XVII-XVIII (Dec 2023)
“Written with teares in harts close bleeding book”: Reading the embodied page in Spenser’s poetry
Abstract
What has reading to do with love? The early modern sonnet sequence would answer that the one has everything to do with the other – or, more precisely, that reading and writing are necessary means by which one might attain love, or if not attain it outright, might at least hope to mirror, capture, or move a little closer to it. Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti plays upon the intertwined sensory and sensual pleasures of reading from their inception, emphasizing that reading, writing, and love are fundamentally embodied practices. This essay engages this sonnet sequence, arguing that Spenser recognizes and plays with the simultaneous independence and interdependency of soul, spirit, and heart with the body. Through an embodied reading practice – focused on the ways by which the lovers of the Amoretti are described as reading and being read through the sensorium – this essay argues that the mutual acts of “correct” reading displayed by the lovers of the sonnets are key to self-fashioning.
