“The Death of the ‘New Poete’: Virgilian Ruin and Ciceronian Recollection in Spenser’sThe Shepheardes Calender”

Abstract

This essay explores Virgil's influence in Renaissance poetry through the literature's most common trope, that of ruin; specifically, it examines the complexity of Virgilian imitation in Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender through an exploration of its introduction by his anonymous first critic, E.K. Through the topos of ruin, this essay reconsiders Virgil's legacy in the Calender, suggesting that critics have underestimated Spenser's criticism of Virgil's authorial pattern. Rather than reconstructing Virgil's model of cultural transmission — that of ruin and repair—Spenser presents the Ciceronian art of memory as a competing model for the architecture of immortality, for building upon the ruins of the past.