Receptions of Plato in the english renaissance : spenser on love and beauty

Abstract

In this paper, I propose to examine some of the ways in which Plato’s elaboration of transcendent love penetrated and influenced English Renaissance poetry, specifically Edmund Spenser’s, and to point out how certain accretions from Renaissance Neoplatonism may be said to have filtered into a specific literary expression, the ‘Hymne’. I shall attempt to offer a glimpse into the artistry of a poet who met the considerable challenge of encompassing philosophical doctrines into poetic structures and to show how the remarkable blend of apparently divergent beliefs, as presented by ancient and modern schools of thought, provided a rich array of ideas that could be exploited in poetical terms.