At the behest of the Faerie Queene, the Gentle Knight, or Redcrosse Knight, sets out with his companion, Una, a daughter of a king, who is riding an ass and leading a small lamb. His quest is to slay a terrible Dragon, that is holding Una’s parents captive. Accompanied by a Dwarf as a servant, the travellers come upon a fierce storm and are forced to take shelter in a forest bower for the night. When morning dawns, they fear that they have lost their way until they come upon a cave. Una cautions the Knight, fraught with fearful doubts and premonitions of this den, but the Knight will not heed and enters, “full of fire and greedy hardiment”. Inside he discovers a terrible monster, Error, surrounded by her young. He commences a battle:
Hamlette at The Edge of the Precipice is hosting one of her excellent read-alongs, this time on the most wonderful classic, Jane Eyre.
If you haven’t participated in one of Hamlette’s read-alongs before, you are in for a treat. They progress at such a slow pace, that it allow the reader time to read deeply, mull over what they have read, and come up with insights that would have perhaps been missed with a quicker read. When you finish, you feel like you know the book backwards, forwards, and upside-down. They are so beneficial!
This read-along will begin on May 29th and proceed through the summer until we finish. Having just read Brönte’s Villette and being less than thrilled with it, I’m looking forward to re-visiting one of my all-time favourites.
Please visit this page if you want to see how Hamlette’s read alongs work, and then please join us May 29th. It’s an experience not to be missed!
“My godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Bretton.”
What on earth have I just read? This book simply cannot be written by the same author who wrote Jane Eyre! The mind rebels! The heart rebels! It cannot be! Am I sounding very dramatic and flourishing and vocal? That’s because I’ve spent 572 pages being lulled catatonic. What happened …..??
Brönte begins with introducing the reader to Lucy Snowe, an unassuming educated young woman, who is left alone after the death of her family, with only her godmother, Mrs. Bretton as a familiar contact. In the house of her godmother, she knows her son, Graham Bretton, and on one visit meets a lodger, a little girl named Polly who is quick-witted, yet bordering on rude and displays an unusual attachment to the Bretton son.
As Lucy returns home, this story is left hanging and we follow Lucy to a job as a companion and then, at the death of her employer, Lucy decides to set out for the country of Labassecour (thought to be modelled on Belgium, where Brönte herself taught at a girl’s school) to search for work. Miraculously, she is immediately taken on as a teacher at a respectable school in the town of Villette. Through Lucy’s eyes only, we meet the headmistresses, Madame Beck; teachers at the school, in particular the fiery M. Paul Emmanuel; Polly’s cousin, Ginevra; and finally an astounding secret about the local doctor, Dr. John, is discovered. Coincidence piles up on coincidence, until one no longer puzzles but simply must move on. Two important relationships occur in Lucy’s life, yet nothing seems to truly touch her as she remains the passive and faithful narrator, except when it comes to the collision of Catholicism and Protestantism, one of which she attacks with a vitriolic vehemence and the other which she lauds as the only way to heaven.
School for Peasant’s Children in Verkiai(1848) Vasily Sadovnikov source Wikiart
The writing meanders all over the place and the characters appear chiselled with a hacksaw. Polly who is mean-spirited and selfish as a child, suddenly appears, not only in a completely different city but in a different country and, as a young woman, is now pleasing and thoughtful and wise. And she has developed this warm and winning character in spite of having a father who is rather petty, obtuse and slightly vindictive. Her great love for him appears to be the only explanation as to her transformation. Characters are often described by Lucy as having certain traits and then later are bestowed with either oppositie traits, or the original ones are highly magnified in melodramatic fashion to serve authorial purposes. The process is problematic, to say the least.
Astraea, the virgin goddess of Innocence and Purity (1665) Salvator Rosa source Wikipedia
Lucy herself is our greatest conundrum. She is like a wraithful spirit who hovers over the drama in the story and participates in narration and judgement but barely with action. Like the Greek goddess Astraea, she pronounces moral, religious and ethical judgement on each character, yet in her zeal, often appears to forget that she is on the same level as those around her. Nevertheless, she is a complex character and while her sentences can often be harsh, we also at times sense a softening of her manner and a deeper generosity in her character.
Brönte does display some fine writing in parts of the novel and there is a peculiar weaving of a wild, melodramatic narrative into a character who is quiet, aloof, reserved, and very nearly lifeless. Brönte also employs contrasting themes but I would have enjoyed them more if I felt that they came from superior writing aptitude instead of displayed prejudices. I also was irritated with her penchant to play with the reader. She seemed to be saying, “oh, so you’d like to see this scenario play out? Well, too bad, I’m deliberately going to give you this.” Quite frankly, I finished feeling rather offended, as if someone had just been rude or discourteous. An excuse for her approach may be found in the successive deaths of three members of her family within eight short months, five years before Villette was published, and there is some suggestion that Brönte was struggling with depression. With this fact in mind, I honestly tried to stick with this novel and find some sort of redeeming feature, but the inconsistencies and coincidences were simply too insurmountable, and the meek yet God-like character of Lucy too unpalatable. Certain reviews claim that this book is a psychological masterpiece, and as I said, Brönte certainly seems to play with psychological aspects of both the characters and the readers’ perceptions of them. Yet this experiment is conducted in an unnatural way, one that is ripe with preposterous manipulations and improbable fluctuations in both personalities and circumstances. I was psychologically exhausted after finishing the novel, not for its fine crafting, but in an effort to grasp its implausibilities. If that brand of psychology is admirable, I would rather treasure the simplicities of Jane Eyre.
I must say the only benefit gained from reading Villette is perhaps the personal insight it gives into Wuthering Heights. The raw, wild, startling prose of the latter, while not necessarily obvious in the former, exists in echoes, while the ghostly apparition and the darkness in the souls of men stand out in stark relief. Villette was an unsettling novel certainly, but more importantly it was unsatisfying, and I was left with a sense of emptiness and time wasted. Fortunately there are rumours of read-along of Jane Eyre coming up at the end of May, hosted by Hamlette at The Edge of the Precipice. Thank heavens! I will be able to cleanse my palate with one of my all-time favourite novels and hopefully regain some of the deep respect I had for its author.
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.”
While Northanger Abbey was the first novel written by Jane Austen and sold to a publisher by her brother, Henry, in fact it was repurchased by the author and not published until six months after her death in December 1817. Austen’s parody of 17th century Gothic novels is told with a good-natured humour, but a valuable lesson lies beneath the surface of its narrative.
Catherine Morland, the daughter of a vicar, is given the chance to travel to Bath with a respectable family called the Thorpes. Isabella Thorpe is her particular friend and the two absorb the delights of the town with an eager anticipation. Yet Catherine’s sheltered upbringing has perhaps made her more artless than your average girl of her age, and her innocent and credulous nature allows for a manipulation of her desires by those with more experience in the arts of enterprise and self-interest. Her steady diet of Gothic novels, combined with her somewhat protected existence, contribute to her highly erroneous perceptions of the motivations and behaviour of others. When an answer does not immediately present itself, she speeds off in wild internal ramblings of imagination, that rarely represent reality. Likewise, when she is faced with obvious circumstances, she fails to perceive them. Her lack of discernment with regard to John Thorpe’s infatuation of her remains puzzling until her understanding is brought into context. What experience does this young sheltered girl have to bring her presence of mind and an ability to discern attitudes outside of her usual element of a protected existence and romantic Gothic narratives? With her uncritical naiveté and wild flights of fancy, initially one wonders if Catherine will be able to navigate through the pitfalls of her own mistaken perceptions to arrive at an outcome that will benefit her innocent, and yet misguided, nature.
In many ways, Northanger Abbey is a comedy, as Austen treats her character with a gentle type of humour. Catherine, while having admirable qualities, is living a delusion, cultivated by her reading material, yet her mistakes are of innocent intent due to ignorance rather than willful human folly. Her awakening, while somewhat arduous, is brief, and she soon demonstrates her innate ability to put into action the values instilled by her family and, with the guidance of the young gentleman clergyman, Henry Tilney, both her instincts and maturity grow, while her wildly unrestrained imagination is harnessed, and diminished into a sensible and mature culmination of happiness and contentment.
While this book doesn’t necessarily showcase Austen’s usual brilliance, it is solidly developed and an engaging story until the last chapter. Then the book falls all to pieces. Somehow Eleanor Tilney, Henry’s sister, makes a brilliant match with a character, “a man of fortune,” who has never been mentioned by anyone, including the bride herself, until four paragraphs from the end of the novel; the General (Henry’s father), who has been somewhat gruff and stringent, yet ofttimes displaying a pleasant character, turns into a mercenary, blustering, (and may I add, foolish) tyrant; and Catherine and Henry’s success in love looks in jeopardy. Yet all is tied up in a sentence or two, and the reader is left feeling like they just hit a brick wall. It’s not Austen at her finest, yet the book is a charming experiment and an example of Austen at the origin of her art.
Ruin of Kenilworth Castle – a gothic-type building source Wikipedia
Northanger Abbey has the unique distinction for being known as the novel that alludes to a number of Gothic suspense novels. If you are a Gothic connoisseur, here is the list for your enjoyment:
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
Clermont by Regina Maria Roche
Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons
Mysterious Warnings by Eliza Parsons
Necromancer of the Black Forest by Ludwig Flammenberg
Midnight Bell by Francis Latham
Orphan of the Rhine by Eleanor Sleath
Horrid Mysteries by Carl Gross (translated by Peter Will)
Normally, I don’t read introductions or commentaries on books or poetry that I plan to read, until after I’ve finished the work. I prefer to experience the art from a point of innocence (or perhaps, ignorance is a better word!), forming my own opinions without influence, even if I struggle with my first read through. However, this time I threw all my ideals to the winds and called for help.
In April I’m reading The Faerie Queene with O, Cirtnecce, Jean, Ruth, and Consoled Reader, and considering the length and complexity of this poem, I confess that it was wiser to admit my complete ineptitude and look for someone who was very familiar with this type of poem and era to give me a little boost. Since C.S. Lewis’ expertise was in Medieval and Renaissance literature, I suspected that he would be a good place to start. His book, Spenser’s Images of Life is a compilation of lectures notes, put together by Alastair Fowler, to give students a deeper insight into The Faerie Queene.
I’m not going to even pretend that I understood half of what Lewis was saying in these lectures/notes, but my lack of understanding emphasizes one of the many things that I respect about the man. He is able to turn on his intellect and produce a brilliantly insightful and stimulating analysis of perhaps the most complex poem in the English language, yet he is also able to let his intellect “idle” and write children’s stories, sci-fi fiction or even a layman-type book such as Mere Christianity. With Spenser’s Images of Life, I had to read it slowly and let it percolate.
Lewis begins by stating that The Faerie Queene is the most difficult poem in the English language, a rather daunting claim for me, as I’m going to be reading it in just over a month. He claims that the poem works on a number of levels and the mistake readers can make is reading it from only one perspective and thinking that is all it has to offer. The simple aspect of the poem is that it’s a moral allegory, in that the story contains a moral, but the poem is more than a narrative, containing images that work on the mind. We must not only read, but see the work.
Lewis believes that Spenser, like Botticelli, accepts “traditional images, he loads them with wisdom from the philosophers and disposes them in divine compositions ……… with a propensity of mingling the Christian and the pagan.” Those of Spenser’s tradition would have regarded ancient poetry as a type of veiled theology, and the mixing of the worlds would not have seemed strange to them. In fact, Lewis believes that “Spenser’s Nature is really an image of God himself.”
Lewis goes into detail about certain aspects of the poem, covering the following topics:
The last chapter is particularly interesting as Lewis examines Spenser’s letter to Raleigh about The Faerie Queene and, quite expertly, “prosecutes” his meaning, declaring that most of what he wrote is not supported by the poem itself. Many of Lewis’ arguments make good sense. He proposes that Spenser was not entirely aware of the depths of his own brooding and birth of the poem, that came from his experience with philosophers, poets and iconographers. He also suspects that Spenser might have written the letter with someone at his elbow, massaging his words to make the poem fit classical (and possibly political) expectation.
In any case, this book was helpful as an introduction to the poem, but it will also be handy to read The Faerie Queene with it in hand. Lewis’ points must be better understood in the context and framework of an already developing story, allegory or image. As to what our expectations with regard to the poem should be, Lewis has a very straightforward answer:
“We should expect, then, from Spenser’s poem, a simply fairy-tale pleasure sophisticated by polyphonic technique, a simple ‘moral’ sophisticated by a learned iconography. Moreover, we should expect to find all of these reacting on one another, to produce a work very different from what we are used to. And now it is time to catch hold of one thread of the fabric, and pull…….”
“It is difficult to make a dull garden, but old Mr. Wither had succeeded.”
Stella Gibbons writes rather odd books. Cold Comfort Farm, her best known and highly acclaimed novel, follows an orphaned, pert young woman to a mucky, rural farm and observes while she neatens and tidies all the morose, lurking, and deranged occupants into their proper places, finding love in the process. Gibbons has a knack for depicting rather unusual and sometimes bizarre characters, and this flair for the unique has continued in her writing of Nightingale Wood. The introduction to the story labels it as a “fairy tale” and it is, although not along the usual lines one would expect from such a tale. Gibbons’ evil creatures often have angelic faces, and her happily-ever-afters can leave the reader uncertain of reality. In playing with her characters, Gibbons appears to play with society and even the reader himself. Her writing is not easily defined.
When Viola Wither finds herself a widow, parentless and very nearly destitute, she must accept the hospitality of her in-laws for her subsistence. However, the Wither household is a quirky one, yet Viola, with her quiet and rather doe-eyed vacuity, manages to navigate the excessive expectations of her father-in-law, the ineffectualness of her mother-in-law and her two sisters-in-law, one who is a rather mannish, outdoorsy, opinionated woman, and the other a dull, thin, conventional woman with strangled hopes from an overbearing father. Yet, in spite of the tedious country life she is forced to accept and Viola’s credulous and nascent view of the world, she somehow manages to find her Prince Charming in this unlikely place.
“It has been hinted that her nature was affectionate; now that it had received encouragement there was no holding it; she was in love, so much in love that she did not realize that it was Wednesday morning and the letter had not come; and that the man she was in love with was the legendary Victor Spring. Victor had now become Him. He was less of a real person than ever. She never once thought about his character or his income or his mother. She was drunk. She wandered about like a dazzled moth, smiling dreamily, and running downstairs when the postman came, crying: ‘Anything for me?'”
Right away, we notice that Gibbons fairy-tale has some rough edges, that will never be filed smooth. It is romance, but romance with an uncomfortable twist. While Viola’s Prince Charming is not only handsome, debonair and rich, he’s also engaged to be married. And although he is physically attracted to Viola, he doesn’t even seem to remember her name. His reaction to Viola after the ball is not one of an idealized lover:
“He was most strongly attracted to her, but not romantically. The intentions of the Prince towards Cinderella were, in short, not honourable: and as we have seen, he thought it the prudent thing not to see her.
However, this story is not only about Viola, and the Withers. We have a number of other unconventional characters who populate the pages of this unique novel: Hetty, Victor’s cousin who loves books and her family not so much; Saxon, the young, handsome chauffeur whose family has come down in the world, as he tries to manage his rather slovenly, yet sexually indiscriminate mother; the loud and dirty woodland Hermit who takes great delight in terrorizing the gentry with his insightful, yet indelicate observations; and many, many more colourful personalities. It’s a kaleidescope of the English country life of the 1930s, but while the surface is nice and tidy, underneath there are swirling passions, undisclosed sentiment, and hidden resentment.
Certainly the novel has a fairy tale flavour to it, sprinkled with hyperbole, but Gibbons ensures that she imbues it with a healthy dose of realism. In a lovely fantasy-style, Gibbons bestows on each character their heart’s desire, yet the outcome of their desires are firmly entrenched in the reality of the 1930s, and their desires can perhaps turn out not to be as desirable as first expected. On one hand, Gibbons shows incredible insight by investigating human desires, and then showing us how capricious the hand of fate can be, and how indiscriminate human nature can be, yet sometimes she doesn’t seem to like her characters, almost manipulating and abusing them in a way that makes you wary of liking them, even if you wish to. Reality descends on the characters, but often they seem to reject it, living inside a mental shell of their own making. It’s sort of an odd experience. I feel that I’ve witnessed an explosion of Dodie Smith meets Virginia Woolf and I’m not sure if I like it.
Having written over 20 novels, Gibbons was rather annoyed that none of her other works received the attention of Cold Comfort Farm, yet perhaps the criticism is somewhat deserved. While I enjoyed this book, I felt that it was difficult to really get to know any of the characters. Perhaps this mental barricade was due to the radical treatment that Gibbons gives her characters, pressing the loud pedal at one time, and the soft at another. Just when you think you have a character sketched, they behave in a way completely unexpected and you have to start all over again with a likeness. The characters themselves struggle not only within the definitions Gibbons imposes on them, but societal definitions and self-definition, so the read becomes somewhat unsettling. A fairy tale, yes, but a splintered fairy tale, where actuality rears its ugly face and blows away the clouds of expectations.
Prince Charming (1948) Rene Magritte source Wikiart
That man to man, the warld o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that.
The more I read of Robert Burns, the more I like his poetry. There must be something about my Scottish heritage that feels an affinity with it. In any case, in spite of its popularity, this was my first introduction to A Man’s A Man For A’ That, and I wasn’t disappointed. Burns challenges the popular premise that a man’s worth lies in his birth or employment or station, instead emphasizing that the measure of a man lies in his character. From the beginning of the poem, the poor man is first presented in a lowly, yet honest manner, but as the poem progresses, Burns gradually elevates him until he has pride of worth and is looking down on the respected gentleman.In fact, Burns actually inverts the class structure and hierarchies of rank, calling the poor honest man a “king”, and the rich “fools” and “knaves”. The qualities of honesty and unrewarded toils of the poor man make him inherently a man of greater character and therefore, worth, compared to the entitlements and indiscretions of the gentry. Burns egalitarian principles shine through with his claim,“that man to man, the warld o’er, / Shall brithers be for a’ that”echoing his radical politics and his sympathy for the French Revolution that was still in progress during the time of his song’s publication in the Glasgow Magazine in 1795. In fact, Burns must have been wary as to how this song would be perceived by his detractors, as he originally chose not to have his name attached to it. Here’s a wonderful reading by David Rintoul (of Doctor Finlay fame) of A Man’s A Man For A’ That:
“The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.”
I read this book for the Classics Club Spin #11. Was it my spin book? No, it was Mockingbirds, Looking Glasses, and Prejudices spin book but I decided to read along with her. Why? Well, her book was much shorter than my Spin book, and I couldn’t imagine getting through God in the Dock in the allotted time frame. Yes, I’m breaking the rules, but it’s on my Classics Club list, AND at least I read something!
The unidentified Time Traveller has built a machine that he believes will transport him through time. After he explains to his dinner guests the concept of his invention, he puts it into practice, returning the next week to regal them with the fantastic details of his adventure.
Having sent himself to 802,701 A.D., he encounters a race called the Eloi, a diminutive race that behaves in the manner of small, wide-eyed children, even though they are of adult growth. They live an uncomplicated life of leisure, simply eating and resting, and having no initiative or curiosity to speak of. Expecting some sort of greatly evolved being living in the future, the Time Traveller experiences disappointment and puzzlement at their almost backward evolution, wondering how their lackadaisical way of life is supported. But the Traveller’s perplexity turns to dread as his machine mysteriously disappears. Pursing the theft using reason and action, he eventually discovers another race, living in the depths of the earth; the Morlocks, hideous, pale, savage, troglodyte-like creatures who are in possession of his time machine. Unlike the Eloi land dwellers, these cavernous people exhibit an industry and an ability to reason, but in a primitive way that is only based on their survival. The Traveller discovers that they are providing the means for the Eloi’s rather vacuous paradisical existence using underground tools and machinery, yet they are also the predators of their parasitical neighbours, catching them for food during the night. Eventually, he concocts a plan to retrieve his machine, his only link with human society, his only means of returning to a civilized world.
Trained as a biologist, Wells developed an interest in Darwinism, and the significance of evolution is apparent in this work. The Eloi and the Morlocks, descendents of the human race, are presented as two species that have evolved on completely different tracks, separated by social oppression and elitism. The Traveller observes:
“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people —- due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor —- is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land …….. And this same widening gulf — which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich —- will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along line of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour ….”
The Traveller had expected unprecedented progress, but instead found a degeneration on each side, of intelligence, empathy, mercy, discipline, respect, etc., in fact most qualities which make us human.
Wells, a commited socialist, was extrapolating some of the problems faced in his own time, such as the widening gulf between the rich and the poor, and hatred or disdain along the same class lines. But instead of the poor simply being oppressed by the rich, Wells takes it a step further; the rich, in their mindless indulgence, become the prey. Wells intended to communicate not only these innate problems in society but the lack of success of the solutions that communism and utopian socialism offered for the betterment of society. It’s a very bleak picture of the future.
C.S. Lewis loved Wells’ fiction as a boy, but as he matured and his tastes became more discerning, he began to see cracks in their veneer. While he praised Wells for his original thought, and his desire to tackle the bigger questions, he found the works “thin” and “lacking the roughness and density of life.” I’m by no means a Wells expert, but so far I’d agree with that assessment. The book’s plot is entertaining but rather simple, lacking any subtleties or true character development. His characters often work on an elementary level, to illustrate the questions, but without being imbued with a life of their own. The questions themselves, while compelling, are treated quite swiftly, with the narrator often chronicling the issues instead of the reader becoming intimate with the characters and absorbing dilemma through their actions. While the pace might be useful for a movie, it doesn’t really give the reader time to process, so the ideas thump around in our heads a little but there is no true contemplating of them that leads to a greater understanding, or development that leads to possible solutions.
Ruth from A Great Book Study was also reading The Time Machine at the same time as Cirtnecce and I, so I’m including both of their insightful reviews below.
“Beyond all doubt it is best to have made one’s first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large — and, preferably, illustrated — edition of The Faerie Queene, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen; and if, even at that age, certain of the names aroused unidentified memories of some still earlier, some almost prehistoric, commerce with a selection of ‘Stories from Spenser’, heard before we could read, so much the better.”
A number of us are going to be reading The Fairie Queene beginning sometime in April and, considering the difficulty of the poem, I decided to do some pre-reading investigation.
Although C.S. Lewis is known for his books on theology, his actual expertise was in Medieval and Renaissance literature. He has a number of essays relating to The Fairie Queene, and when I stumbled on this one, I thought it a perfect beginning.
Lewis writes that the optimal experience with The Faire Queene is created if one reads it between the ages of 10 and 16, with a large illustrated edition and then grow with the work, starting with mere wonder at the story and advancing to a critical appreciation of it, cultivating a relationship with the work that will remain and flourish throughout life. But while advocating this process, Lewis realizes many may come to The Faerie Queene later in life, and he is writing to give guidance to the mature reader with his first experience of this great work.
Una and the Lion (c. 1860) William Bell Scott source Wikimedia Commons
Lewis instructions begin very simply; as the child does, one must begin with The Faerie Queene. Next, even if one does not have a large illustrated edition, one should imagine the book they do have to be a heavy volume that should be read at a table, “a massy, antique story with a blackletter flavour about it — a book for devout, prolonged, and leisurely perusal.” The illustrations would be not only fantastic and beautiful, but also wicked and ugly. While the book is new, it is also old, ancient yet original.
“All this new growth sprouts out of an old, gnarled wood, and, as in very early spring, mists it over in places without concealing it …………. And it is best to begin with a taste for homespun, accepting the cloth of gold when it comes, but by no means depending on it for your pleasure, or you will be disappointed ….”
Lewis reveals that Spenser’s friends wanted him to conform to the Puritan perspective of the time, being only a “servile classicist”, yet his poetry appeared to naturally break out of this mould. After being cautioned by a his friend on touching too closely on papist and medieval themes by his references to “Ladies of the Lake” and “friendly fairies” in his poetry, Spenser remained true to the natural appreciation he harboured for the Middle Ages, and taking “all his renaissance accomplishments with him”, produced The Faerie Queene. In blending the two ages, Spenser in effect “became something between the last of the medieval poets and the first of the romantic medievalists.”
As a child one may have a uncomfortable feeling that one has met many of The Faerie Queene’s characters before, but as a mature reader one has the apprehension to discover the moral allegory within the work. While critics aren’t in agreement as to how much emphasis should be placed on it, it is not necessary to analyze the poet’s exact meaning. Instead we should simply have an impression of regions within the poem that are not always what they seem.
Lewis ends with William Butler Yeat’s quote on Spenser’s House of Busirane, saying that Spenser’s characters are “so visionary, so full of ghostly midnight animation, that one is persuaded tht they had some strange purpose and did truly appear in just that way.”
And so I can now step into Spenser’s world with a little more imagination and expectation. I’ve already been exposed to the world of King Arthur and so I’m looking forward to some more fantastical adventures. And honestly, a few fairies would be very welcome.
This “fickle maid” relates her story, a story of love unrequited, but as she describes her inner conflict, we receive a vision of the maid, no longer young:
“Whereupon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of a beauty spent and done;
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven’s fell rage,
Some beauty peept through lattice of sear’d age.”
Crying despondently and wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, the maid tells a respectable man, who is grazing his cattle nearby, of her troubles.
“Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power;
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied
Love to myself, and to no love beside.”
She fell in love with a young man with a silken tongue and enchanting brown curls, who stole her heart in spite of other more questionable qualities.
“His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm
As oft twixt May and April to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.
His rudeness so with his authorized youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.”
She “gave him all my flower,” without being demanding of him like others. She claimed that “mine honour shielded” but she became an “amorous spoil.” Even though she knew of his other women, of his “foul beguiling” and of his illegitimate children, still she is taken in by his false charm. Yet, in spite of this sorrow that is a burden to her heart, she claims that she would be captivated by him all over again.
O, that infected moisture of his eyes,
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow’d,
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow’d,
O, all that borrow’d motion seeming ow’d,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray’d,
And new pervert a reconciled maid.
Young Woman in a Straw Hat (1901)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
source Wikiart
Popular in medieval and renaissance times, this “complaint poem” is written in rhyme royal (ababbcc), with seven lines per stanza in iambic pentameter, which I just encountered while recently reading The Brubury Tales (in The Feet’s Prologue), a take on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Because this style was unusual for Shakespeare, some critics question his authorship, yet there are parts of the poem that certainly echo of Shakespeare, and coincidentially the first stanza is very close to the first stanza of The Rape of Lucrece.
As for figures of speech, the following are included in the poem: alliteration, anaphora, hyperbole, metaphor, paradox, personification and simile. Could I identify them all on the first read? No, but that means that I’ll have to read The Lover’s Complaint again!
#/media/File:Salvatore_Rosa_005.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
