadfield (Sussex) in ‘Spenser’s Real Sheep’ considered the importance of sheep for the fortune of the Spencers of Althorp, and the role of sheep as commodities. Asking whether or not Spenser had any interest in sheep beyond their value on the market and their necessity for pastoral, a final question for all the speakers was: ‘Does Spenser think about the consciousness of sheep?’
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These are the questions that the colloquium ‘Spenser and Animal Life’ explored on 18 June 2021.
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