"The Shepheardes Calendar: October" by Edmund Spenser

 As a reflection upon the section of "October", I feel that there is a theme that runs throughout the  lines that would pertain to the justification of Edmund Spenser's worth as a poet.

He came from meager and simple means to acquire his education and has since become a renown poet, but was not taken seriously in the literary community of his era. Point in case was Sir Philip Sidney who wrote "The Defense of Poetry" which essentially stated that the English had not had a poet deemed worthy of influential status since Chaucer.

Chaucer, having written pastoral poetry such as "The Nun's Priest's Tale" from "The Canterbury Tales", was the initiating influence for Spenser's "The Shepheardes Calendar". The prod to write was the demoralizing views of the literary circles both in England and abroad.

The form of pastoral poetry in "The Shepheardes Calendar" mimicked Chaucer thus defending the poetry of Spenser's beloved country and  gives evidence of a personal nature weaved between the lines. The character Piers embodies the voice of those who have told Spenser that he needs to write aspiring toward the more affluent society and leave his own roots and style behind. This is in reference to Sidney's view that English poets of the then present era were "bastard poets" and "poet-apes,". Line 40 of "The Shepheardes Calendar: October" says, "Turn thee to those, that weld the awful crown." This is generally interpreted to mean that the character Cuddie is directed to turn from "...the rural routes to thee doe cleave". (Line 26)

Cuddie's stance is reflected well in lines 13-15 , "The dapper ditties, that I won't devise, To feede youthes fancie, and the flocking fry, Delighten much: what I bett for thy?" This could be interpreted to mean that writing to please the court and others is a futile exercise that would not honor the voice of the poet himself, thus producing a piece that is contrived expressly for the literal critics and not faithful to the process of creativity and muse as an influence for art.

"The Obedience of a Christian Man" by William Tyndale

In "The Obedience of a Christian Man", Tyndale goes to great lengths to compare the application literal word of the Bible to "proverbs, similitudes, riddles, or allegories......Borrowed of the Scripture to declare a text or conclusion of the Scripture more expressly, and to root it and grave it in the heart.". He says that both can be studied and applied in life equally as truth but only when you can cite and prove "with an open text, that which the allegory doth express.".

I feel that this statement has a direct correlation to the conflict of the Catholic and Protestant church during the Protestant reformation.  The main proclamation of the Protestant movement was that man could read and interpret scripture without the interference of or strict interpretation given from the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church stood by the practice of interpretation being delivered through the papacy. Man, in general, without the ordination of the Catholic Church, was incapable of reading the Bible and interpreting it. It had to be done through the priest, who was a cog of the greater machine of the Catholic Church and supremely controlled by the Pope.

In other words, Tyndale believed that the structured and inflexible interpretation of the Catholic Church was unnecessary to achieve salvation. Man could do this on his own and without the aid of the rigid, ritualistic, and hierarchical religion.

Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English was the act that  preceded "The Obedience of a Christian Man" and eventually ensured his demise, as ordered by King Henry VIII.  This is especially ironic when you take into consideration that just two years after Tyndale's death, Henry the VIII named "The Great Bible" (translated, in part, by Tyndale) as the Bible for the Church of England.