Much attention has been devoted to the importance of harmony as an organising principle in early modern conceptions of art and the universe, and to its influence on the literary production of the time. The opposing concept of discord, however, has only received limited critical consideration. This thesis offers a sustained exploration of this concept as a significant aesthetic principle in early modern culture, investigating its influence on English epic writing in particular. By way of introduction, the first chapter investigates how discord functioned as an effective expressive technique across the different arts—from music and poetry, to architecture and painting. I show that early modern theorists did not merely engage with classical ideas of variety and contrast, but viewed discord as a productive aesthetic tool in its own right. In the subsequent chapters of the thesis, I go on to demonstrate the prominence of this principle in early modern literature by way of four case studies: Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, William Davenant, and John Milton. The second chapter looks at Spenser’s Faerie Queene. I argue that Spenser was influenced by Tasso’s arguments regarding the importance of discord as a key aspect of epic form, which informs his Gerusalemme Liberata at the various levels of style, vocabulary, and narrative. I contend that this context is important for interpreting the acoustic moments of strife that recur stylistically and narratively throughout The Faerie Queene, revealing their theological and hermeneutic implications. The third chapter analyses Drayton’s Barons Warres and Poly- Olbion, showing how these works negotiate the discords of history by means of their form; I pay special attention to the role of typographic elements such as hyphens, brackets, and printed marginal notes in visually destabilising a harmonious reading of the text. The fourth chapter turns to Davenant’s Gondibert, where the forceful reconciliation of discordant elements becomes an expression of absolutist ideals, to which Hobbes gives theoretical grounding by comparing the poem to an anamorphic picture. This leads to a consideration of the early modern satirical responses prompted by the publication of this poem, which make a concerted effort to expose the limitations of Davenant’s poetic and political programme through a process of disharmonisation. Finally, the last chapter considers how Milton’s Paradise Lost engages with the use of dissonance in the musical discourses of the time. I show that Milton already employs linguistic and argumentative techniques reflecting seventeenth-century musical-rhetorical practices in his early polemical tracts, where he explores the power dynamics of discordant voices; this informs his treatment of the music and rhetoric of the devils in Paradise Lost, to which his own style provides a dynamic counterpoint.
discord, English literature, epic, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, William Davenant, John Milton, poetics
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