Spenser as Secretary and the Emergence of the
Self
In an essay discussing Spenser's role as secretary -- as the keeper of
secrets for his employer -- and the insight that this grants into
understanding The Shepheardes Calender, Richard Rambuss writes
here of Angel Day's description of the secretary's closet:
"It is the place for writing, the place 'appropriate unto our owne
private studies,' for which 'we keepe the key our selves, and the use
thereof alone doe onelie appropriate unto our selves.' This secret
room -- and this secretive servant -- is, in Day's striking formulation,
the
space in which we 'doe solitarie and alone shut up our selves.' One
cannot help noticing Day's repeated invocation of the language of the
self here, as well as his registration of a formative relation between
writing, secrecy, and subjectivity: in the secretary's closet (among
other places in early modern culture) an interior, private subjectivity
begins to be scripted and secured. Here the self is coming to be formed
in and as its secrets" (Rambuss 321).
volume 2, issue 2
SN 202
