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Chapter OneVisualized Politics and the Praise of the Queen

The April Eclogue is purposely intended to the honor and praise of the QueenElizabeth. The main speakers are Hobbinol and Thenot, two shepherds. Hobbinol ismentioned greatly to have loved Colin. But Hobbinol is complaining Colin’s greatmisadventure in love. Spenser’s interest in the visual involves far more than simplyorganizing his poem as a sequence of masterful poetic images. The poem repeatedlyinvites a readily gaze, whether of its poetic mirrors and ekphrases, or to unveil itsallegories, or to see through appearances, or simply to visualize its evocative pictorialdescriptions.

A. Metaphors from Greek Mythologies inApril Eclogue
It is well known that Elizabeth I vowed her to a life of perpetual virginity, sheentered into a symbolic marriage with England as her husband. When Spenser ispraising the queen, he uses different visual metaphors which implicated her virginityand glory. The picture shows that Queen Elizabeth as queen of harmony is surroundedby musicians and placed directly under Taurus, which emphasis the queen is aloved-object and generator of concord within the realm. And Taurus was also understood to be the metamorphosed Isis, Dianan goddess of the Egypitans who wasimportant in the virginal cult of Elizabeth. The virginity of queen was used as apowerful political weapon all through her reign.Pan is the god of shepherds in the Greek mythology. As the daughter of Pan andSyrinx, Elizabeth’s grace is divine and immortal. Spenser alludes to the Queen accountthat Syrinx preserved her virginity when she flight from Pan, resulted in hertransformation into a reed bed. In this paradoxical rewriting of the classical myth,Syrinx fails to evade Pan. Indeed, she conceives of Elizabeth by means of aninsemination vaguely aligned with the virgin birth of Christ.
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B. The Light and White Color in April
Speaking pictures, perfect pictures best colors, the sight of the soul…the languageand principles of Sidneyan poetics are anchored in the endorsement of visual, andForrest G. Robinson makes the convincing case that it is the poet’s most urgent task torender philosophical truth visible through poetry and prose that minimize the gapbetween written word and pictorial idea. In Shepeardes Canlender, Spenser also useslight as an image to paint and describe the Queen. In the British mind white and lightmeans god, angel, happiness, and a symbol of purity in religion. In Elizabethan age, notonly Spenser uses silver as a metaphor to create his art work. In Marvell’s poetry, The Garden, the poet uses silver to symbolize the divine light and the eternal light. LiteraryCritics noticed that ‘silver’ is also related to the light of Divine Nous in Neo-Platonism.Plotinus compared the One to ‘light’ and the Divine Nous is to the ‘Sun’. Marvellregards the birds with silver wings as the soul which indicated that the soul had alreadyinvolved into the divine light and fly into it among the heaven.The first substance created by God is light, in conjunction with Christ’s words(Genesis1: 3-5): “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. And Godseparated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness hecalled Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day”. As this kindof corporeal light is created by God on the first day, according to Christ’s words, it canbe inferred from above tha