An Ecofeminist Reading Of Amoretti By Edmund Spenser
Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”
“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
This paper will be adopting an Ecofeministic reading of the poem “Amoretti” by Marlowe. I used Transcendentalism to analyze The Revolutionist by Hemingway, Romanticism to analyze The Shepard to his love by Marlowe, and now ecocriticism for Sonnet 75: Amoretti by Spenser.
In literature, ecocriticism analyses the relationship between humans and the natural environment. It examines the presentation and analysis of environmental issues, cultural issues pertaining to the environment, and attitudes toward nature.
With the beginning of the environmental movement and the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, ecocriticism emerged in the 1960s, but its popularity grew substantially in the 1980s. The first wave of ecocriticism occurred in the 1980s, followed by the second in the 1990s.
The first wave highlighted nature writing as both a field of study and significant practice. It maintained the difference between humans and nature while emphasising nature’s significance and the need to advocate for it. People believed it was the role of the humanities and natural sciences to work together to raise awareness of environmental and climate challenges and to develop answers.
The second wave was built on the first, increasing the scope of the environmental movement. They questioned the differences between human and non-human, as well as nature and non-nature when redefining the term environment to cover both urban and natural places. Examining how the poorest and most oppressed elements of a population are disproportionately affected by climate change and environmental degradation spawned the eco-justice movement.
There are several types of ecocriticism, including pastoral, wilderness, and ecofeminism.
Ecofeminism examines the relationship between female dominance and male dominance of nature. It draws parallels between women and nature, which is frequently viewed as feminine, fertile, and male-dominated. Other aspects of environmental justice, such as racial environmental justice, are also included in ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is divided into two branches:
The first branch of ecofeminism holds that women are biologically, spiritually, and emotionally closer to nature than men. This branch is often referred to as radical ecofeminism because it opposes men’s dominance over women and nature.
The second branch of ecofeminism contends that neither men nor women are more likely to connect with nature.
The paper will tackle two themes that the Eco-feministic first branch adopted as a whole;
- The sense of control
- The refusal and radical behaviour
- Feminizing Nature
- The relationship between Nature and Man
We can trace the sense of control as we inspect the poem as a dialogue exchange between the poet and nature being reported by the poet themselves;
“said she,… The use of parenthesis in (quod I)”
The sense of control is not just the poem being reported but also wanting to immortalize and personalize Nature;
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;”
And the sense of control is also evident in disregarding Nature’s preference and making the choice for Nature to be eternalized;
“that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”
“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
Still, Nature shows a faint signs refusal and radical behavior;
“Vain man,”
As we track how Nature is feminized as a ‘she’;
“said she,… I wrote her name”
Finally, we track the troubled relationship between Nature and Man as a sea of waves of push and pull;
“Our love shall live, and later life renew… One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey… Vain man, said she,”
that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”
“Not so,”
In the end, it is evident that the paper personalized Nature as a ‘she’ and so did the speaker. The speaker imposed their unwavering connection to Nature by their determination to immortalize Nature. Even so, Nature was willing to accept the reality of endings. Maybe in a sense, Nature was suffering and such pursuit of the speaker only emotionally, since Nature is personalized here, pressures Nature further.
P. S. Antagonizing Nature Stance
Nature’s way of taking back what initially belonged to Nature. The poet refuses the death of their beloved and goes up against Nature antagonizing it in a way by using Nature itself to immortalize his beloved.
