The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics) by Frances Yates

Author:Frances Yates [Yates, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2003-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

and who is mentioned as a close friend and adviser in the prefatory matter to The Faerie Queene. And it was Raleigh who introduced Spenser at court in 1592. But no rewards or favours were forthcoming for the author of the great epic of the Elizabethan age. Spenser went back to his semi-banishment in Ireland, returning to London in 1599, but only to die in poverty and neglect.

Moreover, misfortune also overtook the friend at court who had encouraged Spenser and his poem. Walter Raleigh lost the royal favour and was banished from court in 1592, ostensibly on account of his marriage.

I believe that much in the chilly reception of The Faerie Queene can be explained if it is realised that the poem expressed Dee’s vision for Elizabethan England, an expansionist vision which had become too dangerously provocative by the time it was published. After Dee’s activities abroad, he received no reward on his return home, and was never adequately rewarded for his outstanding contribution to the greatness of Elizabethan England. Semi-banishment, ill-success and poverty were to be his fate in his third period. No wonder that a similar fate befell the author of The Faerie Queene.

I try in this book as far as possible to avoid detailed linking to historical situations, concentrating on the thought evolving in those situations. The above brief and inadequate sketch seemed necessary to place Spenser and his poem within the Elizabethan situation, but I now return to the wider, and necessarily vaguer, effort to place them within the history of European thought, and of the partial breakdown of the Renaissance under the pressures of the later sixteenth century.

The hopes of some vast all-embracing reform through Hermetic–Cabalist influence and particularly through the influence of Christian Cabala, belonged to the earlier sixteenth century, though they were never forgotten nor completely discarded amid the disappointments of the later sixteenth century.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.