Title page of the first edition of Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595)
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (also known as Colin Clouts Come Home Again) is a pastoral poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser and published in 1595.[1] It has been the focus of little critical attention in comparison with the poet's other works such as The Faerie Queene, yet it has been called the "greatest pastoral eclogue in the English language".[2] In a tradition going back to Petrarch, the pastoral eclogue contains a dialogue between shepherds with a narrative or song as an inset, and which also can conceal allegories of a political or ecclesiastical nature.[2]
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe is an allegoricalpastoral based on the subject of Spenser's visit to London in 1591 and is written as a lightly veiled account of the trip. He wrote it after his return home to Ireland later that year. He dedicated the poem to Sir Walter Raleigh in partial payment for the "infinite debt" Spenser felt he owed him.[3] (Sir Walter Raleigh had visited him prior to his London trip, convincing him to go.) Spenser also sent Raleigh several versions of the poem between 1591 and 1595 when the poem was published.[3] In the poem, Colin Clout gives a description of the London visit; the poem is Spenser's most autobiographical and identifies a number of anonymous poets, the real life identities of whom have been the grist of speculation over time.[4]
Although Colin Clouts Come Home Againe is a pure pastoral poem, the poet, through the use of insets within narrations, is able to mock the limitations of the pastoral mode through poking fun at the use of ordinary words. While he intersperses "grim realities" into the pastoral text, he does so in a georgic (didactic) tone, achieving a rustic effect that is more realistic than the strictly pastoral mode; and then the poem rises to "an exalted vision of cosmic love" in a way that gives the poem a cultivated complexity that was unique to English literature at that time and which became a model for many later poets.[2]
Colin Clout (under the spelling Collyn Clout or Cloute) was previously the character named in the title of a poem by John Skelton, written before 1523.[5] He then turned up again later in John Gay's The Shepherd's Week in 1714.
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language.
The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I–III were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IV–VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 stanzas, it is one of the longest poems in the English language; it is also the work in which Spenser invented the verse form known as the Spenserian stanza. On a literal level, the poem follows several knights as a means to examine different virtues, and though the text is primarily an allegorical work, it can be read on several levels of allegory, including as praise of Queen Elizabeth I. In Spenser's "Letter of the Authors", he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices", and that the aim of publishing The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline".
Richard Barnfield was an English poet. His obscure though close relationship with William Shakespeare has long made him interesting to scholars. It has been suggested that he was the "rival poet" mentioned in Shakespeare's sonnets.
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale.
This article is a summary of the literary events and publications of 1595.
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.
Stephen Gosson was an English satirist.
Abraham Fraunce was an English poet.
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke was among the first Englishwomen to gain notice for her poetry and her literary patronage. By the age of 39, she was listed with her brother Philip Sidney and with Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare among the notable authors of the day in John Bodenham's verse miscellany Belvidere. Her play Antonius is widely seen as reviving interest in soliloquy based on classical models and as a likely source of Samuel Daniel's closet drama Cleopatra (1594) and of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1607). She was also known for translating Petrarch's "Triumph of Death", for the poetry anthology Triumphs, and above all for a lyrical, metrical translation of the Psalms.
The Shepheardes Calender was Edmund Spenser's first major poetic work, published in 1579. In emulation of Virgil's first work, the Eclogues, Spenser wrote this series of pastorals at the commencement of his career. However, Spenser's models were rather the Renaissance eclogues of Mantuanus. The title, like the entire work, is written using deliberately archaic spellings, in order to suggest a connection to medieval literature, and to Geoffrey Chaucer in particular. Spenser dedicated the poem to Philip Sidney. The poem introduces Colin Clout, a folk character originated by John Skelton, and depicts his life as a shepherd through the twelve months of the year. The Calender encompasses considerable formal innovations, anticipating the even more virtuosic Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, the classic pastoral romance by Sir Philip Sidney, with whom Spenser was acquainted. It is also remarkable for the extensive commentary or gloss included with the work in its first publication, ascribed to an "E.K." E.K. is an intelligent, very subtle, sometimes wrong, and often deeply ironic commentator, who is sometimes assumed to be an alias of Spenser himself. The term sarcasm (Sarcasmus) is first recorded in English in Spenser's poem (October).
Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, O.Carm was an Italian Carmelite reformer, humanist, and poet.
Corydon is a stock name for a herdsman in ancient Greek pastoral poems and fables, and in much later European literature.
The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing grief at a loss. This form of poetry has several key features, including the invocation of the Muse, expression of the shepherd's, or poet's, grief, praise of the deceased, a tirade against death, a detailing of the effects of this specific death upon nature, and eventually, the poet's simultaneous acceptance of death's inevitability and hope for immortality. Additional features sometimes found within pastoral elegies include a procession of mourners, satirical digressions about different topics stemming from the death, and symbolism through flowers, refrains, and rhetorical questions. The pastoral elegy is typically incredibly moving and in its most classic form, it concerns itself with simple, country figures. In ordinary pastoral poems, the shepherd is the poem's main character. In pastoral elegies, the deceased is often recast as a shepherd, despite what his role may have been in life. Further, after being recast as a shepherd, the deceased is often surrounded by classical mythology figures, such as nymphs, fauns, etc. Pastoral elegy is one of the forms of poems in Elizabethan poetry.
— From Sir John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax
Elizabeth Spencer, Baroness Hunsdon was an English noblewoman, scholar, and patron of the arts. She was the inspiration for Edmund Spenser's Muiopotmos, was commemorated in one of the poet's dedicatory sonnets to The Faerie Queene, and was represented as "Phyllis" in the latter's pastoral poem Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. She herself translated Petrarch. Her first husband was George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, grandson of Mary Boleyn, elder sister of Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I.
Alice Spencer, Countess of Derby was an English noblewoman from the Spencer family and noted patron of the arts. Poet Edmund Spenser represented her as "Amaryllis" in his eclogue Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595) and dedicated his poem The Teares of the Muses (1591) to her.
Sir John Spencer was an English nobleman, politician, knight, sheriff, landowner, and Member of Parliament. He was an early member of the Spencer family.
Lodowick Bryskett, was a poet, translator, diplomat and Irish official. He served as Special Ambassador from England to Tuscany in 1600-01.
Astrophel: A Pastorall Elegy upon the Death of the Most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney is a poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser. It is Spenser's tribute to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, who had died in 1586, and was dedicated "To the most beautiful and vertuous Ladie, the Countesse of Essex", Frances Walsingham, Sidney's widow.
Kilcolman Castle is a tower house located in County Cork, Ireland. It was formerly the residence of the poet Edmund Spenser.
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