ABSTRACT
Teares exemplifies Spenser’s natural inclination (most fully realized in FQ) to draw together and synthesize a mass of discrete source materials. His clear sympathy with the Pléiade’s requirement that the vernacular poet be steeped in ancient literature is seen in passages that look directly to du Bellay’s verse and prose; Urania’s account of her ‘heavenlie discipline’ indicates his admiration for du Bartas’ Sepmaine and ‘Uranie’ (see Var 8:322-7; Prescott 1978:51-2, 209-10). Whether his knowledge of the Muses derives directly from Macrobius, Giraldi, and others, or, more probably, from Renaissance dictionaries, Teares confirms Spenser’s familiarity with the tradition. Known only to the wise and virtuous, and forever opposed to ignorance, the Muses, who represent encyclopedic knowledge, transmit divine wisdom (in particular the conception of cosmic harmony) to the souls of mankind. In the context of Spenser’s evolutionary historical vision, Teares records some dissatisfaction with the tradition of the Muses: culturally fixed and permanent, and in paradoxical consequence not altogether adequate for the poet who must transform and revise ancient myth, these learned ladies may have been considered by Spenser, even thus early, as elemental parts of the complex unity of that ‘greater Muse’ invoked in FQ VII vii 1. A scriptural undersong echoes also in Teares, notably in the complaints of Melpomene, Euterpe, and Urania, which recall the New Testament on the deceitful power of sin. Renaissance, medieval, and scriptural elements, finally, are contained within a numerical structure in which nine, traditionally associated with the soul, and with the heavens and angelic virtue (see Fowler 1964:55, 274, 280), is the ruling number, hinting at permanent rhythms within the flux of time and change.
