Review

Reviewed Work(s): Short Time's Endless Monument. The Symbolism of the Numbers in
Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion by A. Kent Hieatt
Review by: Alastair Fowler
Source: The Review of English Studies, Vol. 12, No. 48 (Nov., 1961), pp. 417-419
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/512115
Accessed: 11-10-2018 18:29 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Review of English Studies

This content downloaded from 66.171.203.86 on Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:29:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEWS 417

failed to detect the typol

there should be so much
quence' (p. 79). Clear tha
'symbols' would be untrue
terms of typology that th
troversial waters. It woul
an area Miss Rosemond Tu
and sensitive exegesis with
and theological points of v
the modern reader sees, o
R. T. DAVIES

Short Time's Endless Monument. The Symbolism of the Numbers in

Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion. By A. KENT HIEATT. Pp. x+118. New
York: Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1960.
30s. net.
This slim volume constitutes an event of importance in Spenser scholarship.
Not only does it offer an entirely fresh interpretation of Epithalamion, but also
(though the author himself does not claim this) the possibility of a new approach
to Spenser's poetry as a whole. Until recently the criticism of Spenser mostly
concerned itself with fairly large literary units. The tacit assumption was that,
however accurate his allegory, however condensed and allusive his mythology,
nevertheless, in terms of the phrase, even of the stanza, Spenser's construction
was loose and uneconomical. He might (though this was doubtful) have written
the best cantos in the best order; but not the best words in the best order. Mr.
Hieatt's very original book is one of a number of contemporary studies that are
completely altering this older conception. For he is able to show-in my opinion
quite conclusively-that the minutiae of the poem are consummately ordered
in an intricate system of numerological symbolism. This is the main structural
principle; and no one ignorant of it is in a position to make pronouncements about
Epithalamion's formal qualities.
A number of other Elizabethan poets used numerological arrangements (I have
collected many examples in Peele, Drayton, and Jonson in particular); yet no
other seems to have hit upon Spenser's brilliant device, of using the numbers of
astronomy. This device makes possible a mimetic dramatization of astronomical
and temporal patterns at the formal level. It is as a total entity that Epithalamion
celebrates the cosmic renewal of life to which marriage makes its human contri-
bution. For, of the larger, cosmic movement, the poem's exterior structure pre-
sents an arithmological model-a microcosm with its own system of numerical
laws.
Mr. Hieatt begins by noticing what it is almost incredible that no one has
noticed before: namely that the 24 stanzas and 365 long lines of Epithalamion
represent numerically the measure of the day in hours and of the year in days.
The bearing of this pattern upon the problem of the poem's apparently irregular

This content downloaded from 66.171.203.86 on Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:29:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 418 REVIEWS

metrical scheme is not los

unique metrical form by
entirely succeeded. Now w
proportions of long and sh
as a matter of arithmetica
24 parts.
Given these initial observations, the discovery of subtlety after subtlety of
arrangement follows naturally, until with mounting excitement the reader forms
the impression that he is for the first time experiencing the poem substantially
as Spenser intended it. We see, for instance, the structural division of the 24
stanza-hours into hours of day and hours of night, signalized by a change in the
refrain from positive to negative forms at stanza 17: the stanza at which, in the
'narrative', night comes upon the day of Spenser's marriage. More exactly,
the transit from light to darkness is at 1. 300, 'Now night is come .. .', the last of
the group of long lines at the beginning of stanza 17. This line occurs exactly
I61 stanzas after the commencement of the poem. Now, as Mr. Hieatt is able to
show, at the latitude of southern Ireland, the place of Spenser's marriage, on 'the
longest day in all the yeare', the hours of daylight were also 16j. The short lines
appear to symbolize divisions of time, marking the graduation of the stanzas into
four quarter-hour groups of long lines; a precision of measurement characteristic
of the remarkable numerology of Epithalamion.
Many further subtleties are revealed, particularly in the Envoy, where indi-
vidual words are re-enlivened by Mr. Hieatt's ministrations, and come to exhibit
a weight and accuracy unsuspected before. Yet one hardly ever feels that the
symbolic arrangements are being invented. This is partly because at every turn
results are independently confirmed by the actual wording, or by some feature
of the imagery. Thus the hours do not merely appear as stanzas, but are also
prominent among the bride's attendants: 'fayre houres'
Which doe the seasons of the yeare allot,
And al that euer in this world is fayre
Doe make and still repayre. (11. Ioo-2)

Objectivity is also assured by Mr. Hieatt's method, which inspires confidence by

its lucidity and rigour. As is proper in an essay breaking new ground in such a
field, maximum allowance is made for the possibility that patterns may be the
result of mere coincidence. And at every stage Mr. Hieatt makes it quite clear
which patterns are being established as certain, and which only tentatively
suggested.
The only phase of the argument which is imperfectly worked out is that de-
scribing the system of paired images in the two halves of the poem. (Mr. Hieatt's
concluding section is an edition of the text, designed to display these correspon-
dences.) Some stanzas are matched convincingly (such as 9 and 2I, with their
moon-goddess images); but with others the comparison seems far-fetched.
Nevertheless, the pattern is established: a critical overhaul of this section would
add more instances of pairing than it subtracted. For instance, the parallel
between stanzas z and 14, which seems to Mr. Hieatt his weakest, seems stronger

This content downloaded from 66.171.203.86 on Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:29:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEWS 419

if we recall that the Bacch

sun-god.
Another instance where Mr. Hieatt's argument might be buttressed comes in
his demonstration that a prominent mention of the marriage-day occurs around
the 103rd long line. No accident, surely, that this day, St. Barnabas's Day, was
the 103rd of the year, if I March is reckoned to begin the year. But Mr. Hieatt
needlessly undermines this construction by a qualification: 'March I is not, of
course, conventionally speaking, the first day of the year, which for Elizabethans
was Lady Day, March 25.' In fact, when Spenser was writing, before the
Gregorian calendar reform was accepted in England, the beginning of the astro-
nomical year (the vernal equinox) was Io/Ii March, not 25 March. But a
separate tradition, of crucial importance for Mr. Hieatt's thesis, began the astro-
nomical year on I March; a practice which had the convenience of making the
intercalary day, 29 February, conclude the calendar.' At a number of other places
where Renaissance astronomy enters the argument it would have been instruc-
tive, in view of modern ignorance of the subject, if Mr. Hieatt had gone into a
little more detail.
These flaws do not in my view seriously detract from what represents a per-
manent contribution to Spenserian scholarship. Short Time's Endless Monument
should be read, not only by specialists, but by all those interested in extreme
poetic achievements. For this brilliant essay in literary investigation, itself
a critical tour de force, reveals Epithalamion to be an apex of Renaissance art, a
miracle of artistic unity, with a hidden complexity almost unknown in continental
poetry of the period. Its numerology is never merely ingenious or cryptic, but
the result of 'a pursuit of an integral meaning, integrally expressed, below the
surface of discourse'. ALASTAIR FOWLER

The Queen and the Poet. By WALTER OAKESHO

and Faber, 196o. 25s. net.
It has been given to the Rector of Lincoln to mak
discoveries than fall to the lot of most scholars. Th
of luck, but of the breadth of his interests and th
recognize the work of writers widely separated in ti
In his introduction Dr. Oakeshott recounts with ju
sort of story which will rejoice the heart of all bi
which enabled him in 1952 to identify a manuscript
sion since 1935, and which he was about to sell,
Raleigh's hand containing material for his History o
books in his library, and with a hitherto unknown
leaf. It is to be hoped that the intention to publish
speedily carried out.
The present book falls into two parts: the first e
I D. J. Price (ed.), The Equatorie of the Planetis (Camb
R. L. Poole, 'The beginning of the year in the Middle A

This content downloaded from 66.171.203.86 on Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:29:12 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms