Hallmarks of Platonism and the Sons of Agape (Faerie Queene IV.ii–iv)

Abstract

The present essay first lays down a foundation of terms and concepts which are distinctively Platonic as they appear in Spenser: Ideas, the four beneficent frenzies, the concomitance of beauty and goodness, ladders, preexistence, and the Platonic cycle of the individual soul from emanation to remeatio. With regard to several of these hallmarks, it introduces a new Platonist, Flaminio Nobili, in a mutually illuminating comparison to Spenser, discovering that Plato means less to his trattato d’amore than to Spenser’s works. It demonstrates that Spenser throughout his poetry both endorses and enacts the Platonic and Ficinian notion that a certain kind of madness or frenzy fosters vision and creativity. It argues that just as Spenser affirms preexistence in Heavenly Beautie, so he implies it in certain otherworks, including The Faerie Queene. It argues that whereas the word “Idea” seems adventitious to the Hymne of Heavenlie Love, it plays an important part in Hymne of Beautie and in Amoretti 45 and 88, manifesting Spenser’s tendency to translate Platonic metaphysical concepts into terms of individuals and of the human mind. Then in the second part, proof-texts from the Fowre Hymnes serve to reveal some other Platonic concepts such as emanation in an explication both of a story and of its analogous echoes, thus illustrating that tango of retrenchment and discovery that an investigation of a poet’s worldview enacts as tastes change. The unity of the sons of Agape with each other and with their community of siblings, in-laws, lovers, and friends exemplifies the unity and equality of a modern social group in the face of diversity.

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