（英语语言文学专业论文）柏拉图理想主义在埃德蒙·斯宾塞《爱情小唱》中的体现.pdf

vi 摘要 摘要 埃德蒙斯宾塞是英国文艺复兴时期最伟大的诗人之一.他以优美的音韵、 严谨的格律而被后人称为 “诗人中的诗人”。这部诗集共收集了 89 首十四行诗,是诗人献给他的未婚妻伊丽莎白鲍伊尔的情诗.他的这部诗集 和锡德尼的、 以及莎士比亚的被认为是文艺复兴 时期英国文坛上流行的三大十四行组诗。 本文旨在探讨柏拉图理想主义思想在斯宾塞爱情小唱主题、意象、以及 诗歌形式这三方面上的体现。柏拉图对西方的思想史具有重大的影响。本文以涉 及到柏拉图理想主义理论的几篇对话为依据,来讨论其对诗歌主题、意象、和诗 歌形式的影响。本论文由引言、主体和结论三部分组成。引言部分主要是关于国 内外学者对爱情小唱的评论,其次指出了本文所需要的理论,最后介绍了柏拉 图理想主义在该诗集中的体现。 第一章论述了柏拉图理想主义在爱情小唱主题上的体现。分为三部分: 主要是阐释斯宾塞为什么要追求美、而他所追求的是心灵而非外貌的美、以及对 现实的不满迫使他想要建立一个理想的王国,这一切都和柏拉图追求真、善、美 的理论相吻合。 第二章分析了柏拉图理想主义在爱情小唱意象上的体现。斯宾塞在诗集 中通过运用自然意象来表达爱情的理想状态、 以及女人的神圣化和男人的卑微化 来表达他对爱情的像往,对理想的盼望,就像是柏拉图所要建设的另外一种理想 的社会。 第三章探讨了柏拉图理想主义在爱情小唱诗歌形式上的体现。柏拉图十 分重视修辞学,包括修辞和韵律等。而本诗集中诗人对明喻、暗喻、头韵、尾韵 等的运用,以及对十四行诗歌的创新来源于柏拉图对美的不协追求。 结论部分指出了柏拉图理想主义在爱情小唱中得到了充分的体现,并且 重新全面分析,最后叙述了斯宾塞对十四行诗所做的贡献。 关键词: 关键词: 柏拉图理想主义 主题 意象 诗歌技巧 iv abstract as one of the greatest poets in english renaissance period, edmund spenser is regarded as “the poets poet” for his beautiful melody and strict meter. the sonnet sequence amoretti consists of 89 sonnets which are devoted to his intended wife elizabeth boyle. spensers amoretti, sidneys astrophil and stella, and shakespeares sonnets are considered to be the three most famous sonnet sequences in their age. this thesis aims to discuss platos idealism embodied in spensers amoretti from three aspects: the theme, imagery and poetic techniques. as one of the founders of philosophy and the most famous thinker in ancient greek, plato exerts a great influence on the western thoughts. based on a few dialogues related to platos idealism, this thesis analyzes its impact on the theme, imagery and poetic techniques. this thesis includes three major parts, covering introduction, main frame, and conclusion. the introduction deals with comments on amoretti by both domestic and overseas scholars, then, it points out the theory needed in this paper, concluding with an application of platos idealism in this poetic sequence. chapter one studies the embodiment of idealism in the theme of spensers amoretti. it mainly discusses three aspects, which explain why spenser pursues beauty and that the object of his courting is inner virtue instead of outer fairness, as well as why he is discontented with reality. all of these mentioned above forced him to build an ideal state which dovetails with platos theory of pursuing truth, kindness, and beauty. chapter two analyzes the embodiment of idealism in the imagery of spensers amoretti. the natural images are employed by spenser to express the ideal state of love. by idealizing the woman he loves and lowering the poet speakers status, he indicates his longing for pure and true love. chapter three explores platos idealism embodied in the poetic techniques of spensers amoretti. plato pays great attention to rhetoric, including figures of speech and rhymes. the use of simile, metaphor, initial rhyme and end rhyme in this sonnet v sequence, as well as inventory in sonnet forms stem from platos untiring pursuit for true beauty in materialistic society. the conclusion points out that platos idealism is fully displayed in spensers amoretti and makes a general revaluation of the particularities of this sonnet sequence and finally shows spensers contribution to love sonnets. key words: amoretti platos idealism theme imagery poetic techniques iii 学位论文原创性声明 学位论文原创性声明 本人所提交的学位论文柏拉图理想主义在斯宾塞爱情小唱中的体现 (embodiment of platos idealism in edmund spensers amoretti) ，是在导师的指 导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的原创性成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外， 本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。 对本文的研究 做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中标明。 本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师确认（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解河北师范大学有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构 送交学位论文的复印件和磁盘，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权河北师范大学 可以将学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩 印或其它复制手段保存、汇编学位论文。 （保密的学位论文在 年解密后适用本授权书） 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 1 introduction edmund spenser（1552？-1599）, one of the greatest poets in the history of english literature, enjoys the fame of the “poets poet” by inventing the “spenserian stanza”. and he is famous for his long epic faerie queene, the shepherds calendar, amoretti, and epithalamion，etc. “spenser is still one of the four founding fathers of modern english literature, along with chaucer, shakespeare and milton”. 1 most of his poetry expresses the view of humanists love and longing for life, the new platonists meditation on world, the puritan religious ethical values and the emerging bourgeoisie strong enthusiasm for nation. so he has been regarded by milton as “a better teacher than johannes duns scotus or thomas acqui”. 2 meanwhile, william nelson offers his statement that “spenser was a highly sophisticated, self-conscious, and meticulous artist”. 3 as a prolific poet, spenser writes all his life. among all his works, although faerie queene gains a lot of attention from critical world, amoretti is also regarded as beautiful love poetry for its romantic passion, elegant rhyme and strict meter. amoretti, consisting of eighty-nine sonnets, records the long and difficult journey he pursues elizabeth boyle and is the first sonnet sequence “to have been written by a poet to his bride”.4 so together with epithalamion, “part private and autobiographical, part mythological”, 5 amoretti is said to be a love story related to his personal experience, which tells about spensers view of love: the harmony between the beauty of soul and body is perfect. as a work which is profound in its structure and poetic form, amoretti has been popular and is still popular all over the world. in amoretti, spenser praises the lady and expresses his desire to win the heart of the lady. at the same time, so many details described in amoretti give the reader a hint that this sonnet sequence is closely related to spensers own life. for example, when spenser was born is unknown to us, but there is no doubt that amoretti was written in 1593. so according to one sentence written in sonnet 60, critics have calculated the birth of spenser. sonnet 33 in amoretti is his response to his friend, 2 lodwick brysktts complaints related to the writing process of the faerie queen. besides, sonnet 74 also reveals that “elizabeth was the name of spensers mother, just as it was the name of both his monarch and his bride-to-be”. 6 so william nelson points out that “spenser tells us in one way or another that he was born in london in 1554 or a year or two before, that his mothers name was elizabeth.”7some of the scholars argue that one of the distinctive features of amoretti is that the material is from his personal calendar and the petrarchan conceits. according to andrew hadfield, in addition to the lyrics recording the love history of edmund spenser and elizabeth boyle, the speaker in the amoretti is a man of forty years old. his mother, his wife and his queen own the same name. he has completed six books of a great poem entitled the faerie queene; and the woman he loves is not an intangible petrarchan woman, but a young lady of wit. “spenser both assimilates his private love to the public convention and at the same time declares its particular nature.8 in the study of the amoretti, critics pay special attention to the relationship and difference between it and petrarchan sonnets. it is spensers amoretti that bears the nature of inheritance and innovation. on the one hand, he follows and writes with the manner established by petrarch. “there is an inevitable sameness about these poises of love poems, inevitable because the long-established convention included not only a specified verse form but also a specified set of themes and subjects, like the pieces in chess, with which the sonneteer mighty play”. 9 on the other hand, compared with the petrarchan sonnets, amoretti has an innovation in the poetic theme, imagery and techniques, for example spenser praises the physical beauty like other sonneteers, but has more concern with the spiritual tribute. furthermore, william j. kennedy claims that the joyous reunion with the beloved at the end of the poem draws amoretti away from the petrarchan tradition. in mutability and the literary life, waller also talks about the relationship between the petrarchan tradition and the innovation of amoretti. first, he points out that spenser takes all petrarchan weapons to pursue the beautiful lady. second, there is “a pattern of desire that leads not to the petrarchan impasse of compulsive frustration and idealized hopelessness but to marriage and mutual submission of 3 husband and wife to gods will”. 10 he quotes sinfields sentence and declares that: amoretti is an “unprecedented puritan humanist adaptation of the sonnet sequence to a relationship which ends in marriage”. 11 meanwhile, the frequent use of the image of hard-hearted and cruel lady suggest that the process of pursuing is in fact to purify spirit and soul. “amoretti provide a protestant critique of the persuasiveness of petrarchan modes of thought and expression”. 12 when it comes to the innovation of petrarchan tradition, louis martz points out that, on the one hand, many of these poems in amoretti are written with extravagant exaggeration of the conventional pose. the poet in the series proposes love to his lady with the petrarchan manners which are the usual ritual of courtship. on the other hand, as an english protestant poet, the lady he describes in the sequence is more than the petrarchan one. in this point, andrew hadfield agree with martzs view and declares that “he leaves the dominant sonnet tradition and shows how an english protestant poet can outdo the petrarchans”.13 in examining the character of the lady, louis martz shares same opinion with pope; he has said “most petrarchan ladies have no character at all”. 14 speaking of spensers lady, martz thinks that she “has a very decided and a very attractive character”. 15 louis martz takes a lot of sentences from the series to talk about the lady of wit possessed in amoretti, such as “her deep wit” (sonnet 43, l13), “her gentle wit, and virtuous mind” (sonnet 79, l3-l4) which makes her different from the petrarchan ladies. to sum up, the lady he pursues in amoretti is not only an arrogant, self-confident and willful lady, but a person full of wisdom. louis l. martz also considers amoretti as the “most goodly temperature” 16 and explains it for contrary voices. first, there are some objection to amoretti, especially when placed at the same level with sidneys or with shakespeares, amoretti sounds rather “tame and flat”, “his melody, his craft, his emblematic techniques, his strong idealism may not be adequate to lift amoretti very far above their heavy reliance on the petrarchan conventions”. 17 then, j.w. lever appears to agree with when some people said that spensers amoretti is inconsistent in the description of the character of the heroine, for there is “an attempted blending of two collections of sonnets, 4 differing in subject-matter, characterization, and general conception”. 18 according to j.w. levers view, the lady as angelic, divine, purely virtuous is in conflict with the tyrannical nature of her. moreover, some critics allege disproportion in amoretti, for the lovers mood changes too suddenly at the second new year and the most of the earlier complaint poems are in excess of the reminder of the happy sonnets. as the mood changes abruptly from happy to distress, the readers are confused by the ending of the sequence. louis l. martz strikes back against this oppression by claiming that “all these objections are so closely related that to deal with one is to deal with all”.19 then he uses the specific poems in the amoretti to explain the consistencies of thought, mood, and style in amoretti. sonnet i, as prologue to the whole sequence, tells why they two are separated at the end of the poem. the sequence shows that whether the touch of slander or the envy of the world can not spoil the true love, though it is the cause of their separation, there is no sign indicating that the poet can not endure this temporary separation, instead, he spends his time with expectation. so the only reason that may cause their separation is to prepare for their wedding. therefore, martz claims that he never finds the abruptness and uncertainty that other has discovered in this sequence and he considers it to be a single poem. imagery is another feature that attracts attention of critics. many of them agree that plants, animals, and any other images used in amoretti are traditional. b.e.c davis thinks that “most of the imagery of amoretti has been traced to its source in ronsard of desportes, petrarch or tasso”. 20 the imagery spenser used in amoretti is conventional, but as an ingenious poet, his power transcended the convention. “in the making of images his superiority to his contemporaries is one of degree, resulting from a finer sensitivity and a wider range of appeal which have strengthened his position as poets poet”. 21 the nature of spensers innovation in the imagery of amoretti is best understood that “he is in love, not with an intangible petrarchan lady, but with a young woman of wit and good humor”. 22 spenser is an active innovator. by blending petrarchan with shakespearean and imparting new values into a familiar figure, he invented his own sonnet form with original rhyme scheme. he wrote his love poems in amoretti in this new form, with 5 sonnet 8 as an exception which was written in shakespearean. spenserian sonnet is more difficult to handle when compared with that of either petrarch or shakespeare form, but “the tone of amoretti sounds sweet and delightful, tuneful and pleasant to the ear”. 23 davis declares that spenser is a great master of meter for using strange forms of speech and obsolete words in his works. both william nelson and thomas warton view spensers poetry as “the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility”. 24 it is his exquisite melody and rigid meter that has made spenser known as a “highly sophisticated, self-conscious, and meticulous artist”. 25 when analyzing the source of innovative idea in amoretti, one can not fail to mention the effect of platos idealism on spenser. the renaissance encouraged the study of platos writings, and many well-known humanists were platos followers. in spensers period, the influence of platos philosophy in the uk could be strongly felt. michael drayton and other poets had used platos idea theory as the theme of their poems: in sir philip sidneys sonnets astrophel and stella and defense of poetry, there is a strong atmosphere of platonism. according to john.n.k, to a certain extent, spenser follows the footstep of traditional writers in amoretti, but his understanding of the nature of love “differs significantly from that of the courtly amorists”. 26 he points out that when the other writers of his time was distinguishing between love and lust, his focus on the soul rather than on the body explains that “spensers thinking is platonic” and “the platonic grand scheme of things are clear enough”. 27 on top of this, by drawing a distinction between the earthly love and heavenly love, he once again explains that spenser was influenced greatly by plato. as platos follower, spensers earthly love is different from heavenly one. the idea of his earthly one trying to learn to ascend from the material to the immaterial world has been described by diotima in symposium, but failed. the process of pursuit is in fact the purification of soul, and one finally can get his way to the heavenly love. as a result, he claims that “as for plotinus as spenser, the heavenly kind of beauty and love is immeasurably superior to the earthly”. 28 6 as for platos influence on spenser, li funing wrote: when he was studying at cambridge university, spenser was affected by the ancient greek philosophers plato and aristotle”. 29 and he also wrote early hymns praising love and beauty “in honor of love” and “in honor of beauty” showing his platonic ideas. wang zuoliang points out that in amoretti the idea he intended to express, in addition to describing the beautiful appearance of the girl, is the plato thought that “soul is more beautiful than body, 30 such as the idea of beauty is better than all other forms mentioned in amoretti. thus, it is beyond doubt that spensers poetry writing is affected by platos idea. in this thesis, the author will analyze embodiment of platos idealism in the poetic theme, imagery, and poetic techniques of the love sonnets. although most of platonic dialogues have mentioned poetic theories, this thesis only focuses on symposium, republic, phaedo, lawsthen the theories applied in this thesis will be discussed in the coming part. first, plato takes love as a process of purification of soul and the way of life of human beings aiming at self-improvement. according to plato, to accept the suitors wooing rapidly is shameful and people need some time to discern this love for time is always the best test for many things. meanwhile, the true love will not stay in the material beauty. along the ladder of beauty with non-stop difficulty climbing from the love of physical beauty to the emphasis on the soul, he takes a step to the true nature of beauty. however, to obtain the pure beauty, people who love beauty should consistently improve their realm of life and purify their soul. the lady is in fact a teacher help him to close the true beauty. second, plato views that the inner virtue is more valuable than outer appearance. he advocates that education, playing a very important role in the formation and reformation of peoples souls, should start with the children, for the souls of the children are very pure.