ABSTRACT
However one defines poetic style-as a means of expression, as the language and devices suitable for a given subject, or as manipulation of language for its own sake-Spenser is clearly a formidable stylist. The conspicuous variety of his first major work, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), shows that it was intended as a virtuoso stylistic performance. Its fundamental stylistic principle is stated in the prefatory Epistle to Harvey, in which E.K. praises the young poet for ‘his dewe observing of Decorum everye where.’ This is to say that the verse form, the diction, and the rhetorical mode and level of each eclogue are answerable, first, to the general pastoralism of the work as a whole; second, to one of thr ee ge neral t ypes identified by E.K. in the General Argument (plaintive, recreative, and moral); and finally, to the nature of the specific month to which each poem is assigned. For example, Colin Clout’s ‘laye/Of fayre Eliza’ in Aprill is exuberantly elaborate in its stanza form, its mythological allusions, and in some of its diction, as befits a poem praising Queen Elizabeth in pastoral guise. But it is also fresh and unaffected in some of its imagery and modes of address, thus reflecting both the season and the fact that it is said to have been composed in Colin’s youth, when he was innocent of love. In the eclogues for the winter months, on the other hand, the language and rhetorical tactics reflect the fact that these poems are concerned with death, aging, and the distresses of love.
