Abstract
Centring on Spenser’s literary treatment of the butterfly in ‘Muiopotmos’ (1591), this chapter considers the valences of the parenthetical in order to posit a lepidopteran practice of reading parenthetically. The chapter begins by offering some historical context for Spenser’s and contemporaries’ representations of butterflies, in materials including Renaissance natural philosophy and imaginative literature of the sixteenth century, before turning to the parenthetical. A means of preserving that which is remarkable while simultaneously flagging its inconsequence, the parenthetical offers a kind of thematic hospitality, a willingness to shelter in a text that which could be, but is not, discarded. This model of parenthetical hospitality opens new interpretive possibilities when applied to ‘Muiopotmos’, itself a seeming burlesque of hospitality. A poem throughout which parenthetical remarks appear, and in which these parentheses are in fact integral to the meter, rhyme, and narrative content, ‘Muiopotmos’ foregrounds the parenthetical in ways that model a reading practice grounded in literary ecology.
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Notes
- 1.
My thanks to the participants of the Sixteenth Century Society Conference session on ‘Pedagogies of Hospitality’ (October 2021) and to the attendees of Stanford’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Workshop (May 2022) for their feedback on presentations developed into this essay. Special thanks to Sarah Higinbotham for generous and sustaining conversations about lepidoptera and hospitality.
- 2.
For more on Moffett, see Todd Borlik’s chapter in this volume. For an extended account of Moffett’s treatment of butterflies and moths in light of Spenser’s ‘Muiopotmos’ and other early modern texts, see Barrett (2023). For an additional reading of Moffett’s butterflies alongside Spenser’s ‘Muiopotmos’, see Brown (2002).
- 3.
- 4.
For instances of ‘butterfly’ as an insult, see, for example, the ‘Butterflye Miss’ of The Country Miss New Come in Fashion (1670), and the ‘Butterflye Courtier’ of The Careless Gallant (1674).
- 5.
For examples of works invested in the project of silkworm cultivation, see Serres (1607), Williams (1650).
- 6.
For more on Shakespeare’s use of butterflies, see Barrett (2016).
- 7.
My gratitude to Esther Richey, who pointed out to me the notable frequency with which parentheses appear early in ‘Cooke-ham’.
- 8.
For more on the advantages of ‘uncritical reading’ practices, see Warner (2004).
- 9.
My thanks to Kelly Stage, for having observed to me the near-but-not-quite closure of the circle.
- 10.
For ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’ in early modern contexts, see, for example, McColley (2007, 1–2 and passim).
- 11.
For more on ‘Muiopotmos’, its ambivalence about epic violence, and its interest in cultivating sympathy for Clarion in this moment of slaughter, see Rao (2019).
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Barrett, C. (2024). Spenser’s Parenthetical Butterflies. In: Stenner, R., Shinn, A. (eds) Edmund Spenser and Animal Life . Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42641-4_8
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