SIGLELD:D45945/83 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Gaffney, Christopher.

English

Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, one of the longest pastorals written in the
late sixteenth century, expresses the classical spirit of pastoral in an
unique form which combines Neo-Latin, Renaissance, and medieval genres.
The Renaissance poets made love the most important activity in the bower,
but no one had attempted to explain its function in the pursuit of peace.
By creating a shepherd philosophy in which Cupid has the power of the Logos,
Spenser demonstrates that even the unrequited lover can find happiness in a
pastoral community if he follows Cupid's rules.

The method is "ernest unto game". Through such stylistic devices as the use
of a narrator, comic irony, parodic transformation of romance conventions
and the creative use of pastoral tropes, the poet directs us to issues of
which the shepherds are unaware. The biographical material is presented
wittily: the ecloga nautica discloses the appreciative understanding that
Raleigh and Spenser had for each other; and a delicately constructed myth
of locality reveals a sensitive exemplum of Raleigh's seduction of EIizabeth
Throckmorton and the-tragic cost of defying intransigent authority.

Critics believed that CCCHA existed in two States in the outer forme of sheet
C, but my collation of 47 copies reveals that there are some minor variants
on Bʳ₃ and Cᵛ₃ There is no evidence to suggest that Spenser was in London
at the time of publication

Colin Clouts come home again

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