Fulke Greville's Caelica

Freya Sierhuis

Fulke Greville's Caelica

English and Related Literature

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Abstract

Fulke Greville’s Caelica is in the first rank of lyric sequences produced in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and is unusual in having been produced over a very long period. In consequence, it has an intricate textual history. Begun in the 1570s, in poetic exchange with Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, first drafted in fair copy in 1619, then revisited and revised by the author on at least three occasions in the years that followed, the manuscript seems a testimony both to Greville’s nostalgic relationship to the Elizabethan past, and to the
complexities of his own authorial position. More fundamentally, though, than a consequence of biography or textual transmission, however, revision is for Greville both a habit of thought and a poetic praxis that creates a loosely allusive structure to the two parts of the sequence, progressing from erotic to divine love and from Caelica to Christ, in which the erotic poetry anticipates the movement towards conversion, and the spiritual poetry revises or restates the terms of the earlier poems. Greville’s poems are characterized by frequent perspectival shifts and re-orientations, often involving a turn towards abstraction, either in philosophical or satirical vein. A recurrent concern of the latter part of the sequence are questions about the nature of time, and the incommensurability of time and eternity, often worked out through an apocalyptic or eschatological lexis that emphasises the radical transformative power of grace. In this way the lyrics themselves reflect the authorial manuscript as an extraordinary experiment in subjectivity.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Oxford Handbook of Renaissance Poetry
Editors	Jason Scott-Warren
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Publication status	Submitted - 2022

Keywords

Renaissance poetry
Lyric
Religion and Literature

Cite this

@inbook{c4345e9645b0499287348f727bc23af6,

title = "Fulke Greville's Caelica",

abstract = "Fulke Greville{\textquoteright}s Caelica is in the first rank of lyric sequences produced in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and is unusual in having been produced over a very long period. In consequence, it has an intricate textual history. Begun in the 1570s, in poetic exchange with Sir Philip Sidney{\textquoteright}s Astrophil and Stella, first drafted in fair copy in 1619, then revisited and revised by the author on at least three occasions in the years that followed, the manuscript seems a testimony both to Greville{\textquoteright}s nostalgic relationship to the Elizabethan past, and to thecomplexities of his own authorial position. More fundamentally, though, than a consequence of biography or textual transmission, however, revision is for Greville both a habit of thought and a poetic praxis that creates a loosely allusive structure to the two parts of the sequence, progressing from erotic to divine love and from Caelica to Christ, in which the erotic poetry anticipates the movement towards conversion, and the spiritual poetry revises or restates the terms of the earlier poems. Greville{\textquoteright}s poems are characterized by frequent perspectival shifts and re-orientations, often involving a turn towards abstraction, either in philosophical or satirical vein. A recurrent concern of the latter part of the sequence are questions about the nature of time, and the incommensurability of time and eternity, often worked out through an apocalyptic or eschatological lexis that emphasises the radical transformative power of grace. In this way the lyrics themselves reflect the authorial manuscript as an extraordinary experiment in subjectivity.",

keywords = "Renaissance poetry, Lyric, Religion and Literature",

author = "Freya Sierhuis",

year = "2022",

language = "English",

editor = "Scott-Warren, {Jason }",

booktitle = "Oxford Handbook of Renaissance Poetry",

publisher = "Oxford University Press",

address = "United Kingdom",

}

TY - CHAP

T1 - Fulke Greville's Caelica

AU - Sierhuis, Freya

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Fulke Greville’s Caelica is in the first rank of lyric sequences produced in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and is unusual in having been produced over a very long period. In consequence, it has an intricate textual history. Begun in the 1570s, in poetic exchange with Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, first drafted in fair copy in 1619, then revisited and revised by the author on at least three occasions in the years that followed, the manuscript seems a testimony both to Greville’s nostalgic relationship to the Elizabethan past, and to thecomplexities of his own authorial position. More fundamentally, though, than a consequence of biography or textual transmission, however, revision is for Greville both a habit of thought and a poetic praxis that creates a loosely allusive structure to the two parts of the sequence, progressing from erotic to divine love and from Caelica to Christ, in which the erotic poetry anticipates the movement towards conversion, and the spiritual poetry revises or restates the terms of the earlier poems. Greville’s poems are characterized by frequent perspectival shifts and re-orientations, often involving a turn towards abstraction, either in philosophical or satirical vein. A recurrent concern of the latter part of the sequence are questions about the nature of time, and the incommensurability of time and eternity, often worked out through an apocalyptic or eschatological lexis that emphasises the radical transformative power of grace. In this way the lyrics themselves reflect the authorial manuscript as an extraordinary experiment in subjectivity.

AB - Fulke Greville’s Caelica is in the first rank of lyric sequences produced in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and is unusual in having been produced over a very long period. In consequence, it has an intricate textual history. Begun in the 1570s, in poetic exchange with Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, first drafted in fair copy in 1619, then revisited and revised by the author on at least three occasions in the years that followed, the manuscript seems a testimony both to Greville’s nostalgic relationship to the Elizabethan past, and to thecomplexities of his own authorial position. More fundamentally, though, than a consequence of biography or textual transmission, however, revision is for Greville both a habit of thought and a poetic praxis that creates a loosely allusive structure to the two parts of the sequence, progressing from erotic to divine love and from Caelica to Christ, in which the erotic poetry anticipates the movement towards conversion, and the spiritual poetry revises or restates the terms of the earlier poems. Greville’s poems are characterized by frequent perspectival shifts and re-orientations, often involving a turn towards abstraction, either in philosophical or satirical vein. A recurrent concern of the latter part of the sequence are questions about the nature of time, and the incommensurability of time and eternity, often worked out through an apocalyptic or eschatological lexis that emphasises the radical transformative power of grace. In this way the lyrics themselves reflect the authorial manuscript as an extraordinary experiment in subjectivity.

KW - Renaissance poetry

KW - Lyric

KW - Religion and Literature

M3 - Chapter

BT - Oxford Handbook of Renaissance Poetry

A2 - Scott-Warren, Jason

PB - Oxford University Press

ER -