SEL 53,Powrie

1 (Winter 2013): 7389

Sarah
ISSN 0039-3657
2013 Rice University

73
73

Spensers Mutabilitie and the

Indeterminate Universe
SARAH POWRIE

Spenser demonstrates a persistent interest in the aesthetic

potential of Neo-Platonic metaphysics. His Epithalamion transforms a wedding hymn into a universal expression of harmony,
so that conjugal love limited by time is joined to the eternal love
moving the heavens and stars. Likewise in the Fowre Hymnes,
the philosophers metaphysical investigation of the natural order
cultivates spiritual equanimity within the self, as the contemplative exercise proceeds from the multiplicity of material things in
time to the singular truth of eternity. Spensers nostalgia for such
medievalisms is well recognized; however, his attitude toward the
early modern interrogation of this world order has been largely
unconsidered.1 Spenser must have been aware of the Copernican
hypothesis, as well as the emergent interest in observational and
experimental science. The Two Cantos of Mutabilitie, from book
7 of The Faerie Queene, with its celestial setting and theme of
change, offer a promising text for locating Spensers response
to the new astronomy.2 Yet, the unwarranted underestimation
of Spensers scientific capacities has deterred scholarship from
pursuing this interpretation.
This oversight is due in part to Gabriel Harveys tepid assessment of Spensers abilities in astronomy and to the sequence of
scholars who have deferred to Harveys judgment as Spensers
contemporary and friend. Harvey writes, I have often marveled
that Chaucer and Lydgate were such good astronomers in those
days, while modern poets are so ignorant of astronomy, and
that Spenser himself is ashamed, though he is not completely
Sarah Powrie is Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College,
Saskatoon, SK. Interested in continuities linking medieval and early modern
thought, she has also published on John Donnes playful appropriation of
medieval metaphysics.

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

ignorant of the globe and the astrolabe, of the difficulty he has

with astronomical rules, tables and instruments.3 The historian
of science Francis R. Johnson criticizes Spenser more directly in
his Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England. Paraphrasing
Harveys remarks, Johnson compares Spenser unfavorably with
medieval poets: [Spenser] never acquired Chaucers easy familiarity with the actual processes of astronomical observation.4
Johnson laments that Spenser was not more like Harvey in being directly engaged in scientific debates: For example, [Spenser
makes] no allusion to the new star of 1572, and its shattering of
the Aristotelian doctrine of the changeless heavens, although in
the Mutabilitie cantos Spensers theme offered an appropriate
occasion for such a reference.5 Accepting Johnsons criticism,
Robert Ellrodt quotes this very passage to argue that Mutabilitie is
dominantly medieval in spirit and that Copernican resonances
are peripheral to the poems purpose.6 Echoing this theme, Harry
Berger Jr. claims that Spenser is not interested in cosmology per
se.7 Harveys dismissive comments about his friend have generated the critical assumption that Spenser was either a talentless
astronomer or ignorant of Copernican science. Given Spensers
acquaintances, however, it is more reasonable to suppose that the
poet was well acquainted with the scientific debates of his time.
Harveys estimation of Spensers capacities cannot be accepted uncritically. Harvey was extraordinarily fluent in scientific
debates. His marginalia reveal his familiarity with significant scientists of the period.8 Spensers grasp of astronomy perhaps fell
short of Harveys standards, but Harvey likely had high expectations. Spensers Epithalamion and Fowre Hymnes both testify to
the poets knowledge of traditional cosmology, while his learned
circle of acquaintances suggests a familiarity with early modern
astronomy as well. In addition to Harvey, Spenser knew Philip
Sidney and Walter Ralegh; these individuals in turn were well
acquainted with Englands leading scientists: John Dee, Thomas
Digges, and Thomas Harriot. Harriot acted as Raleghs geographer
in an expedition to Virginia in 1585, and Harriots writings from
that period demonstrate his growing interest in early modern
methods and technologies.9 Ralegh knew Dee, an eminent astronomer in Queen Elizabeths Court. Dee in turn had mentored
Digges, who played a critical role in disseminating the Copernican
hypothesis in England. By translating and publishing selections
of Copernicuss De Revolutionibus in his Prognostication Everlasting, Digges exposed English readers to arguments supporting a
heliocentric world.10 The work remained highly influential, with

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seven editions being published over the course of thirty years.11

Harvey owned a copy of the Prognostication, and his marginal
notes clearly express his admiration for the author.12
Spensers friends also knew the controversial philosophy of
Giordano Bruno, who not only endorsed the Copernican thesis
but also argued that the universe was infinite in extent. During
Brunos sojourn in England between 1583 and 1585, Harvey
attended one of Brunos Oxford lectures.13 Likewise, Ralegh met
Bruno while the latter lodged with the French ambassador.14
Sidney was likely a patron of Bruno, given that the Nolans De
Gli Eroici Furori is dedicated to Sidney.15 Spenser, however, could
not have read Brunos dialogues, which, though published in
England, were composed in Italian; nonetheless, the poet likely
heard of Brunos revolutionary theories, as Bruno was the sort
of extravagant personality who generates controversy and gossip.16 Since Spensers circle included patrons and admirers of
prominent scientific figures, he likely encountered discussions
not only of Brunos infinite world, but also of Tycho Brahes new
star and Diggess translation of Copernicus.
Johnsons disappointment in Mutabilitie is shaped by his perspective as a historian of science. Johnson perhaps would have
preferred that Spenser had incorporated scientific content into
his text, just as John Donne had embellished his First Anniversary with magnetic theory, or as Milton had invited his reader
to gaze through Galileos telescope in Paradise Lost.17 However,
Johnson underestimated a crucial observation made by Mutabilitie: it detects an epistemic crisis in cultural certainties.18 As
a meditation on decay and disorder, Mutabilitie anticipates the
theme of Donnes First Anniversary, composed perhaps a decade
later.19 Mutabilities contention that
the Earth (great mother of vs all)
That only seems unmovd and permanent,
And unto Mutability not thrall;
Yet is she changd in part, and eeke in general
(7.7.17.69)
resonates with Donnes lament:
[N]ew Philosophy calls all in doubt,
..........................
The Sun is lost, and thearth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it.20

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

Mutabilities challenge signals an eroding confidence in the finite

geocentric cosmos and its metaphysics of rational order.
Mutabilitie is often interpreted in Boethian-Chaucerian
terms as a synonym for inconstancy, such as occurs in the decay
of matter or the fickleness of fortune.21 In Boethiuss philosophy,
such episodic outbursts of disorder are mitigated and contained
within a rational and beneficent metaphysics. However, in Spensers verse, Mutabilities disruptive force represents more than a
momentary occasion of disorder; it signifies the subversive interrogation of that same metaphysical structure. Spenser allegorically
explores the unpredictable and revolutionary implications of the
new science through Mutabilities insurrection, which transforms
the heavens from a recognized hierarchy into an undifferentiated space of uncertainty and debate. She challenges the very
foundations of the traditional cosmos, pointing to ways in which
its structure is undermined by the Copernican paradigm. The
same subversive impulse also motivates the so-called Faunus
episode (7.6.42.153.9) in which the curious satyr of that name
spies upon the naked Diana and is punished. Faunuss Diana
anticipates the allegorical goddess Nature of canto 7: the formers
nudity and humiliation prefigure the latters muffled person and
de-authorized voice. In both moments, Mutabilitie engages in a
self-reflective interrogation of allegorys promise to reveal transcendent certitude, either by stripping away the allegorical veil
or by subverting Natures adjudication. The final stanzas of canto
8, the unperfite canto (7.8.12), continue the same metatextual
interrogation, suggesting that Mutabilities challenge to the finite
world order has infiltrated the text itself: Mutabilitie forestalls its
own closure by introducing an appended two verses that ponder
once more the relentless force of change before the frail and distant
promise of Eternity. Through this self-reflective questioning, it
anticipates both the indeterminacy of the early modern universe
and the decline of allegory.22
Spenser outlines the traditional cosmology in his Fowre
Hymnes. He identifies the hierarchical assumption of Aristotles
metaphysics when he states that every thing doth upward tend,
/ And further is from earth, so still more cleare / And faire.23
The earth occupies the heavy corruptible center of the world
system, while the heavenly bodies are extended in a sequence of
ever increasing perfections to the worlds physical perimeter. Corruptible matter is contained within the sublunary spherethat
is, below the moons orbit, at the universal center. The first hymn
of the collection describes earths material corruptibility through

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the four elements, whose contending contraries [t]hreat[en]

confusion and decay.24 In contrast, the celestial region is a more
perfect realm composed of unchanging, incorruptible ether.25
The fourth hymn enters into this celestial-spiritual space, articulating the sequence of planetary spheres, the sphere of fixed
stars, which forms the universal perimeter, and the Prime mover,
who activates the starry sphere: in his mightie compasse doth
comprize, / And carrie all the rest with him around (Heavenly
Beautie, lines 734). The Prime mover exists at the summit (or
circumference) of this universe, as its most complete expression
of goodness. From this privileged vantage point, Spenser as the
philosopher-poet glimpses a panoptic view of the world system
and an ecstatic vision of divine mystery.
Mutabilities attempt to annex the moon and the heavens
represents a direct challenge to the cosmos described in the Four
Hymnes. Mutabilities violent ascent forms a striking contrast
with the contemplative register of these Neo-Platonic hymns,
in which the mind figuratively takes flight by abstracting itself
from corporeal concerns. Mutabilitie is an intensely physical and
forceful presence. She climbs to the moon, threatens the goddess Cynthia, and then forcibly throws the lunar regent from her
throne. Like the prime matter described in An Hymne in Honour
of Love that [t]hreat[ens] confusion and decay, Mutabilitie is
an agent of destruction, bringing violence, death, and corruption
(7.6.16). Furthermore, Mutabilitie descends from an ancient line
and identifies only with her maternal family; both her age and
gender recall Platos description of matter (7.6.2.2 and 7.6.26.4
5).26 Her material nature, her capacity to bring corruption, and
her feminine identity all suggest her conceptual association with
sublunar matter.
As a representation of material substance, Mutabilities invasion of the celestial spheres suggests one of the ways that early
modern science interrogated the Aristotelian world system. Several
sixteenth-century discoveries suggested that the celestial region
was not impervious to corruption and change, thus challenging
Aristotles distinction between celestial and terrestrial physics. Fittingly, Mutabilitie initially confronts the sphere of the moon, which
forms the border separating terrestrial matter and incorruptible
ether. Having annexed the sublunary border, she subsequently
challenges Jove, arguing that she deserves to rule the celestial
realm in addition to the earth, since heavenly bodies are also
subjected to change. Mercurys fear that Chaos broken had his
chaine signals that change is no longer limited to the sublunary
realm but has become the condition of the universe (7.6.15.6).

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

Copernicus was among the first to challenge Aristotles hierarchical division of terrestrial and celestial matter. His heliocentric
world model considerably raised the status of earth, transforming it from the cosmic pit of decay into another planet and thus
metaphysically akin to other heavenly bodies. Such a transformation inevitably raised questions about the incorruptibility of
the heavens. If earth were comparable to other heavenly bodies,
then perhaps these bodies were also material and corruptible.27
Two events in the late sixteenth century further weakened arguments for celestial perfection. In 1572 a supernova appeared in
the European skies. Astronomers of the time, such as Brahe,
Digges, and Dee, assumed that a new star had formed. In doing
so, they conceded the possibility of celestial generation. Likewise,
a comet sighting in 1577 offered further evidence that heavenly
bodies were corruptible. Brahe had previously followed Aristotle in
believing that comets must travel beneath the moons orbit, since
the heavens were incorruptible. However, when Brahe observed
and measured the comets path, he determined its position to be
near the planet Venus; thus he allowed that irregular motion and
corruption were possible in the celestial region.28 These observed
examples of heavenly change suggested that terrestrial and celestial substances were similar, if not identical, and that the same
laws of force and motion governed both spheres. Mutabilities
infiltration of the heavens suggests the way in which heavenly
ether was terrestrialized by sixteenth-century science.
Mutabilities interrogation of the terrestrial-celestial stratification forms part of a broader challenge to Aristotelian structures,
the extent of which becomes clearer in the judicial proceedings
between Mutabilitie and Jove staged in canto 7. In order to establish her case for ruling both earth and the heavens, Mutabilitie identifies evidence of change in the sublunary and celestial
regions. She begins with earth, drawing attention to fluctuations
in the four elements; she then identifies seasonal and diurnal
change caused by the rotation of celestial bodies (7.7.1826 and
7.7.2844). At first glance, the terms of her argument appear
conventional and medieval. The characters account of the four
elements recalls An Hymne in Honour of Love and relies upon
Aristotelian physics. Her examples of natural decay through
seasons and days fail to provoke anxiety when one considers
that each instance of decline implicitly anticipates regeneration:
spring renewal succeeds winter death, just as day succeeds night.
Her argument begins to resemble a Book of Hours or a liturgical
procession as circular patterns of renewing recurrence emerge.

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79

Recognizing this medieval trope, Sherman Hawkins argues that

Mutabilities arguments are self-defeating. Her accounts of physical change engage the Boethian and Aristotelian frameworks that
philosophically neutralize her threat.29
In order to detect Mutabilities early modern anxiety, one
needs to look past the medieval terms of her argument and understand her message of paradigmatic decay.30 Even though she
uses Aristotelian language, Mutabilitie challenges the authority
of that same paradigm by identifying its structural weaknesses.
When she points to change in natural phenomena, she does not
simply refer to examples of physical change; she anticipates the
necessary reformulation of scientific theory to account for these
physical changes. In drawing attention to the motion of the terrestrial elements, the succession of seasons and days, and the
celestial movements measuring these times, she identifies natural
processes that early modern science will redefine throughout the
seventeenth century. Though Mutabilities scientific vocabulary
is not early modern, it must be remembered that Spenser is
thinking through the implications of an emergent science. The
consequences of the Copernican hypothesis were still unrealized
in the 1590s: Francis Bacon had not yet formulated the inductive method; Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton had not drafted
their laws of motion. What is significant is Spensers intuition that
accounts of time and material change will need to be radically
reformulated in the wake of the Copernican paradigm.
To illustrate the intuitive prescience of Mutabilities challenges, it will be helpful to consider the ways in which Copernican
science reconfigured elemental and planetary change. Mutabilities
account of the four elements relies upon Aristotles physics. She
identifies two kinds of change in the elements: they move from
place to place, and they often change [i]nto themselues, and lose
their natiue mights (7.7.20.3 and 7.7.25.5). In Aristotelian terms,
these instances represent locomotion, or change with respect to
place, and substantial change, or transformation. In locomotion,
each element moves by a natural inclination toward its proper
place, either upward or downward. Earth and water are heavy,
tending downward to earth; fire and air naturally move upward
to the celestial region. This account of motion depends heavily
upon a finite world of determinate places, where the celestial
sphere represents absolute up and the earth, absolute down.31
The second kind of changethe transformation of elements into
each otheris related to locomotion, since the potential for one
element to become another element is the potential to be moved

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

to a different place of natural rest. For instance, water has the

potential to become air, and when water is made lighter, this potential is actualized.32 In short, Aristotles account of elemental
movement and change depends upon a geocentric cosmos, in
which up and down are determined places naturally recognized
by the elements themselves.
The Copernican displacement of the earth robbed the Aristotelian universe of its stable center and challenged the premise
that place or motion could be defined in absolute terms. Having
argued for the earths axial rotation, Copernicus needed to explain both why it is that we do not directly perceive the earths
rotations, and also why elements would appear to move rectilinearly even though they are part of a spinning earth. Copernicus
argued that any account of these phenomena must recognize that
our perceptions are distorted by the movement of the planet we
inhabit. He appealed to the example of a passenger on a moving
ship, explaining that for passengers, the landscape appears to be
moving, while objects in the ship appear stationary; nonetheless,
the passengers know the opposite to be the case. So too, we do not
perceive the earths circular motion; nor do we perceive the elements moving circularly as they travel with the earths rotation.33
Despite the incredulity of opponents, Copernicuss attention to the
limitations of perspective and to the provisional status of measurement proved to have an enduring legacy. Because the universe
lacks a place of absolute rest, the measurement of motion must
be qualified by the recognition that the observer him-/herself is
in motion, being situated on a rotating planet. By challenging the
determinate place of the Aristotelian world, Copernicus fostered
the notion of relative space in an immeasurable cosmos.34
After describing elemental change, Mutabilitie turns her attention to the passage of days and seasons caused by the celestial
rotations. In a geocentric world, earths seasonal variation was
considered to be one of many kinds of planetary influence, while
the days pattern was caused by the rotation of the sphere of fixed
stars. Aristotles hierarchical assumption of celestial superiority
is clearly illustrated in the significance he ascribes to each of
these heavenly movements. The diurnal rotation of the sphere
of fixed stars served as the universal marker of time, measuring
the twenty-four hour day shared by the earth and the planets
alike.35 Seasonal change was understood as planetary power exerting controlling influence over terrestrial matter, since Aristotle
considered the sun to be a planet. Aristotle pointed to the suns
power over seasonal change and vegetable growth to argue that

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81

other planets exercise comparable influences over the earth. While

the suns influence effectively illustrated planetary power, Aristotle more likely argued for celestial influence because it accorded
with his hierarchical assumptions: the elevated position of the
heavenly bodies must translate into power over lower terrestrial
bodies. As Edward Grant explains, for Aristotles universe [i]t
was fitting and proper that what is more noble and more perfect
should influence and guide what is less noble and less perfect.36
Copernicus redefined the operation of seasons and days, arguing that seasonal variation is caused by the earths orbit around
the sun, and that the alternation of night and day is caused by
earths axial rotation. By locating the cause of daily change with
terrestrial motion, Copernicus displaced Aristotles Prime mover
and the sphere of fixed stars, rendering their operations superfluous. This displacement represents at once the most explosive
threat to the traditional cosmos and the greatest achievement of
the Copernican system. Though existing beyond the circumference
of fixed stars, the Prime mover occupied the metaphysical heart
of the geocentric cosmos. Possessing infinite intensive power, the
Prime mover not only moved the sphere of fixed stars, the largest
and fastest orb in the universe, but also imparted motive force to
the intelligences directing each planetary sphere. Noting the Prime
movers power, scholastic commentators believed that it reflected
divine omnipotence.37 Thus, the starry sphere and the Prime mover
not only represented the summit of the Aristotelian cosmos, as
its ultimate expression of celestial perfection and superiority, but
also gestured toward the empyrean, the Christian heaven added
to accommodate biblical revelation. To remove this final perimeter
would not only rupture the finite cosmos of determinate place,
but also raise questions about Gods place in the universe.
Having transformed the sphere of fixed stars into a stationary and functionless feature, Copernicus had redefined time in
relative terms, reducing the universal significance of a day to an
experience confined to earth, generated by its localized turnings.
Since the starry sphere had become extraneous in the new world
model, later thinkers, such as Digges and Bruno, would extend
or remove this physical perimeter, representing the universe as
limitless. Though Copernicus did not argue that the world was
infinite, he allowed as much by claiming that its boundaries were
unknowable. By displacing the Prime mover, Copernicus had extracted the governing centerpiece of Aristotles heavens, thereby
dismantling a universe of graded perfections and opening the
possibility of an indeterminate universe of relative time and space.

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

The same conflict of assumptionsbetween Aristotelian notions of determinate hierarchy and early modern notions of relative
spaceis played out in the debate between Jove and Mutabilitie.
Jove, as king of the planets, endorses the hierarchical Aristotelian
universe in which the more noble and perfect celestial bodies exert
power over the mutable matter of earth. Mutabilitie challenges
the hierarchical assumption of celestial superiority by claiming
that terrestrial and celestial substances are alike, being equally
subjected to alteration. In an attempt to diffuse Mutabilities arguments for universal change, Jupiter invokes arguments supporting
celestial superiority to reassert his dominant position:
[W]ho is it (to me tell)
That Time himselfe doth moue and still compell
To keepe his course? Is not that namely wee
Which poure that vertue from our heauenly cell,
That moues them all, and makes them changed be?
So them we gods doe rule, and in them also thee.
(7.7.48.49)
Jupiter slightly overstates his planetary powers. With respect to
seasonal change, the planets do poure virtuethat is to say
exert powerover the earth. But he exaggerates the planets
power over time, which, as noted earlier, is, in fact, measured out
by the diurnal rotation of the sphere of fixed stars. Mutabilitie
responds by correcting his exaggerated claims. She articulates the
traditional order of planets leading to the sphere of fixed stars,
reminding Jove that even within an Aristotelian paradigm, his
planetary movements are governed and contained by this final
starry sphere. Likewise, she is skeptical of planetary influence,
saying that she can not be persuaded to believe in an unseen
secret powre (7.7.49.4). She warns Jove that the Aristotelian
structure upon which he bases his superiority will continue to be
questioned by early modern discoveries: Yet what if I can proue,
that euen yee / Your selues are likewise changd, and subiect vnto
mee? (7.7.49.89). She claims that even the stable marker of the
fixed stars will be overturned by wizards of the new science:
Onely the starrie skie doth still remaine:
Yet do the Starres and Signes therein still moue,
And euen it self is movd, as wizards saine.
But all that moueth doth mutation loue.
(7.7.55.58)

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83

Significantly, the climax of Mutabilities argument coincides

with her challenge to the sphere of fixed stars, whose mou[ing]
or removal she provocatively suggests. To claim that the sphere
of fixed stars is moved accords with Aristotles metaphysics; however, the claim assumes revolutionary force when one considers
that Bruno had visited England a decade earlier arguing that the
universe is absolutely infinite without defining parameters. Mutabilities anti-Aristotelian and antiauthoritarian position shares
much with Brunos philosophy. Bruno argued that Aristotles
universe of hierarchical perfections was an artificial construction;
he collapsed the distinction between terrestrial and celestial matter, advancing instead a homogenous universe of infinite space.
Denying the existence of a heavenly empyrean, Bruno argued that
the divine presence extended throughout nature.38 Refusing to
accept an enclosed world of defining structures, he believed that
an infinite universe would emancipate the human spirit, freeing
it from limitation and constraint.39 Brunos philosophy challenged
religious orthodoxy and political power, making him a celebrity of
his time and eventually a martyr for his beliefs.40 When Mutabilitie
suggests the rupturing of the starry perimeter, she introduces the
Brunian notion of a limitless universea universe in which time
and motion are measured in relative terms and in which a place
of absolute authority is absent.
Perhaps it is this final challenge to authority, or the culmination of such challenges, that serves to undermine Natures
adjudication, making her voice unexpectedly weak. Natures
reticent demeanor at the end of canto 8 forms a surprising contrast with her confident introduction. Early in canto 7, Nature is
identified as a medieval arbitrator lifted from the texts of Chaucer
and Alan of Lille, thus suggesting her Aristotelian bias for order.
In anticipation of her presence, Natures Sergeant, Order, sets
about arranging the assembled creatures into taxonomies. In
medieval texts, Nature is almost invariably accompanied by Venus
and Genius, who prefer to stir sexual desire in creatures, not to
classify them.41 Spensers Nature is introduced as an exacting
perfectionist. And yet, her judgment does not impose limits on
Mutabilitie. Nature attempts to counter Mutabilities argument
with Aristotelian teleology, claiming that things in nature aim to
complete and perfect their being. This belief in final, perfecting
causes was central to Aristotles natural science, cosmology, and
ethics.42 However satisfying such an answer was to Aristotle or
Boethius, it fails to address Mutabilities message that the Aristotelian order itself will be overturned as early modern science

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

redefines causality.43 The brevity of Natures adjudication and

the hastiness of her departure do not inspire confidence in her
authority, in part because the adjudication is inconclusive and
unconvincing, as scholars have noted.44
With the verdict pronounced, the reader expects closure;
however, Mutabilitie frustrates this expectation by reviewing
both perspectives yet again in an appended eighth canto, aptly
called the unperfite. The title of this unfinished work implicitly
subverts Natures teleological ruling that all things work to complete themselves, since Mutabilitie itself undoes its completion.
Much like the Aristotelian cosmos, whose dismantled perimeter
opens into indeterminate space, the debate of Mutabilitie is extended without determined resolution. Two stanzas weigh each
perspective yet again, forming a miniature dialogue between two
world systems as they contrast the uncertain, imperfect world of
Mutabilitie with the hierarchical world grounded on pillours of
Eternity (7.8.2.4).45 Thus, Mutabilities indeterminateness has
infiltrated not only Joves heaven, but even the poetic properties
of the text, as closure is disrupted and absolutist answers interrogated.46 This closure-resisting canto, the unperfite, shares
a conceptual kinship with the infinite. Infinity connotes incompletion, and its Latin root finis can signify either limit or
perfection. Thus the infinite can refer to what is limitless, such
as an infinite universe, or what is indefinite, such as an imperfect
canto.47 By resisting conclusions and accommodating competing
perspectives, this final canto appropriates the relativistic features
of the early modern cosmos. Infinite space is indeterminate. In
such a universe, time and motion are not absolute terms of measurement but are reckoned in relation to a planets rotation. An
infinite world can only be charted through a dialogue of perspectives, each of which contributes understanding, neither of which
is authoritative. Mutabilitie ends with such a dialogue.
This indeterminate poetics of multiple vanishing points signals a departure not only from the traditional cosmos, but from
the allegorical genre that actively sustains its hierarchical and
idealistic assumptions. As Gordon Teskey notes, allegory points
toward a transcendent singularity of meaning, which operates
as does the vanishing point in a linear perspective: it is never
visible itself, but everything that is visible directs the eye toward
it.48 So too, in medieval metaphysics, the phenomena of motion,
change, and time are explained as palpable manifestations of the
Prime movers ultimate power, which is otherwise imperceptible.
After Mutabilitie claims that change has disrupted the pillars of

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85

the Aristotelian cosmos (namely, celestial superiority, determinate

space, a uniform measure of universal time, the Prime mover,
and teleological causation) Mutabilitie cannot sustain confidence
in its transcendent center. Thus the eighth canto, paralyzed by
ambivalence and ambiguity, subverts the allegorical orientation
toward poetic ecstasy and totalizing answers. Mutabilities challenge signals the decline of both a metaphysical system and a
symbolic mode.49
Mutabilitie tells us that Spenser, contrary to the opinion that
pervades the critical discourse, was attuned to the debates shaping sixteenth-century scientific discourse and, indeed, sensitively
appreciative of their implications. Through the voice of Mutabilitie,
he considers the ways in which early modern astronomy challenged Aristotelian hierarchies and opened up a homogenous
universe of measureless space. He enters the ambiguity of an
indeterminate, post-Copernican, post-Brunian universe, where
empty spaces defuse transcendent aspirations and elude closure.
NOTES
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Renaissance
Society of America in March 2011. Thanks are due to Carol V. Kaske and
Lee Piepho for their enriching and helpful commentary.
1
For Spensers medievalisms, see Judith H. Anderson, Reading the Allegorical Intertext: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton (New York: Fordham
Univ. Press, 2008), pp. 1153; Glenn A. Steinberg, Spensers Shepheardes
Calendar and the Elizabethan Reception of Chaucer, ELH 35, 1 (Winter 2005):
3151; and John Watkins, Polemic and Nostalgia: Medieval Crosscurrents in
Spensers Allegory of Pride, SSt 18 (2003): 4157. Exceptions include Russell J. Meyer, Fixt in Heauens Hight: Spenser, Astronomy and the Date of
the Cantos of Mutabilitie, SSt 4 (1983): 11529; and Gerard Passannante,
The Art of Reading Earthquakes: On Harveys Wit, Ramuss Method, and
the Renaissance of Lucretius, RenQ 61, 3 (Fall 2008): 792832.
2
Spenser, Book VII: Two Cantos of Mutabilitie, in The Faerie Queene, ed.
A. C. Hamilton (New York: Longman, 1977) pp. 71435. All subsequent references to The Faerie Queene will be to this edition and noted parenthetically
by book, canto, stanza, and line number. Henceforth, further references to
the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie will be termed Mutabilitie for consistency.
3
Gabriel Harvey, Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Stratford-upon-Avon:
Shakespeare Head Press, 1913), p. 162, qtd. in Spenser: The Critical Heritage,
ed. R. M. Cummings (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), p. 50. The original
Latin reads: Saepe miratus sum, Chaucerum, et Lidgatum tantos fuisse in
diebus illis astronomos. Hodiernos poetas tam esse ignaros astronomiae:
praeter Buclaeum, Astrophilum, Blagravum: alios perpaucos, Uraniae filios.
Pudet ipse Spenserum, etsi Sphaerae, astrolabijque non plane ignarum; suae
in astronomicis Canonibus, tabulis, instrumentisque imperitae (p. 50n1).

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

Francis R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A

Study of the English Scientific Writings from 1500 to 1645 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1937), p. 194.
5
Johnson, p. 195n81.
6
Robert Ellrodt, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (Geneva: Librairie
E. Droz, 1960), p. 65.
7
Harry Berger Jr., The Spenserian Dynamics, in Revisionary Play: Studies in the Spenserian Dynamics (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: Univ. of
California Press, 1988), pp. 1935, 23, emphasis added.
8
Johnson, p. 191; and Virginia F. Stern, Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library (Oxford, London, and New York: Clarendon Press, 1979),
pp. 16570.
9
John W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: A Biography (Oxford, London, and
New York: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 14950.
10
See Lynn Holt, Rational Magic: Thomas Digges Sixteenth-Century
Defense of Copernicanism, The Modern Schoolman 79, 1 (November 2001):
2340, 33.
11
For Diggess influential role in bringing Copernican science to England,
see Johnson, pp. 1619; and John L. Russell, The Copernican System in
Great Britain, in The Reception of Copernicus Heliocentric Theory, ed. Jerzy
Dobrzycki (Dordrecht NL and Boston: Reidel, 1972), pp. 189239, 1934.
12
Stern, p. 266.
13
Stern, pp. 734.
14
Raleigh Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (New York and London: Penguin,
2002), p. 119.
15
Giordana Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, trans. Paul Eugene Memmo Jr.
(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 59. See David FarleyHills, The Argomento of Brunos De Gli Eorici Furori and Sidneys Astrophil
and Stella, MLR 87, 1 (January 1992): 117.
16
Striking textual parallels between Brunos philosophy and Spensers
poetry have caused scholars to speculate about a possible influence. Apart
from the fact that Spensers friends had directly encountered Bruno, there
is little historical evidence to indicate that Spenser had read the Nolans
philosophy. For conjectures regarding Brunos influence, see Ronald B. Levinson, Spenser and Bruno, PMLA 43, 3 (September 1928): 67581; James
Nohrnberg, The Analogy of the Faerie Queene (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1976), pp. 469, 745, and 751; Douglas Brooks-Davies, The Mercurian
Monarch: Magical Politics from Spenser to Pope (Dover NH and Manchester UK:
Manchester Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 2942; Alex Barnes, Spensers Spherical Imagery in the Mutabilitie Cantos, Rinascimento 34 (1994): 37788; and
Louise Gilbert Freeman, Vision, Metamorphosis, and the Poetics of Allegory
in the Mutabilitie Cantos, SEL 45, 1 (Winter 2005): 6593.
17
See Angus Fletcher, Living Magnets, Paracelsian Corpes and the
Psychology of Grace in Donnes Religious Verse, ELH 72, 1 (Winter 2005):
122. See also Maura Brady, Galileo in Action: The Telescope in Paradise
Lost, MiltonS 44 (2005): 12952.
18
This epistemic crisis is more often read in political terms; see, for instance, Patricia Coughlan, The Local Context of Mutabilities Plea, IUR 26,
2 (AutumnWinter 1996): 32041; Andrew Hadfield, Spenser, Ireland, and
4

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87

Sixteenth-Century Political Theory, MLR 89, 1 (January 1994): 118; Syrithe

Pugh, Spenser, Ovid, and Political Myth Making: Mutabilitiess Challenge to
the Ideology of Power, in Spenser and Ovid (Aldershot UK and Burlington
VT: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 24677; and J. B. Lethbridge, Spensers Last Days:
Ireland, Career, Mutability, Allegory, in Edmund Spenser: New and Renewed
Directions, ed. Lethbridge (Madison and Teaneck NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 30236.
19
Mutabilitie was published in 1609, but the date of composition remains
uncertain. I follow Lethbridges view that it was written after the revolt at
Muenster in 1598.
20
John Donne, First Anniversary, in An Anatomie of the World, in The
Poems of John Donne, ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson, 2 vols. (Oxford, London,
and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), 1:23150, 237, lines 2058.
21
For Boethian interpretations of Mutabilitie, see Brents Stirling, The
Concluding Stanzas of Mutabilitie, SP 30, 2 (April 1933): 193204; Ellrodt,
pp. 689; Sherman Hawkins, Mutabilitie and the Cycle of Months, in Form
and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser, ed. William Nelson (New
York and London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 76102; and Alastair
Fowler, Spenser and the Numbers of Time (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1964), pp. 22733.
22
Gordon Teskey and Catherine Gimelli Martin each consider the interrelated interrogation of the medieval cosmos and allegory during the early
modern period. Teskey argues that Mutabilitie challenges the metaphysical
order and undermin[es] the metaphysical basis of allegorical expression
(Allegory and Violence [Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1996], p.
175). Martin reads Miltons Paradise Lost as a meta-allegorical epic, which
self-consciously revisits Christian allegory and the traditional world structure
(Introduction to The Ruins of Allegory: Paradise Lost and the Metamorphosis
of Epic Convention [Durham NC and London: Duke Univ. Press, 1998], pp.
130).
23
Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, in Spenser: Fowre Hymnes,
Epithalamion: A Study of Edmund Spensers Doctrine of Love, ed. Enid
Welsford (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), pp. 11927, lines 446. All subsequent
references to this text will be noted parenthetically by title and line number.
24
Spenser, An Hymne in Honour of Love, in Spenser: Fowre Hymnes,
Epithalamion: A Study of Edmund Spensers Doctrine of Love, pp. 93101,
line 82.
25
For ether as incorruptible, see Aristotle, On the Heavens I and II, ed.
Stuart Leggatt (Warminster UK: Aris and Phillips, 1995), bk. 1, chaps. 23,
pp. 519; and Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos,
12001687 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 195205.
26
For the material receptacle as feminine, see Timaeus 50D51B in
Platos Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato, trans. and ed. Francis MacDonald
Cornford, Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1957), pp. 1856; for its eternal nature, see Timaeus 52B, p. 192.
27
Grant, p. 205.
28
Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Fabric of the Heavens (London: Hutchinson, 1961), pp. 1849; Victor E. Thoren, The Comet of 1577
and Tycho Brahes System of the World, Archives Internationales d Histoire

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Spensers Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

des Sciences 29, 104 (JuneDecember 1979): 5367; and Grant, pp. 20410
and 2612.
29
Hawkins, pp. 969.
30
Berger makes a similar argument when he claims that the medieval
pageant of seasons is a conspicuous allusion designed to distance the procession as a medieval artifact; see his The Mutabilitie Cantos: Archaism and
Evolution in Retrospect, in Revisionary Play, pp. 24373, 268.
31
Helen S. Lang, The Order of Nature in Aristotles Physics: Place and the
Elements (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 1812.
32
Lang, p. 249; and Grant, pp. 1915.
33
Nicholas Copernicus, Nicholas Copernicus: On the Revolutions, trans.
Edward Rosen (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992),
bk. 1, chap. 8, pp. 167; and Grant, pp. 5506.
34
Karsten Harries, Infinity and Perspective (Cambridge MA and London:
MIT Press, 1991), pp. 339 and 1412.
35
Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dantes Comedy (Oxford, London,
and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005), p. 134.
36
Grant, p. 574; for the importance of the suns power in arguments
defending celestial causation, see Grant, pp. 5709.
37
For the powers of the Prime mover, see Grant, pp. 5424; for scholastic
interpretation, see Grant, pp. 519 and 644.
38
Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, ed. and trans. Arthur
D. Imerti (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 33 and 235.
39
Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, ed. and trans. Edward A. Gosselin
and Lawrence S. Lerner (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1977), p. 90.
40
Hilary Gatti notes Brunos antiauthoritarian message in the Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England (London: Routledge,
1989), pp. 179.
41
See Jane Chance Nitzsche, The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages (New York and London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 11536; and
Theresa Tinkle, Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sex, Hermeneutics, and English
Poetry (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 198210.
42
Lang, p. 274; and G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle
(New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 1212.
43
E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science
(Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1954), p. 29; and Steven Shapin, The Scientific
Revolution (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 30.
44
Kenneth Gross argues that Natures argument is too pat and her departure too hasty (Spenserian Poetics: Idolatry, Iconoclasm and Magic [Ithaca
and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985], pp. 2512); Nadine G. Grimm claims
that the weight of evidence favors Mutabilitie (Mutabilities Plea Before Dame
Natures Bar, Comitatus 17 [1986]: 2234, 22); Elizabeth Fowler observes
that Nature does not actually rule in favor of Jove (The Failure of Moral
Philosophy in the Work of Edmund Spenser, Representations 51 [Summer
1995]: 4776, 70); and Freeman argues that anxiety continues to pervade
Mutabilitie even after Natures verdict has been recorded (p. 66).
45
Scholars have more often interpreted this last stanza as the dying
prayer of a deeply sensitive and pious man (Judah L. Stampfer, The Cantos of Mutability: Spensers Last Testament of Faith, UTQ 21, 2 [January

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89

1952]: 14056, 152). In contrast, I am arguing that the two final stanzas of
the unperfite canto form an unresolved dialogue, reconsidering in turn a
mutable universe and an ordered one.
46
Spenser uses a kind of fallacy of imitative form, which is often found in
medieval and early modern texts: see, for example, Anne Middleton, William
Langlands Kynde Name, in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain,
13801530, ed. Lee Patterson (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: Univ. of
California Press, 1990), pp. 1582, 76; Georges Economou, Introduction to
William Langlands Piers Plowman: The C Version: A Verse Translation (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. xiiixxix, xix; V.A. Kolve,
Telling Images: Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative II (Stanford: Stanford
Univ. Press, 2009), p. 54; and Teskey, p. 73.
47
Aristotle associated infinity with imperfection (Physics, 206b.35
207a15, in Aristotle: Physics, trans. Philip H. Wicksteed and Francis M.
Cornford, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1980] 1:2535). Given this privative nuance, medieval theologians
were initially unwilling to describe God as infinite; see Leo Sweeney, Some
Mediaeval Opponents of Divine Infinity, MS 19 (1957): 23345.
48
Teskey, pp. 17 and 5.
49
For Boethian interpretations of Mutabilitie see n21 of this essay.