The Faerie Queene, Book 3, Cantos 1-6

Wow.

So this is the book on Chastity, ostensibly focusing on Britomart, who is held up as one of the two (after Gloriana) examples of Elizabeth. (Sorry! Belphoebe and Gloriana are the two that can be Elizabeth. It's an easy mistake to make. As I state below, Britomart's lineage does look forward to Elizabeth, implying a vertical (if not horizontal comparison.)The posited allegory, which recurs on occasion, is quite curious. One is stately power, and the other is knightly endeavor. More than that, one is stately power, and the other is the struggle of a maiden to reconcile herself to the fate of eventually finding love and starting a royal line. She hates Arthegall, her prophecied love, but cannot help but to love him, as well as the prophecied future of a royal line (which connects Brutus to Elizabeth).

In these cantos we see the fracture of the singular narrative, which had already seen a little tendency of fracturing beforehand (Book 2 Canto 3, when Braggadochio runs across Belphoebe, who cows him). Canto 1 offers the possibility of continuity, with Guyon, Arthur, the Palmer, and Britomartis meeting. Britomartis fights and defeats Guyon, who must be warned not to fight further by the Palmer. (Sometimes people lose - don't fight fate.) They ride together for some time, until they see a lady (Florimell) pursued by a foster (presumably a forester?). Arthur (and his squire Timaeus) and Guyon (and the Palmer) go off in pursuit, but Britomartis rides alone. She finds the Redcrosse Knight being defeated by six knights who serve Malecasta, the owner of a pretty castle, who scorns men who hold other lovers, or who don't see her. She defeats the men, and gains access to the castle, where after a feast and a lot of sexual tension (Malecasta crushes all over Britomartis), they go to bed. Malecasta goes to Britomartis's bed, who awakens and draws a sword on her. The six knights (representing progressive levels of lust) respond, Gardante lightly wounding B with an arrow. RCK and B go on.

In the next two cantos, we hear about Britomart's story, which largely involves her being raised in arms, stumbling across Merlin's mirror and seeing her lover in it, burning with love, being unsuccessfully cured by her nurse Glauce (including a weird and unsuccessful charm), them seeking Merlin who claims she should seek leach-craft, their insisting until he tells her the prophecy of her line to Elizabeth (including her own life), and their resolving to set out in search for him in Fairy land.

In Canto 4, we turn to Britomart riding (after complaining about her lost love in terms of a ship on a sea of sorrow), who encounters Marinell. They fight despite his warning, and she leaves him as a bloody pulp on the coast before riding off, wondering but thinking little of jewels speckled along the coast. His mother Cymoent comes, and we hear of her story and the story of the coast. Proteus had prophecied that he would have much ill of a woman, which she took to mean love. Eventually they find Marinell, and load him in their sea coach. He still has a pulse, and his wound is cleansed. They curse B, but she's immune to it. She and her nurse split, as they're pursued by Archimage and come to a crossing.

At this point, the narrative vein fractures. We turn to Timias, Arthur's squire, who has also been split from the others in a threeway division. He pursues Florimell, but gets lost in the night, and sees ghastly visions in the dark. In Canto 5, Arthur finds the Dwarf, who pursues Florimell. We learn that Florimell loves Marinell, who was charmed to not love her back. Meanwhile, T gets to the Foster, who with three others waylays the squire. He fights well, kills all three (in a scene with comparatively little blood but lots of beheading), but gradually bleeds out himself. Belphoebe comes up, tracking the blood of something she's hunting. She fins herbs for him, introduces self, and works to cure him. But he falls in love, wounded another way, and gradually succumbs to death in order to preserve her virtue. His blood dries.

In Canto 6, we learn of the origins of Belphoebe, who was conceived by Chrysogonee and sunbeams. Fearing dishonor though she knows she had none, she flees to the woods. Venus, seeking Cupid after a spat, wanders everywhere and finally to a forest where she sees Phoebe naked. Phoebe is scornful of this, but gradually softens in Venus's entreaties, and sends her nymphs to find Cupid in the woods. They find the children. One, for Phoebe, is named Belphoebe. The other, for Venus, is named Amoretta. The narrative then follows Amoretta to the garden of Adonis, where the tapestry in Canto 2 is finally completed - after Adonis died, he came here, where he lives eternally with Psyche and his child Pleasure. Old Genius keeps the door. Children are dressed by him in sin, and come in through the back door to be planted and purified (reincarnation of a sort). Amoretta is much loved, but loves only Scudamore. Then the narrative decides to turn back into Florimell.

Besides the formal shifting around, there are a few other threads. The prefaces of each canto (the first two or three stanzas) normally treat some abstract concern, much like the quatrain before summarizes the plot in an inadequate manner. In this case, most of these are either about the inadequacies of love or the passage of female valor or female ancient glory. The narrator really laments the loss of a tradition of martial women. This is especially clear in Canto 4, when he laments them in different ways depending on whether they're dead or merely lost. Canto 5 is also interesting in that it laments the kinds of love that can occur.

Blood is effusive in these passages, at least in parts, though the most intriguing place to be (besides Timaeus's wound in the thigh that opens as he fights, is closed by Belphoebe, and which opens another wound in his heart, which because he restrains himself from loving his blood gradually dries up) is with Marinell. He is left bleeding profusely, and when they find him, his blood is pretty cruddy. But they (his mother and her helpers) empty the wound of blood and then fill it with balm and nectar such as is good for mortals and gods. It's transfusion! Here again, to cure a wound that Belphoebe has caused, though this time neither knight nor mother know that it came from a man.

Happiness language has died down here, except for the strange proliferation of bowers of bliss. Venus has one!

The Faerie Queene, Book 1, Cantos 7-12

Today I read the conclusion of the first book.
Crazy. Crazy good. Again, the sense of it is sometimes, or even often, adopted from medieval romances with some epic embellishment from classical sources, but the expression of it is original. It's not often that Spenser falls back on stock phrases and the like that can be traced. The language, intentionally archaic, is quite lively. I'm thinking of the one stanza where the giant is jolted out of his complacency by Duessa's voice in the same way that a gunshot would catch someone's attention (13), but the way the gunshot is described, it's very aureate. It's the stanzaic equivalent of "boomstick," and yet so very evocative and vivid.

Anyway, trends I saw. There's a fight with a giant! Another fight, attempted, with Despair. And finally a fight with the dragon. In all of these, dismemberment and bleeding are quite prominent. Blood must flow. Blood must be on the ground. Blood. Blood. Blood. The fight with despair shows blood operating on a different register. The blood is now frozen in Treuisan as he tries to describe the fate of his friend Terwin, lured to killing himself with a rusty knife by Despaire. Indeed, the malady wrought by Despaire is one that seems to lie in the blood - the Redcrosse knight's doubt lies in the "troubled bloud" that sits in his face (IX.51). This blood in the next canto gets a cure - leeches and the like by Patience (23), and the drawing of blood in particular by Remorse (27). He also gets the blood letters in the bloody book held by Fidelia, and learns further about the bloody sacrifice through Charissa and the example of the City of God, Hierusalem (55). All this is in contrast to the dragon's blood in Canto 11, which is quite effusive, potentially poisonous, and black. Ridding the kingdom of Eden of this black blood is the ultimate task for the Redcrosse knight in this book, an exterior representation of his own purification. It also represents the boundaries between species of bodies. (I can't help thinking of Titus, where Aaron never bleeds. Could they prevent his bleeding in order to prevent seeing how red his blood is as well? By keeping him intact, his blood could be, well, black? It's a big stretch.) Finally, a brief note - compare the giant and the dragon. Both are huge, both bleed a lot, and both fall like mountains. Also, there's the fear of procreation with the dragon, which as noted with the lamia monster ... unnatural procreation is common here.

As I've mentioned, the turn in Canto 10 to the spiritual hospital run by Caelia is a little odd. It's the second time we enter an extended part where the author emphasizes through allegory a spiritual lesson (Canto 4 was the house of Pride.) It preserves many of the classical spiritual divisions, as the RCK is strengthened by the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity (in contrast to the four cardinal virtues, one of which, Temperance, structures the second Book). Faith involves a direct treatment of grace, justice, and free will. Hope involves treatment in the hospital of patience, and the aid of Amendment, Penance, Remorse, and Repentence. Then Love (Charissa), who has been absent due to her birthing a child (Jesus?), is helped by Mercy in instructing him in love and well-being. This then turns to the hermitae held by Contemplation, who talks about reaching a good end, and especially the city of God. Then the Redcrosse knight is revealed as St. George, which should be no surprise to its readers, but is to the knight, who inquires about why he has English blood, if he's Elfin? (He's an orphan.)

Ah, this reminds me. Two threads, one for now, one for later. The one for later - orphanage in these stories. The one for now - happiness. When Arthur has defeated the giant and he's talking with the Redcrosse knight (Canto 8, 9), there's mention of both the sureness of bliss and the unsureness of earthly happiness. This comes to a head when Despaire, in his stanzas, brings up as well the unsureness of earthly life as a reason for ending it soon, because as he puts it, longer life only increases one's sorrows and one's sins. Against this the hospital in Canto X works. It's the discourse on happiness and ends I find intriguing here, because I don't think that people have talked about it in such terms. It's not uncommon, sure, but I'm particularly sensitive to it given the work I've already done with Boethius in Chaucer. Oh, it'd be awesome if there were a tie between it and, say, Troilus and Criseyde.

Prince Arthur is worth some mention too. He's a Prince, before the point that he becomes a queen. He pursues the Faerie Queene as his love. He's valiant, and has a shield of diamond. When he and the Redcrosse knight trade gifts, he gives a bejeweled box that has drops of a healing liquor, and receives a Bible in golden letters. Again, all of these books circulating tempt me to focus on them too, especially the easy elision between a holy and a magic book demonstrated initially with Archimago.

Una as a guide. The way women guide actions here is quite interesting, especially the way that the manner of guidance is so easygoing. She is the one who tells him where to go, because he doesn't know. She is set by him in places to spectate while the battle goes on, and there's something important about her viewpoint. I don't know exactly what, but her spectatorship is required. For honor and worship? For telling that the tale is true? For encouragement? A little of all. I've written on this before in relation to the Tale of Sir Gareth, so I'll keep an eye on it. 

Otherwise, I'm keeping my eyes open. The book ends with RCK and Una married. RCK then leaves again, and Una stays in safety, which connects directly with the second book, where a captured Archimago (who tried to accuse RCK of being married to Fidessa/Duessa) escapes.

The Fairie Queene, preface materials and Cantos I-VI

There are times when the stretch towards allegory seems sincere. There are the two Cantos (4 and 5) that are focused on Pride. Pride is a palace that looks quite gaudy and impressive. It has high but thin walls, and an insecure foundation. Once let in (and the doorkeeper Malvenu keeps no one out), one is in the court of Queen Lucifera. Vanitie keeps the court, while the other six sins (idleness, gluttony, lechery, avarice, envy, and wrath) pull her coach. Each one has a three-stanza description, their bodies mirroring their sins in much the same way they do in the Purgatorio and the Inferno. Satan rides the beam of the coach, while Slowth rests in the mire nearby. It is decadent. It is destructive. We don't see the prisoners and the corpses around this court until, at the end of the next Canto, the Redcrosse Knight flees in fear for his life. He's bleeding, but he must flee anyway, out of fear that he will become one of the downtrodden rather than the victorious. (He has just beaten Sans ioy, the brother to Sans foy (who he defeated) and Sans loy (who tries to rape Una).

Yet there are parts of the story that thus far read as unintelligible. What is Archimago doing, except being a stereotypical villain? He appears to be a true hermit and religious type, but it turns out that the book around his belt is a magic book rather than a psalter. If this book is supposed to be about faith, is Archimago (and Duessa too) supposed to represent the failure or subversion of faith while maintaining the false appearance of virtue? Facade - that seems to be the most striking note in these parts. Three times now, Archimago has appeared in disguise. First indirectly, through his sprites, he feigned Una's disgrace. Then he dresses as the Redcrosse Knight to deceive Una, only to be discovered by Sans loy (who knows Archimago). Finally, as a pilgrim, he leads Una and Satyrane into a fight with Sans loy. Coupled with the castle of Pride, and Duessa/Fidessa, there's a lot of disguises going about.

There is also the direct faithlessness of the pagans, paynims, or the Sarazins (Saracens). Nothing direct about their religion - it seems like their faithlessness is enough. Sans foy, Sans loy, and Sans ioy. The first killed at the start. The second currently fleeing after Una, with Satyrane in pursuit. The third killed (and ambiguously healed?) in Pride's court by the Redcrosse Knight. They are large, but somewhat fair in description, even if they are also prone to excesses. They sound a lot like Cohen's giants. They are a physical threat to faith, and also to virtue.

What else? Duessa's descent into the underworld to obtain healing for Sans ioy is fairly interesting (Canto 5). There are tons of descriptive details, including the sinners that are found there. All of this falls under a general strain I've seen of providing classical examples. This happens even in the dedicatory materials, but there's a constant emphasis on referring to Jove, Venus, Mars, Phoebus, and the like. I've mostly left these references out of my notes, being too lengthy and typical to really pay attention to. I think it's interesting where they appear, more than how they appear. For instance, the descent into the underworld seems to closely mirror what the Redcrosse Knight sees in the court of Pride.

Blood, of course, is on my mind. Fighters bleed frequently, and there seems to be an extra satisfaction in these cantos in telling where the blood goes to. This also ties in with monstrous procreation (Satyrane, the lamia monster). For instance, the monster with a woman's top and a snake's bottom has poisonous dugs from which a thousand little monsters suckle (Canto 1). When she is decapitated, black blood rushes forth from her head. Note, the blood doesn't disappear, but it pools on the ground. The little ones consume the blood, become overfull, and die. When the two knights fight in Canto 6, the blood falls fruitlessly to the ground, evoking its alternative uses in reproduction. When Sans ioy is killed, I believe there is reference to his blood being consumed by the ground around him. Unlike most of the romances I've read, I want to say that blood here is at least two-dimensional. It denotes violence, yes. It has humoral valences at times, yes. It also - and this is important - participates in an exchange where it must go somewhere, must come from somewhere, and must rest somewhere. When fighters bleed, it reads as more than a matter-of-fact detail. That blood is as necessary to the fighting as swords, but more than that, it's not just incidental. It's integral to fighting itself, showing it and its effects on each other and the environment around them.

The Allegory of Love

Well, my summer has most definitely been a summer break. Anyhow.

C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. 1936. Amazing what a memory will conjure up.

This book is a tour de force through the history of allegory, starting about as early as it could (Greek and Roman writings) and continuing through Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

There are probably three centers where the book is of key importance or interest to me. The first is in its focused study of The Romance of the Rose. Here, Lewis is best at demystifying the process of allegory. Instead of looking at it as some sort of double-step, where an extra veil is drawn on one's eyes or an extra level of interpretation is required (as with a symbol), I should read working allegory as a story that functions on two levels of action - what literally happens, and what is represented by the action. The personifications are real versions of abstract qualities. For The Romance of the Rose, the characters can be regarded as figures of the lover, figures of the loved, or figures of both. Fair Welcome is a figure of the loved, as is the castle itself, and the other people there. My interest in Fair Welcome is partially relieved and partially revitalized. It isn't significant that the lover treats with Fair Welcome as a substitute for the Rose, because Fair Welcome is a part of that loved woman. I still think there is something going on with gender assignation, but it isn't as simple as, to use a quote I've overheard, "There's something gay going on there."

Two is the interstitial period, and particularly figures like Chaucer and Langland that tend to fill the middle line of allegory, where it develops and gets adapted to other genres (like the romance), or where it is developed enough to become a mere veneer for other work (rather like the 19th century Gothic architecture as compared to its 12th century roots). One point that is laughable here - how Lewis judges poems and poetry. Besides his other humorous disparagements and praises, he frequently draws the distinction between a poet and poetry (from Shelley or Wordsworth, for instance?). I think he struggles here with a form of the intentional fallacy that would soon emerge. What is best - a poet that realizes his talents and produces the greatest art intentionally, for intended meaning is more poignant (if not more meaningful) than accidental meaning. What many poets (and non-poets, in his parlance) produce - poetry, that which can delight and excite both the intellect and its sentiments, which has rhythm, structure, and intangible ectasy. I think I could learn from him how to judge quality in writing. At the same time, I see how silly such pursuits sound now. This is a day where we demonstrate the worth of a text through more subdued means. (I realized that the spots I observed were between poems and poetry, but both differences abound. His bias in the latter case is between what qualifies a full poem structurally, and the bits that strike him as good in any work.)

He reads the poets quite well, and I'll have to return to him when I'm done with Chaucer. He also gives a brief travel through the 15th century that is more a light skip, but which may be useful for summaries when I don't want to read a 24,000 line poem once, let alone twice.

Three is The Faerie Queene. He provides a diligent allegorical reading for each book, while being careful to distinguish those elements that do not cleanly fit his allegorical reading well. For Lewis, there is an allegorical core to every book, and then the spiraling adventures that can serve as examples or exemplars of the central theme but which cannot be read in the allegorical manner - they are fantasy, or romance, without much superstructure. Mutabilitie is the core without the dressings. Lewis is also good at distinguishing between the Italian epic tradition, with works like Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, where Spenser borrows obviously in great volume, and the English allegorical tradition, from which Spenser borrows a less provable mood and intention.

My discussion thus far must include one other factor, the role of courtly love. He traces that through ancient writing like Ovid, through early medieval Latin texts, and to Andreas Capellanus. Helen Cooper's criticism of Lewis here is fresh in my mind, of how he hallowed Andreas's exemplification of adulterous love as a rule by which to read other books by. I think, contrary to Lewis and with Cooper, that love can (and did) happen frequently in marriage in the romantic tradition, so that FQ, with its frequent marriages and the figure of amorous marriage, isn't the glorious exceptional endpoint to courtly love's common practice. At the same time, Lewis chose his texts well, and there seem to be these two parallel discourses of love, depending on whether one is reverent of or irreverent of marriage. Certainly marriage is no necessity for love, but the lack of it is not a necessity either.

Now for my notes:
(116) - Good explanation of allegory - the two realms of action here are the inner and the outer world. If I can distinguish between the two using the significatio, I can read the allegory.
(140) - The most relevant treatment of Fair Welcome in RotR. He depicts the breakdown in allegory, where Fair Welcome is treated as a young woman by the Old Woman, rather than a young bachelor as he appears. Lewis, typically, attributes this slip to clumsiness.
(142, 222, prior) typical places where poem/poetry dichotomy occur.
(163) A still relevant critique of Chaucerian study - we look too much to the "mocking" Chaucer, and not the serious Chaucer.
(185) He reads Criseyde spot-on here. Criseyde is driven by fear from the start, and seeks above all protection. All her actions can be read in this way, including her betrayal of Troilus.This makes her out to be a sympathetic character, one who ultimately fails the test of courtly love but gains pardon in a court of human emotion.
(220) tergiversation - the act of turning one's back on another.
(233-4) Lewis can only justify studying the 15th century by looking forward, though at points he shows that medievalist glint of really liking what he reads.
(247) He uses Occam's razor to determine that the author of a poem is a woman because the speaker is. While such a process is rather generous, it lies uneasily with me, because women will frequently write narratives for men (Marie de France the first to leap to mind), and men will write in women's voices (The Earl of Surrey the first to mind this time.) I suppose, if one must use an author's gender for any purpose, it is better that it is female?
(270) - Ah, this point made me wonder about age and bad intentions and gender. That's really all I have to say - why are aged women so often the evil party?
(297) Here's where the italian epic (in reference to FQ) comes up.

The English Romance in Time: More Thoughts

When I had initially typed it up, I lacked my notes. Now I have a few, mainly a list of points where I was particularly interested and wanted to later return.

Women and the quest

I had some disagreement with the claim that Cooper makes on page 53, in the midst of discussing the quest and pilgrimage. She dismisses the female quester: "The outside world is masculine space, where few women venture willingly. ... Apart from a few women warriors - Grisandol in the prose Merlin, the eponymous Silence, Yde in Huon of Bordeaux, Ariosto's Bradamante and Spenser's Britomart - women who find themselves in a situation analogous to the hero's quest in romance are most often victims rather than agents, compelled to leave  the safety of their own homes and at other people's mercy. The lone woman at large in romance is more likely to be cast adrift in a rudderless boat than to choose to follow the call of adventure" (53). Now, Cooper has undoubtedly read more romance than me. That was a frustrating point of this book, that I didn't have the context to always be able to knowingly agree with the generalizations. Sometimes I granted it to her on faith.

But, and maybe I've read the romances that are exceptional to this, I think the opposition between agent and victim is a false one. Women are often empowered through the quest, and often undertake a line of action that can be considered a quest. I think of the frequent times that women accompany and initiate quests in Le Morte Darthur. If the space they traverse is dangerous, it is not masculine, since they often show themselves to be better at reading the landscape than the males are. Reading women's journeys as quests in fact alleviates the interpretive problems with some romances, since it allows one to recover senses of motive and development that remain lost when the assumed quester remains a man.

For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawayne and Dame Ragnell only became fruitful for my studies when I realized that the questing figure here is as much Dame Ragnell as King Arthur. Choice isn't a qualification for questing either - neither Dame Ragnell, Arthur, nor Gawain choose the situations they find themselves in. Instead, a quest is about seeking an end that might be unknown, which promises development and worship to the successful pursuant. Ragnell seeks a reversal of the curse that renders her sexuality into a lewdness that then gets displayed in all of her features. To do this, she must find a husband that will grant her her own sexual autonomy, what women in the poem really want. The curse is perhaps a reflection of the common claim that women could not be trusted or virtuous if they were unchaste, and the related claim that no woman can be unchaste in spirit. The hag is the feared reflection of this paranoia, the representative of unrestrained sexuality improperly applied. Gawain is offered the choice of whether she should be ugly during the day or ugly at night. When her own choice is respected, her sexuality is not a cause for lewdness at all, and she is no longer subject to the misogynistic claims that her sexuality is both inevitable and dangerous. Because she is trusted with the decision by her husband, she is truthful, and her beauty shows for Gawain and for everyone at court. The quest logic forms an instantiation in this case of a querelle des femmes debate that relates indirectly to Christine de Pisan and directly to Chaucer, particularly his Wife of Bath, who tells a similar tale after a lengthy prologue that refutes many misogynistic claims. Where the Wife of Bath walks the line of sincerity and parody (though a flawed character could be right in sentiment and wrong in action), Weddynge strikes me as supporting the women's side of the debate.

That's an easy example, because the question is built right into the poem. I think that the woman's quest is often obscured because it is conflated with magic. Quests often get defined by the tools that are used in them, sword and shield and lance and horse and helm and armor and the rest. Magic also forms an important tool, though one that too easily falls into the background. Magic often gets treated as a suspected art, which is used to support or hinder a knight's quests, often without motivation outside of mischief. Think of Morgan le Fay in Malory, showing up to entrap Lancelot randomly. Lyonet is not remembered for her sagacity in guiding Gareth towards the proper way to be a knight, but for the weird magic she pulls that preserves her sister's and his chastity. When women are involved in a quest, they are often wielders of magic. If we interpret their concerns as the material for a quest though, I think that magic and enchantment combine with a more general skill, that of knowledge and sagacity in general. Reading, even reading a situation, is after all a form of magic - grammar, glamour, and grimoire all having the same root.

So, summarily, I agree with most of Cooper's arguments in the book, but she touched a sore point here. I think that women are more agents than victims in many cases, and quite often a combination of both that really renders them worthy of neither name. In some cases, I would even say that the woman quester is the one that earns the most success and renown. (Perhaps Ragnell had to die so that Gawain would remain the most renowned unattached knight.)

Saint's Life and Romance

I liked her tendency on pages like 124, in the chapter on sea voyages, of comparing legendaries and hagiographies to the romance. I don't really have anything deeper to say here, except that I think the common points between the two are far more common than is typically allowed, particularly in the motifs they tend to trade. They might be somewhat restricted in the different context, but I feel like saints' lives are set aside because we want to mark a distinction between the miraculous and the fictional that may not have been a firm boundary back then.

Women and Enchantment

Whoops, guess I returned here again after getting a lot of my fire out at first. The page I noted (160) discusses perceptions of witchcraft before shifting to a history of Morgan. I wonder why here Cooper is perfectly willing to delve into heroines and their history, but elsewhere is reluctant to conflate such heroines with the quest as an archetypal narrative function. But when I do write on enchantment, I want to return here. Best point: "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was taken to be an act, not a state, and it was an act that was at least as likely to be performed by men as by women" (160).

Rapacious Sexuality and Antifeminism

Okay, so my notes really did follow a common trajectory. I just liked the example given by Tom a Lincoln of disruptive sexuality on 391. I also liked the example of suspicion given a little later on 398, from The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, except this time the husband's jealousy is unfounded, and ends when he makes his wife die after she eats her best friend's heart. And on that note...

One More Note: C.S. Lewis

Wow, the guy really doesn't get any favor in this book. Mainly it is his depiction of love that is at dispute, one that assumes that an affair must happen extramaritally for there to be a relationship of love. In other words, C.S. Lewis assumes that Andreas Capellanus is the normative influence int he medieval period, when that might not be the case. 

The English Romance in Time, Helen Cooper

The whole subtitle reads, "Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare." To be clear, the motifs themselves are transforming with the shift in time. The book does not purport to change them.

Helen Cooper is an author I've seen a lot in medieval scholarship. I'm familiar with her Chaucer writings secondhand. I chose this book because it was written in the past ten years, and seemed to be a general, thematic treatment of the medieval romance, one that made nothing of crossing between the medieval and Renaissance (a linchpin I want to study in more detail).

I like her approach. It is a basic one - pick out several of the motivating memes of different romances, and trace them as they progress through time. How do they develop? For what reasons are they appropriated at a particular time? Do their valent associations change through time? Do the tropes cross genres, as for instance with tragedy and comedy? In other words, what is the convention developed with the audience, how is it regularized, and in what ways is it broken? (21-22). Finally, what does all this mean for the work and its audience?

She emphasizes the word meme rather than trope in order to get at the social significance I was hinting at in the last few questions. A trope can be interpreted as something that exists in the literature, that is primarily static and formal. A meme is more fluid, dependent on social currency and spreading rather like a virus. Certainly the terms are interchangeable in this case, but it changes the determination.

The memes/tropes she focuses on include (copped with paraphrase from the Table of Contents):

Pilgrimage and questing - think of motifs of traveling, with its parallels with interiority in direction, motivation, setting, and so on.
Providence and the sea - "So we set this ship into the water, gave it no means of orientation or propulsion, and let God sort it out."
Faulty magic - "I got this cool ring but never got to use it," or "I tried using this ring but it didn't work," or "I guess the magic worked, but it was totally incidental and misleading."
Fairy rulers and so on - What happens when you ride the liminal line between the benign supernatural and the diabolic?
Desirable desire - is women's desire a good thing in different works? How does its motif get treated?
Women on trial - Pretty much about what it sounds like, with particular focuses on alleged and proven adulteries, and the normally supernatural interventions that attest the truth.
The Rightful Heir - inheritance, the Fair Unknown, the dangers of lacking an heir (ELIZABETH!!!)
Unhappy Endings - what happens when the typically happy romantic ending doesn't happen?

The book also comes with an extremely useful appendix listing the romances that were current in England after 1500. I don't trust the list as exhaustive, but it's sufficiently detailed that I've written down a lot of pertinent information from it.

To say one interesting focus that comes out of this, her approach to romances demonstrates something that I've thought to be true since I first sat down with Le Morte Darthur: one of the key subjects of romance, which one avoids only to the subtraction of one's work, is women. Women's place in chivalric order, in feudal order, in inheritance, in desire, in magic, in the quest, in trial (you can see I'm picking out the major memes of the book), all these are often far more progressive than one might expect, and are even interesting when they turn out to be antifeminist.

I can expand that to include gender. I think that the romance is a rather amorphous genre that often includes works due to superficial reasons like, "Well, the magic in that is kinda funny," or, "Well, she went on a quest of sorts, nevermind that it was spiritual and totally a pilgrimage." In its collection of memes or tropes, every romance has the parts that don't fit the others, the part that gives the whole renown because it defies expectations in a way that is nonetheless desirable. Now, one place where expectations can be played with is gender. There is the woman who wields a sword, whether or not she uses it. There is the trope of disguise, whether as a man or as a woman. One can also be mistaken, without intention, as is the case in Le Morte Darthur when Lancelot falls asleep in a pavilion only to have another man snuggle up with him, because he thinks that Lancelot is his beloved lady. Even in more general terms, the romance often struggles with the question, "What makes a man the ideal man? What makes a woman the ideal woman?" Virtue, faith, fidelity, reason - whatever the guidelines, what happens when they succeed? Still worse, what happens when they fail?

And an observation - many times the criteria for men and women are actually quite similar. To say that men quest and women are rescued is far too simplistic. To say that women are punished for unchastity and men aren't is likewise reductive. Now, perhaps these are just true enough to become generalizations, but the rules are often broken. Sometimes the markers of assumed gender fall away, in such a way that it would be worthwhile to study a few romances in parallel to see how gender might have functioned. A theoretical structure for such a work might be to figure out whether the romance was a place where one could experiment with gender, or whether such flexibility was inherent in the society? Is this flexibility, or is it simply that we see flexibility as compared to what we think the past would hold gender to be? Perhaps its boundaries are different, its intersections different.

The Romance of the Rose, Jean de Meun

I've taken a longer hiatus than I had hoped.

I have just finished reading Jean de Meun's version of the poem. I should call it an addendum. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.

One fair point is that he uses the allegory differently. Guillaume de Lorris is not inclined to long speeches. His allegorical characters are significant in their dress, behavior, and how they act to each other. Jean de Meun keeps these aspects somewhat, but deluges them in the very long speeches that many of his figures (like Friend, Reason, Wealth, the Old Woman, Nature, and Genius) give. They speak for long periods of time, such that it becomes difficult to remember that it isn't just the narrator speaking. This leads to delightful confusions, like being confused about why the main character hates women so.

I needn't repeat the allegorical figures, since they are largely the same as Guillaume's, with shifts in their qualities. It is similarly difficult to summarize each speech, but I will attempt to do so.

We left Guillaume (hereafter the name of the speaker) when he was despairing over never entering the castle. He gives a fair summation of the current predicament. Then Reason comes along. In this version, she presents a separate allegory, featuring such figures as Youth, Old Age, Delight, Death, Travail, and Suffering. This leads into a long discussion on love, and particularly a debate between what loves are appropriate and inappropriate. The speaker is unconvinced, though, because the pure loves that Reason speaks of are irrecoverable after the fall. He misses the point of holding such a pure love, one outside of Fortune's domain, as an ideal. After a long turn into a debate about Justice, a concept that ties into Love through Christian theology, and then to Fortune and its mishaps at greater length, Reason abandons Guillaume.

Then Friend comes, again reflecting the order of the original. After his advice of ways to reach the rosebud, he then speaks at length about courtship. His main contention, which has several other parts, is that there is no such thing as a good woman. His contradictory advice vacillates between recommending that they should be avoided, and counseling him on how to handle women when the seemingly inevitable hitch occurs. Like Reason, Friend brings to mind a postlapsarian view of life in his own allegory, with Fraud, Sin, Misfortune, Pride, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Poverty, Larceny, Faint Heart, and Lady Laverna (goddess of thieves) overtaking Contentment. Quite a rabble. To the fallen men and women, little bits of good advice emerge, like not restraining women, correcting them kindly in the case of jealousy, and so on, pieces of advice that might double as willful but fortunate blindnesses.

Soon they assemble an army of Love. Again, they have the trouble of False Seeming and Constrained Abstinence (who will in the course of time have the Antichrist?!?). False Seeming, while convincing them that he should be there, delivers a sermon of his own that is duplicitous, though I don't recall the details. He marches a contingent to confront Evil Tongue, and after a debate between them, they fight and Evil Tongue is killed with all of his Norman soldiers. The tongue is cut out, and he is cast into a ditch. Perhaps the only way to quell the lashes of unfair rumors is to appear more virtuous than the tongue can attack, though such seeming will be false.

Then comes Old Woman, who gives plenty of advice as a woman who had once lived the life of a lady swindling her way through men. Fair Welcome and she have a discussion, as she urges him to wear the chaplet that Guillaume has given for him. He finally does, but she seems always to be egging him on to admit of some greater affection, one of the points that I suspect the work keeps male-male sexual tendencies uneasily alongside the allegory that places those affections as towards the rosebud. As for Old Woman's speech, she loved but one man, who swindled her. In the trading of gifts for the goods (if not the affection) of love, she emphatically preaches for trickiness and wariness in all dealings between the sexes. Her ultimate caution is to not wait too long - his youth will turn to age someday.

After the speech, Fair Welcome reiterates his honorable friendship with Guillaume, and they soon meet (with Pleasant Looks accompanying). Fear, Shame, and Rebuff prevent an extended reunion, and thus the assault on the castle picks up steam. At this point, the crux of battle, arround lines 15105 and 15165, Jean de Meun makes an important disclaimer. He doesn't want to offend men, or especially women by the following account. The words are intended only to instruct. His defense of his own conduct partly foists the blame on other authors that report the same thing, and (where it is true, I suppose) begs leave to tell truth for the sake of instruction. Talk about seeking suitors.

Then Nature and Genius come after the battle, and the account is nearly done. They talk between each other for a while, Nature then gives a confession in which she admits the power that she has and its one limitation towards the sinfulness of man. Genius hears the confession, absolves her, and excommunicates all of those who work against Nature's commands to procreate, in metaphors of plowing, writing, and so on.

Finally, Guillaume takes up his place, puts a staff in a hole, breaks the barrier in the aperture, and gains access to the rosebud. And by all that, I think it means they have sex. :P

Overall Observations

It's painfully obvious now why there is not a plot summary on Wikipedia. The introduction of this book attempts one, but acknowledges its own inadequate brevity. It is just not an easy thing to summarize, especially when many of the events happen twice, allegory depends on the details imparted to its characters, and much of the second part consists of speeches that often constitute stories and tangents of their own. Only a schematic plot description is possible if one wants to spend less than an entire day on doing just that.

I can imagine that this poem was read in installments on evenings to a particularly refined audience that would have been intimate witness to the contemporary allusions of Jean de Meun or Guillaume. Each poet's rendition perhaps appealed to its own time, but certainly Jean de Meun's work was only an addition rather than an adaptation based on how it occurs after Guillaume's in manuscripts. So Guillaume's version had not lost much if any currency. Instead, much like the new Star Wars movies did to the old, perhaps Jean's version capitalized on the first one's fame while itself appearing as a product of its time, with better special effects and the same dressings of the original wrapped in somewhat worse dialogue.

This is the classic example of medieval allegory. It does not descend into a simple allegory of virtues and vices. Wealth, Love, Shame, Jealousy, Reason, and False Seeming each have their own advantages and disadvantages, light sides and dark sides and rather gray sides that emerge in their actions. No post-Capellanus lover would argue that Jealousy was unnecessary to Love. No lover would argue that Love was always fair to them. The same with Reason, the Boethian complaint against some of Reason's attempted consolations foremost in my mind when Guillaume refused Reason's advice. This is an allegory that seeks to imprint itself in the bustle of things, amongst humanity, and the need to reproach men and women both for their behavior is a needed reproach against the subjects of such allegorical realism. Of course allegory appears prior to and after this, and not nearly always in this mode. But I think that religious and political allegories both owe something to this example. I wonder what those terms are.

The Romance of the Rose

Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first 4000 lines of this poem between 1225 and 1230. Jean de Meun wrote the remainder, feeling perhaps that the poem was unfinished, between 1269 and 1278. In total, the poem is about 22,000 lines long. Jean de Meun had a lot to say. The poem is preserved in over 200 manuscripts. (More than The Canterbury Tales.) Chaucer produced a translation of this poem.

I've read Guillaume's portion today, and the allegory is quite tasteful and pleasant. It is easiest to go through if I give a catalogue of character, a brief summary of the plot, and then a few observations.

Characters

1. Dreamer -  Rather self explanatory.Soon falls into a dream vision.
2. The Images on the Walls of the Garden
1. Hate - (f) woman wild with fury
2. Cruelty - (f)
3. Baseness - (f) immoderate scandalmonger
4. Covetousness - (f) take and give nothing in return
5. Avarice - (f) give nothing
6. Envy - (f) hates the best, tears down all who do good
7. Sorrow - (f)tormented
8. Old Age - (f) aged, wrinkled, cold
9. Religious Hypocrisy - (f) fearlessly commits any crime, though appearing religious
10. Poverty - (f) naked, but for a sack.
3. The Dance in the Garden
1. Idleness - (f) opens the door for the Dreamer - enjoys amusements
2. Pleasure - (m) intimate friend of Idleness, owns garden and built its walls
3. Courtesy - (f) invites Dreamer into the dance
4. Joy - (f) Pleasure's sweetheart
5. God of Love - (m) ruler of lovers, humbler of the haughty, owner of two bows with five arrows each
1. Beauty
2. Simplicity
3. Generosity of Spirit
4. Company
5. Fair Seeming
6. Pride
7. Baseness
8. Shame
9. Despair
10. Inconstancy
6. Beauty - (f) resplendent lady
7. Wealth - (f) lavish lady, wearing the most distinguished jewelry, stones with magical properties
1. Wealth's lover, unnamed - a well-kept man
8. Largesse - (f) giver of goods
1. The accompanying knight from Arthur's court, courageous and strong in tournaments
9. Generosity of Spirit - (f)whiter than snow
10. Youth - (f) the 12 year old lover, with a boy of the same age constantly kissing. 
11. Pleasant Looks - (m) carrier of the God of Love's equippage
12. Parable of the Fountain
1. Narcissus
2. Echo
13. Gifts of Love - to soothe the aching lover
1. Pleasant Thought
2. Pleasant Conversation
3. Pleasant Looks
4. The Rosebud - the object of Dreamer's desire, yet unopen and keeping a fresh, aromatic scent
1. Chastity - (f) the keeper of the Rosebud
2. Venus - (f) Chastity's mortal enemy, mother of the God of Love (Eros), goddess or fairy in appearance
3. Fair Welcome - (m) son of Courtesy, intimate friend to Dreamer
4. Keepers of the Bud
1. Rebuff - (m) grouch
2. Evil Tongue - (m) slanderer, alleges inappropriate relationshp between Fair Welcome and Dreamer
3. Shame (f) - daughter by Reason and Fiend, conceived when Reason looked on Fiend
4. Fear (f) - daughter of Jealousy, sent when Reason sent Shame to Chastity to help guard the rosebuds
5. Reason - (f) counsels that one should forget love, rebuffed
6. Friend - (m) hears Dreamer's complaints (in accord with Pleasant Conversation), and counsels diplomacy and patience
7. Aid from Heaven - both seek understanding from Rebuff
1. Generosity of Spirit - (f)
2. Pity - (f) 
8.  Jealousy - (f) argues for building the tower enclosing the buds
1. Lechery, Lust - (m) enemies mentioned by Jealousy 
9. Fortune - (f) the keeper of the wheel that casts the Dreamer down

Summary
After citing Macrobius's commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio (rather like one of Chaucer's heroes, though that hero is actually reading it), the Dreamer falls asleep. He soon dreams of coming across a walled garden in May, and sees the images on the walls, perhaps intended to keep people away that are old, hateful, covetous, and hypocritical. Then he searches for a door and finds only a small one. After he knocks, Idleness answers and lets him in. After wandering through the garden for a bit, he witnesses a dance, and is soon asked to join by Courtesy. A cavalcade of characters follows (not to be misleading though it alliterates - no horses are mentioned), encompassing the positive qualities of the garden, including pleasure, wealth, largesse, love, and youth.

Eventually the Dreamer is encouraged to wander again, and he comes across the Spring of Love, prefaced by the story of Narcissus and Echo. The Dreamer looks, sees the rose bushes and the most beautiful rose bud, and is immediately stricken by the five arrows of Eros meant to inspire love. He is then hunted and taken captive, until the Dreamer swears fealty to the Lover, sealed with a kiss on the mouth. The Lover then gives his commandments, which amount to suffering Love with the few consolations given the Dreamer - to think on his love, to talk about his love, and to see his love.

Dreamer then approaches the bushes, and is greeted by Fair Welcome, who is content to allow him to rest near the bud. When he asks to take the bud away, he is refused, and soon Rebuff and his cronies come by and kick Dreamer out. Disconsolate, he seeks a Friend for the solace of Pleasant Conversation. The Friend counsels diplomacy, which with the intervention of Pity and Generosity of Spirit softens Rebuff enough that he allows the Dreamer back in. He sits with Fair Welcome, who soon allows the Dreamer to kiss the bud.

Upon doing so, Evil Tongue spreads rumors about Fair Welcome and Dreamer. Soon, Jealousy is in on the act, and proclaims that they ought to build a tower around the bud, and keep Fair Welcome at the center of it. Once armed, garrisoned (with Norman soldiers!), and kept, Dreamer despairs, loving from afar both the bud and Fair Welcome.

Thoughts

First, homosocial. There is clearly an implied relationship between Fair Welcome and the Dreamer, and the Dreamer's responses to his absence indicate that, though the allegations might be salacious,  it is less a fabrication of what isn't there than a misconstruing of what is. Fair Welcome serves as the point of access to the bud, a benevolent Pandarus-type character who indulges Dreamer in return for the pleasure of having given welcome. The two are warm, and in the earlier sense of the word intimate. The concluding speech by Dreamer indicates that he misses Fair Welcome more than he does the bud. It is nearly as if the rosebud is the object of Dreamer's affections, but Fair Welcome is its agency, a male duenna who receives the poet's advances. He does not restrict access altogether, but makes sure that such access is appropriate, within the strictures of courtliness that Love must be constrained to serve. In my mind, such agency could easily collapse into a Cyrano-like situation, where the Dreamer ends up loving the agent more than the pretty face, Cyrano over Christian. Could such a flip have happened then? I must think it could, having no evidence to the contrary.

And that goes without mentioning the kiss on the mouth that passes between the God of Love and the Dreamer. Certainly, they would have been less picky about such gestures than we are today, as we have turned a kiss into something erotic all the time. In this story, it may be an allusion of the sex that is to come. It could also be a greeting, or a seal of fealty. I think that we have more of an issue of the ambiguity between those statuses than they did. Either (the traditional assumption) the umbrage of the kiss depended on the situation such that categories didn't blend together, or (the generous assumption) there was a little swearing of fealty and eroticism in any kiss, no matter the primary context. I incline towards the latter. To do otherwise would be to ignore a key part of the context; would even a medieval man kiss the God of Love and not feel a little erotic about it?

Second, details. It's so funny to see the parenthetical explanations in places where I would never suspect that one was needed. For example, when Joy is described next to Pleasure, the poet quickly adds, "Who did not hate him in the least, but had given him her love when she was no more than seven years old" (14). Oh. Okay. I suppose that this is a jibe against those that would claim that Joy (with its exalted refinement) and Pleasure (with its earthly tones) are separate in theological grounds. Bodily pleasure serves as a distraction to salvation or happiness, while joy is the place where happiness takes its rest. The Thomistic view would disagree with Guillaume on this point, and though I don't know enough about other scholastic movements at the time, I suspect others would too.

Also, the details like dress and surroundings fascinate me. Why does it matter that Wealth is wearing a stone that protects against toothaches? (I wonder if anyone has ever cross-referenced this with lapidaries of the time, which also record these weird traits.) Do the many spices in the garden (cloves, liquorice, fresh cardamum, zedoary, anise, cinnamon, and "many delicious spices good to eat after a meal") make it more lavish? What are those spices good to eat after a meal? All I can think of is "dessert" or "after dinner mint." Oh, how impoverished my understanding is. This early tendency towards making lists is masterful compared to many later medieval poems, which turn these brief descriptive interludes into indulgent and obsessive fights over who can do so most lavishly.

Third, Arthurian allusion. Just a note that it does occur, including the company of Largesse, and an allusion to Kay and Gawain where the former comes off horribly and the latter quite well in courtesy. 

Protect me! Tomorrow I plan to put a big dent in Jean de Meun.

(Note - I've also been reading through The English Romance in Time by Helen Cooper and The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I'm nowhere near finishing either, but I might post on them too when I feel less long-winded.)