1) What kind of book does Spenser seem to think he is writing? Why? Does he write what he thinks he does?
2) We've spent quite a bit of time talking about heroes and whether or not they "develop." Does Redcrosse grow as a hero? If so, what does he learn? What are we to learn from him?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I apologize in advance for the fact that my post is not related to the outlined discussion questions. However, it is informed by our class discussions. I hope you will indulge my wandering.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of our discussion last week about the descriptions of the land laid waste in Johnson, and found some similar examples in The Faerie Queene. Throughout the first book, the natural world is personified: shown to suffer pain and endure destruction. For example, when Redcrosse Knight tears a branch from a tree to make a crown for Duessa, the tree – who we soon discover is actually Fradubio, a man who was transformed into a tree – bleeds and cries out: “He plucked a bough, out of whose rift there came / Small drops of gory blood that trickled down the same” (canto ii, 30). However, the most significant depiction of the destruction of the earth emerges in the collateral damage that the land receives during Arthur and Orgoglio’s battle. The giant tries to hit Arthur with his club, but instead ends up striking the earth:
So deepely dinted in the driven clay,
That three yardes deepe a furrow up did throw:
The sad earth wounded with so sore assay,
Did grone full grievous underneath the blow,
And trembling with strange feare, did like an earthquake show. (stanza 8)
The fact that the earth is both physically damaged and personified as a victim functions to not only demonstrate the giant’s tremendous strength, but also potentially provides a subtle critique of the adverse consequences that result from the excessive violence that knightly behavior demands. Of course, I have not developed this argument very fully but I was thinking about how the natural world is disciplined and punished by the knights in romance. (An example we examined last week is the poor lions George kills while they are sleeping with their heads resting in Sabra’s lap.)
2. Spenser introduces the Redcrosse Knight to us as a credulous figure, quick to judge situations by their appearance and not to perceive the danger of moral waywardness lurking behind reliance on human faculties alone. Thus, he is not only boastful in the face of the possible threat represented by the darkness of Errour’s cave – “Vertue gives herselfe light, through darknesse for to wade,” but he is also inclined towards avoiding the “straight and narrow” path out of the forest, which leads him to the predicament in the first place (9). Similarly, he is easily led astray by the tricks of Archimago and Duessa. Indeed, it is interesting to look at the primacy of the ocular in these episodes; with Archimago, “the eye of reason was with rage yblent” (24) while with Duessa, while he is supposed to be listening to her story, “More busying his quicke eies, her face to view, / Then his dull eares to heare what shee did tell” (31-2).
ReplyDeleteOf course, when he learns the errors of his ways (trusting his fallible human senses), his inclination (in both Cantos 9 and 10) is suicide. Una teaches him the way out both times, first by staying his dagger in Canto 9, and secondly by bringing him to the House of Holiness where he is to be taught to avoid “boasts of fleshly might, / And vaine assuraunce of mortality.” Most unforgivable is the way Redcrosse Knight has “ascribe[d] it to his skill, / That thorough grace hath gained victory” (152). So while it seems that the Knight has to go through this training before his final contest with the dragon, the way his triumph is described makes no reference to this due reverence, as Una responds first with religious piety – “God she praysd” – and then with fealty to Redcrosse’s mortal stregnth – “thankt her faithfull knight, / That had atchievde so great a conquest by his might” (191). I suspect King’s argument about the analogy of the Redcrosse Knight’s baptism may have some relevance here, but I haven’t determined exactly what that might be yet.
In my first year of undergrad, I took a second year survey course (Literature up to 1800) and wrote my final paper on Canto 1 of FQ, focusing on the words “Fully jolly knight he seemd” (Canto 1, stanza 1). As I recall, the essay focused on the role of “seeming,” where Redcrosse only appears as a knight, which is not enough. His seeming then, is susceptible to the guile of Archimago. At the time I wrote the essay, I did not realize that these same five words are used soon afterward to describe Archimago (“Full jolly knight he seemed” Canto 2, stanza 11). Of course the idea of appearances is central to the text and Spenser’s intended message appears to be a warning against deceit and faithlessness, upholding holiness (as he suggests in his letter). However, the equation of religious and physical love in the work (and in romance) makes his assertion of this idea in the text more confused, even a direct claim as in Canto 4, stanza 1.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time that Spenser appears to try to promote holiness, his text implies that faith is weak and susceptible. Una is especially troubling. Redcrosse’s need for growth is foreshadowed by words such as “seemd” and in his rash advance into error’s cave. His desire for purity is also overly violent, when he is tempted to slay (the false) Una. However, Una appearing as a figure of goodness, faith and reason, is just as easily deceived (along with her lion) by Archimago’s disguise as Redcrosse was earlier (Canto 3, stanza 26). I currently can see two ways of reading this, but I doubt either was what Spenser intended.
1) Una’s susceptibility could be due to her love for Redcrosse. In this sense, she is blinded by her passion, and deluding herself from her true faith and insight. If this is the case, there is no purely holy figure in the text.
2) Faith and holiness are intrinsically & necessarily weak and susceptible. Purity requires a kind of naiveté that is susceptible to evil because of its goodness. Suspicion or doubt would be a loss of holiness and, thus, it is impossible to escape evil and deception. While this might fit with a protestant view of the sinfulness of the world, it seems to suggest that evil only fails because it deceives itself (as with Error’s brood, or Archimago and Sansloy) rather than showing how to live a good & holy life.
1. Spenser thinks he is writing a corrective. He is trying to cleanse the Romance of its earlier (and by then, out of fashion) associations and to reshape it into a form that meets the needs of the new Protestant ethos. All of the traditional Romance conventions are proposed, refuted and reformulated into something new. Spenser's purged and purified Romance of the clearly Protestant hero battling the evils of Catholicism (among other things) can now be read for moral instruction by decent Elizabethans without fear of ridicule or reprisal.
ReplyDelete. . . at least that's what he thinks he doing. As time obscures some of the religious immediacy of the issues addressed by Spenser in the text, what is left for us today is a darn good Romance epic -- reformed or otherwise.
. . . even if it is a bit short on Johnsonian purple-prose for my liking!