The Faerie Queene: A Reader's Guide - Second edition

202 Pages·1999·4.82 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Heale

The Fairie Queene:
A Reader's Guide
The Faerie Queene is the first great epic poem in the English language. It
is a long and complex allegory, which presents the first-time reader
with many difficulties of allusion and interpretation.
This book is the only convenient and up-to-date guide to Spenser's
poem, and is designed as a handbook to be consulted by students
while reading the poem. Each chapter is devoted to a separate book of
the poem, and sub-sections treat particular episodes or sequences of
episodes in detail. Dr Heale considers fully the religious and political
context, and pays due attention to the variety of Spenser's literary
techniques. She encourages close reading of the poem and a lively
awareness of both its rich detail and the intricate interrelation of its
episodes.
This revised edition takes account of recent developments in
Spenserian criticism, and brings the guidance on further reading up
to date.
ELIZABETH HEALE teaches at the University of Reading, and has held a
visiting Professorship at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.
Her latest book, Wyatt, Surrey, and Early Tudor Poetry, was published in
1998.

The Faerie Queene
A READER'S GUIDE
SECOND EDITION
ELIZABETH HEALE
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP, United Kingdom
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK http:/ /www.cup.cam.ac.uk
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA http:/ /www.cup.org
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© Cambridge University Press 1987, 1999
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of
relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1987
Reprinted 1993, 1996
Second edition 1999
Typeset in Monotype Baskerville
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Heale, Elizabeth 1946-
The faerie queene.
Bibliography
Includes index.
1. Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599. Faerie Queene.
I. Title.
PR2358,H35 1987 821'.3 86-31723
ISBN 0521 65468 8 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2002
To
Graeme, Beatrice and Matilda

CONTENTS
Preface IX
Note on texts and abbreviations xi
INTRODUCTION
Backgrounds 1
The poem 11
1 BOOK 1
Introduction 20
Una and Duessa 26
Redcrosse: cantos i-v 33
The Orgoglio and Despair episodes 37
The House of Holiness and the battle with the dragon 41
2 BOOK 2
Introduction 45
Guyon and the Palmer 50
Righteous anger: cantos i-iii 53
The irascible and concupiscible brothers:
Pyrochles and Cymochles 57
Phaedria and Mammon 59
The House of Alma 64
The Bower of Bliss 69
3 BOOK 3
Introduction 73
Britomart's narrative 79
The Florimell and Marinell narratives 81
Belphoebe: cantos v-vi 84
Amoret and the Garden of Adonis 86
Malbecco: cantos ix-x 90
Amoret and Busirane's House 92
4 BOOK 4
Introduction 97
The causes of discord 101
Cambel and Triamond 104
Satvrane's tournament and its seauel 107
Lust's victims 111
Scudamour's story 114
The marriage of Medway and Thames 117
5 BOOK 5
Introduction 121
Artegall 126
'Equal balance': cantos i-iv 127
Radigund 132
The Temple of Isis 135
Force and guile: Dolon, the Souldan and Malengin 137
Mercilla 139
Elizabeth's justice abroad: Beige, Bourbon and Grantorto 141
6 BOOK6
Introduction 146
Justice and courtesy: cantos i-ii 151
Galepine and Turpine 153
The Blatant Beast 160
Mirabella 162
Calidore and the shepherds 164
The capture of the Blatant Beast 168
7 THE MUTABILITIE CANTOS
Introduction 170
Versions of the Fall: canto vi 172
Nature's court of law: canto vii 175
Notes 178
Select bibliography 183
Index of characters and episodes 188
PREFACE
This substantially revised second edition of The Faerie Queene. A Reader's
Guide offers a rewritten introduction as well as amendments to the
main text in order to take account of new scholarship and changing
emphases in recent critical writing on the poem. There is also an
updated guide to further reading.
Like the first edition, this book is designed for those reading The
Faerie Queene for the first time. In my experience the poem presents
such readers with a number of initial difficulties, owing partly to the
remoteness of the sixteenth century and its ideas from our own and
partly to the allegorical mode of the poem and its multiple plots. On
first reading we enter a quite unfamiliar world in which the
significance of characters and episodes and the logic of their
sequence is far from obvious. But the poem demands and copiously
rewards re-reading and close attention to its details. With more
knowledge and greater familiarity much that at first seems
inexplicable or insignificant finds its place and takes on meaning.
This guide in no way wishes to pre-empt the reader's own explora-
tion and gradual discovery of the poem. Its aim is twofold: first, to
provide in a convenient form information which is otherwise difficult
of access, hidden in scholarly articles or sixteenth-century texts, and
which I consider basic to the understanding of the poem; and sec-
ondly, to suggest the bare bones of a reading of the poem which con-
centrates on its coherence - the connections between episodes, their
sequence, the significance of repeated patterns and details - while
trying to acknowledge the poem's complexity and its often deliberate
ambivalence. I have attempted neither to write all that might be
written about any episode, if such a thing were possible, nor to give
a neutral account of various critical views. It seemed to me more
important to try to provide what I hope may be a stimulating and
suggestive reading and to refer the reader to more detailed and
scholarly studies in the notes and bibliography.
My own biases will be clearer to those with some knowledge of
Spenserian criticism than to first readers and I shall therefore try
briefly to state those that I recognize. In my view, Spenser is a poet
deeply concerned with the world in which he lives. In general terms
this means that I stress the way his fictions are concerned with the
Preface
difficulties of interpretation and action in a fallen world, and more
specifically the way his analysis of the virtues reflects a sixteenth-
century Protestant point of view in all its partisanship. Spenser
described his poem as a 'darke conceit', and while I do not accept that
its interpretation depends on sources so recondite as to be obscure
even to his contemporaries, it does seem to me that on occasion he
deliberately cultivates complexity and mystery to convey a sense that
he is dealing with supernatural and therefore hidden secrets. In trying
to explain the allegories as clearly as possible, I am aware that I must
run the risk of over-simplifying and falsifying the poem's carefully
achieved obliquity.
My understanding of The Faerie Queene has been shaped by the
criticism I have read, and it is now difficult to disentangle what is my
own and what I owe to others. I wished to avoid overwhelming a
book such as this with scholarly references, but where I am conscious
of a specific debt I have tried to acknowledge it. I apologize sincerely
if I have drawn on a previous writer significantly without giving due
credit. I have incurred some debts that cannot be adequately repaid
in endnotes. The first is to Martin Wright, who first introduced me
to Spenser and tried to teach me how the poem worked as poetry; the
second is to Frank Kermode, whose writing and teaching opened
many new doors for me, and through whom I first discovered the
magnificent resources of the Warburg Institute; the third is to my
colleague Anthea Hume, whose conversations have profoundly in-
fluenced my reading of the poem. My greatest debt is without any
doubt to my husband, Graeme Watson, whose support, intellectual,
moral and domestic, has made this book possible.