Giving Ear to the Cries: Chasing Spenserian Voices in <i>The Shepheardes Calender</i>

This essay is an attempt to think through the implications of recent research on voice in the Renaissance by looking again at The Shepheardes Calender from the perspective of the sounds it makes and the tones of voice that it imitates. Using the couplet eclogues, in particular “Februarie” and “Maye,” as models of how Spenser seeks to suggest the dynamics and rhythms of actual speech, the essay considers formalist accounts of poetry’s relation to speech. It then considers “tone” as a contested critical term, reviewing approaches from a range of perspectives, with particular emphasis on recent work on the evidence of Renaissance vocality, alongside contrasting perspectives from poets as varied as Wordsworth, Rilke, and Levertov. The final portion of the essay considers in detail the forms of “October” as mimetic and rhetorical structures that provoke aural readings of these complaints, even as the Calender’s paratextual structures impose limits on their performance.