THES FAIRE MIRRHOUR:
NATURE
IN
THE FAERIE QUEENE. BOOK II

Thesis for the Degree of Ph. De
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSiTY
GEORGE H. NILSEN
1972

LIBRAP. 1’ ‘1
Michigan State
University

      

IHEE‘"

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THIS FAIRE MIRRHOUR: NATURE
IN THE FAERIE QUEENE, BOOK II

presented by

George H. Nilsen

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

k ’62 M/Z-«xz gt, yak/34%

Major professor

May 5, 1972 44__

Date

0-7639

‘-

  
 
 
   

‘ amomc av ‘-‘

‘ .. MIIéImeI‘IWe m

I LIBRARY amoens
I Sflllmn. ”MIMI

 

ABSTRACT
THIS FAIRE MIRRHOUR:
NATURE

IN
THE FAERIE QUEENE, BOOK II

By

George H. Nilsen

Modern studies of the Tale of Temperance focus on it as a depic-
tion of Nature, or of Nature and Grace, or of Vision and Reality,
or of Heroism. Each departs from the text in order to bring to bear
upon it various doctrines thought consonant with the allegory. This
study attempts an assessment of the aesthetic and thematic functions
of Nature in Book II without recourse to such doctrines. The find-
ings are presented as answers to these questions: What aspects of
Nature does Book II contain? What are their functions? What does
Spenser express through the medium of Nature images? How do such
expressions support or establish the meaning of Book II? For this
study, Nature is defined as the environment the poet creates for the
poem's narrative action and which the personages of the poem perceive
by their senses.

Book II contains aspects of Nature in four categories, so grouped
to facilitate collection and consideration. They are: Ground, Water,
Vegetation, and Atmospherics. These aspects serve, on the narrative
level, to locate the action of Book II firmly in a world closely

corresponding to the one we know. On the thematic level, images from

George H. Nilsen
this Nature express personages physically, mentally, and emotionally.
This relationship between personages and Nature is at times reciprocal:
Nature is expressed in terms of mortal traits, becoming herself a
personage. Personages and love, Nature and creation--”natura naturans"-—
are parallel.

Yet a significant number of occurrences, wherein Nature is not
as it was created, but unnatural, suggest that the environment reflects
the intents and aims of the personages. The three major occurrences
are Mammon's Cave, the Idle Lake, and the Bower of Bliss. The relation-
ship of these three places to the personages, and the imagery arising
therefrom, are, like the natural aspects of Nature and its images,
reciprocally expressive. Unnatural love and "natura naturata" are
here parallel: both are perversions.

The primary functions of Nature--natural and unnatural—-in Book
II are to express the traits of personages, and, by "poetic action",
to form a commentary on personages and on events. These functions
suggest that Book II is an anatomy of the human mind during the quest
for Temperance by the hero Guyon. Faery land is a representation of
the mind; its chief image, which becomes a symbol for the mind, is
the Idle Lake. We observe the mind by means of the Nature imagery
which expresses the tension between force--"natura naturans"--and
control--"natura naturata"; between indulgence and denial.

Guyon's direction of movement is not constant nor steadily pro-
gressive. He swings from extreme to extreme in describing a circle.
On this perimeter he encounters Love in various forms and effects,
from the rape of Duessa in Canto One to the damsels' invitation to
fornication in Canto Twelve at the fountain in Acrasia's Bower. The

damsels in the pool mirror Guyon's own latent lust. Heretofore denying

George H. Nilsen
his unity with the Nature of the poem, he comprehends that unity. He
discovers his own nature. Spenser uses Nature, and nature imagery, to

express Guyon's quest and his final achievement of self-discovery.

THIS FAIRE MIRRHOUR:
NATURE
IN
THE FAERIE QUEENE, BOOK II

By

L.

George H: Nilsen

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1972

‘00
(9“
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter
ONE NATURE: ITS SIGNIFICANCE AND A DEFINITION
TWO THE PRINCIPAL USES OF NATURAL IMAGERY. . .
THREE THE PRINCIPAL USES OF UNNATURAL IMAGERY. .
FOUR NATURE AND TEMPERATE MAN . . . . . . . . .
BIBL IOGRAPIIY I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 0

APPENDIX THE RENAISSANCE.THEORY OF THE IMAGINATION.

ii

Page

. 119

- 180

. 185

CHAPTER ONE

NATURE: ITS SIGNIFICANCE AND A DEFINITION

When Spenser calls "comely Courtesie" a "bloosme ... on a lowly
stalke" in the prologue to the sixth book of The Faerie Queene,1 he is
using an object in Nature to express an abstract entity: the relation-
ship between civil human beings. When in the same book Tristram's joy
at being sworn as a squire by Sir Calidore is said to grow

Like as a flowre, whose silken leaues small,

Long shut Vp in the bud from heauens vew,

At length breakes forth, and brode displayes his

smyling hew, (11.35)

a natural object expresses a human emotion. When the poet says that

For from the golden age, that first was named,

It's now at earst become a stonie one;

And men themselues, the which at first were framed

Of earthly mould, and form'd of flesh and bone,

Are now transformed into hardest stone, (V.Prol.ii)
he names the earth as the source of man, and expresses the quality of
men and of a whole era by a natural object: a stone. When he asserts

that love

of honor and all vertue is
The roote, and brings forth glorious flowres of fame(IV.Prol.ii)

he expresses by means of a natural phenomenon the strongest force in.

man's nature. When Britomart's change of appearance from one grieving

 

1The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorwn Edition, ed. Edwin
Greenlaw and others, 11 vols. (Baltimore, 1932-49), VI, 2. All quota-
tions from Spenser are from this edition.

2

to one ready for battle is likened to the change in the weather

As when a foggy mist hath ouercast

The face of heauen, and the cleare aire engrost,

The world in darkenesse dwels, till that at last

The watry Southwinde from the seabord cost

Vpblowing, doth disperse the vapour lo'st,

And poures it selfe forth in a stormy showre;

So the faire Britomart, hauing disclo'st

Her clowdy care into a wrathfull stowre,

The mist of griefe dissolu'd did into vengeance powre,

(III.iv.13)

natural phenomena are employed to express two opposite human moods or
emotions. And when Una and her train, along with the Red Cross Knight,
are driven by a sudden "hideous storme of raine" into a grove of trees
which, while sheltering them from the storm, causes them to lose their
way and in "the wandring wood" find instead Error's den (I.i.6,13),
natural phenomena are employed to express a state of mind in the
personages, and a moral attitude toward or commentary on personages
whose actions and states of mind parallel aspects of Nature.

In these illustrations from five of the six books of The Faerie
Queene Spenser expresses through the medium of Nature a concept of an
abstraction (the quality of courtesy); the outward signs of emotion
(Tristram's joy, Britomart's grief and rage); the characteristic trait
not only of men but of a whole age (both of "hardest stone”); and the
nature and power of love (the root of honor and virtue) through the
medium of Nature. Even the aspects of Nature depicting the setting of
that narrative action are significant beyond mere locale: personages
are lost in "the wandring wood." More generally, the pastoral or
bucolic setting of Book VI; the "saluage" habitat of Una's protectors
in Book I, of Timias' nurse in Book III, and of Lust in Book IV; the

sea--its surface, body, and bottom--in Book II; and the Garden of

Adonis in Book III all indicate the importance of natural phenomena as

3
a medium to convey the meanings of the narrative of The Faerie Queene.
To find none of this use in Book II would be surprising. We would
expect rather to find Nature used as a medium to express the same or
similar qualities, the same or similar states of mind and body, the
same or a similar environment with moral overtones as in the other
books. To determine whether or not the expectation is justified and,
if it is, to what extent Spenser employs Nature images as a medium of
expression in Book II--as a perspective in which to view the Legend of
Temperance--is the purpose of this study. For example, do Nature
images in Book II express Temperance as a flower expresses Courtesy
in Book VI? If this is a 'stonie' age, as the prologue of Book V
claims, will stone imagery occur in Book II? Will Nature images
express human emotions, traits, and states of mind as in the other
five books? Will Nature imagery comment upon or assert a moral atti-
tude concerning the personages and episodes of Book II? And finally,
what is the relationship of Nature images and the meaning of Book II?
Other studies, some encompassing all of Spenser's poetry, some

limited to The Faerie Queene, and some to Book II only, have scrutinized
the functions of Nature therein. At one extreme, denying the verisimili-
tude of Spenser's Nature in The Faerie Queene, is a study viewing the
work in terms of the medieval romance:

"In ... The Faerie Queene, the scene, the universe,

is not important except as something arbitrarily

controlled to establish the relationships of men

to each other and to God and to those they love."

Another finds Spenser akin to Chapman, of whom the writer asserts:

 

2John Arthos, 0n the Poetry of'Spenser and the Form of'Rbmances
(London, 1956), p. 91.

4

"Thus, the accurate rendering of externals was

not the poet's aim: he patternized these externals,

and from the relation of the resulting image to

the object in nature a truth was to emerge."3
Most other studies find Nature of considerable significance, though
none are concerned with verisimilitude. Evans states that "The forest
is the almost ubiquitous setting for the action, and, in all its
ramifications, the most sustained metaphor of the poem."4 Arthos
allows the forest some importance, but not for the action: "The
forest of the poem is the image of the poet's own uncertainties."5
Another study finds that the poet descends at times into an inner
Chaos but as a Creator seeking the source of Creation.6

Another scholar, speaking first of Book I, claims that "the idea

that the earthly is a symbol of the heavenly [Spenser] clearly does
adopt. It is of the very texture of Book I."7 He continues in a
footnote:

"Because the action of Book I (as of the other

books) takes place in the material world, the

order of nature, while its allegorical content

is experience in the order of grace, the lower

order stands to the higher throughout the book

in relation of shadow to substance."

Concerning Book II, Woodhouse states in the same article that "Book II

commences to explore the realm of nature with a new contrast in that

 

3Carl R. Sonn, "Spenser's Imagery," ELH, 26(1959), 156-170.

4M. Evans, Spenser's Anatomy of Heroism: A Commentary on The
Faerie Queene (Oxford, 1970), p. 53.

5Spenser and the Form of‘Romanoes, p. 65.

6Blossom G. Feinstein, Creation and Theories of’Creativity in
Ethish Poetry of’the Renaissance. DA 28(1967), 1394A.

7A. S. P. WOodhouse, "Nature and Grace in The Faerie Queene,"
ELH, 16(1949), 227.

5

realm between nature truly conceived and nature falsely conceived."8
The water into which Arthur casts Maleger, who may represent original
sin, symbolizes baptism; and hence

"As water symbolizes grace, earth symbolizes

nature; and among the various ideas shadowed

forth in The Faerie Queene is the presence of

some principle of evil in nature itself, and

especially in matter, a relic of the dark forces

which ruled in the chaos before it was reduced

to cosmos, and which still struggle to reassert

their sway. With these forces of evil in

nature, the evil in fallen man enters into

alliance, and in them it finds a support."

Woodhouse's article Sparked a series of articles intended to
support, modify, or refute his thesis. In one of those articles a
respondent10 considers two concepts of Nature: the first considers
Nature, or the world, to be in a state of progressive decay since the
Fall, when Adam's sin made the world, like man, imperfect. The other
considers the world not as decaying, though decay is evident in worldly
things, but as orderly; the decay is part of the order of life and
death, cyclic rather than directional. According to Miller, Spenser
believes that Nature is perfectible and has a teleological goal toward
which it moves; that there are not two orders of things (perfect heaven
versus mutable earth) simply, but that both are part of the same order;
even things mutable are in the end to return "to their owne perfection."

Mizener, concerned less with philosophical and theological doctrine to

be extracted from Spenser's poetry, considers rather Spenser's

 

8p. 208.

9pp. 221-222.

10M. Miller, "Nature in The Faerie Queene," ELH, 18(1951),
191-200.

6

conviction that man and nature are one:

"...the early Elizabethans ... tended to personify
the abstract forces of nature with the same
facility with which they applied personifica—
tions to ethical abstractions. ...the ethical
personification is Christian, while the nature

to which it is compared is given a Pagan personi-
fication. ...the general connection of the life
of man and the life of nature which supports

the initial act of personification is
unquestionable."ll

In even more general a perspective, Ramsey indicates that Spenser
uses nature images as a medium of expression when he writes:
"The great poets of the Renaissance ... share
... assumptions about nature: that nature is
... symbolic, full of personal-social-physical-
theological correspondences ... and these
assumptions appear whether they write of real
or imaginary or metaphysical fields (Agincourt
or the Bower of Acrasia or the Garden of Eden).
One of their great motifs is the overthrow of
nature, physical nature being stubbornly involved
in the moral world."12
It is evident that, while these studies are concerned with Nature
images as a medium of expression, Opinions differ concerning what is
being expressed. Arthos denies any intent to achieve a degree of
verisimilitude. The others seem to agree, more or less, by claiming
that Spenser uses Nature images to embody religious doctrine, and/or
moral allegory, or to mirror the higher order of grace, or to depict
the contrasting concepts of decay and order in the world. All see a

connection between man and Nature expressed in Spenser's poetry. Most

bring to their readings a frame or template into which they fit various

 

11A Mizener, "Some Notes on the Nature of English Poetry,"
Sewanee Review, 51(1943), 30,32.

12Princeton Encyclopedia of'Poetry and Poetics, ed. A. Preminger
(Princeton, 1965), p. 553.

7
episodes--e.g., Maleger's drowning equals original sin destroyed by
baptism--which they then claim to be the meaning of the poem. At least
one indicates that what Spenser expresses through the medium of Nature
images is his own confusion. This view of Nature in Spenser's poetry
denies the poet any control over his medium, and thus any discernible
meaning of Nature except that the medium has escaped the artist.

None of the studies demonstrate an exhaustive catalog of the
aspects of Nature appearing in Book II. None of the studies evince an
objective approach to those appearances they do cite, allowing them to
generate their own apparent significance in the immediate context of
each appearance, and then in the context of the whole of Book II. In
this sense the studies are selective.

No less selective are their perspectives. Arthos looks at The
Faerie Queene from the nature of the medieval romances, Sonn from
imagery, Evans from metaphor and heroism, Feinstein from theories of
creativity, Woodhouse from theology, Miller from cosmogony, Mizener
from cosmology, and Ramsey from assumptions about Nature common to
Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton.

What is required is, first, a catalog of all of the natural forms
appearing in Book II. Second, such facets of Nature must be allowed
to fall into categories or groupings which they suggest, in themselves
and in context. Any preconceptions about Nature or the meaning of
Book II must be disallowed, at least initially, or subjected to a most
rigorous scrutiny and evaluation before being accepted. And then the
text of Book II must support their inclusion. And finally, the other
strands of Book II must be shown to be consonant with what Spenser
expresses through the medium of Nature images. The narrative action

and its structure must be supportive of what is expressed through the

8
medium of Nature images. The personages must be considered not only
as pawns in a moral, phiIOSOphical, religious, or poetical game, but
as at least in part recognizable human beings. Not least, the commen-
tary by the poet, direct or indirect, speaking as chorus or as artist,
must be considered. To ignore the artificer's directions would make
the re—erection of his edifice a haphazard one.

In order, however, to collect, categorize, and discuss the func-
tions of Nature's forms in Book II, some definition of that Nature is
necessary. We must use some instrument to test what may or may not
be an aspect of Nature, so that the catalog will be complete, yet
discriminatory. In short, what is Nature? What does the term Nature
mean?

In the Renaissance the term had as many as if not more shades of
meaning than we have already seen claimed for the meaning of Book II.
Several approaches are possible. We can consider definitions of Nature
found in the body of Renaissance literature. We can consider defini-
tions of Nature derived from evidence in the body of the Renaissance
literature, and re-stated by scholars. We can consider commentary by
modern scholars on Nature as Operative in The Faerie Queene (and spe-
cifically in Book II).

A brief consideration of definitions of Nature from outside
Spenser's works reveals that some are apt and some are cumbersome. A
proper perspective on such definitions demands that consideration be
limited to those typical of, rather than exhaustive of, the Renaissance.
Perdita (The Winter's Tale, IV.iv.88) expresses a concept of Nature
which speaks for all of Renaissance literature when she calls it
"great creating nature"-~meaning the source and shaper of all living

things which grow. The aptness of this definition is evident when we

9
realize that it is current today--and was current in medieval literature
as well.

The concept of Nature as "creating" concerned philosophers down
through the centuries from the early Greeks onward. Although the name
for man's environment-dworld and cosmos--varied during this time, the
Latin "natura" for Aristotle's "physis" is the underpinning for the
term Nature. Attempts to explain the existing cosmos led inevitably
to attempts to explain its creation, or beginning. In a lucid and
spirited survey of these attempts R. G. Collingwood describes some of
these opinions. They show conflict over Nature as being eternal or
having been created in time; over the concepts of Nature as in continual
flux, or permanent; over the agency of creation being within the matter
of this world or outside it.13 The Greeks (except Plato and Aristotle),
tending to pantheism, believed generally in an immanent God or Creator;
for this concept the term "natura naturans" arose, perhaps first in
Averroes.14 For others, such as the Hebrews, whose religion posited
a transcendent Creator or God, the term "natura naturata" applies.

Still others, such as the Stoics, proposed matter and form, substance
and idea, actual and real, as coexisting. The terms were still in use
after the Renaissance. Spinoza (1632-77) declared "naturans" and
"naturata" to be coexistent in "natura." In general, "natura naturans"
implies active or productive nature; "natura naturata" passive matter,

or nature considered as phenomena.

_

13The Idea ofTNature (Oxford, 1945), Part I.

14James M. Baldwin, Dictionary of'PhiZosophy and.PsychoZogy
(New York, 1925), II, 140-141. The Stoic, most notable of the
Ph11080phies espousing immanence, called it "Logos."

 

 

v.‘

’5

10

Many philosophers, regardless of position or century, posited a
link between mind and Nature. The use of one's mind to understand the
intangible reality--as opposed to the sensible actuality--of Nature,
the frequent conclusion that mind was a satisfactory term for describ—
ing the creation of the cosmos, and the frequent identification of God
as Mind, Intellect as Creator, is rather provocative. It raises the
question of perception versus projection: whether or not man perceives
what his environment really is (behind the facade of changeable
actuality); or whether man is projecting his concept of self upon his
environment. As Collingwood, speaking of the Greeks, puts it:
"The world of nature as a whole is then explained as a macrocosm
analogous to this microcosm [of man as body, directed by mind]."15

A compromise between the extremes of immanence and transcendence
occurs in literature which, personifying Nature, makes her a goddess
acting as God's agent for creation. It places her in an intermediate
position between Creator and created; she is neither God nor mortal.
She appears so in Alanus' complaint of'Nature, and in Chaucer's
Parliament of’Fbes. In the Mutability Cantos Nature is personified
as a goddess or agent of God. The argument she is to settle concerns
the rank due Mutability. Change, over which the personage Mutability
presides, is apparently the master of the worldly realm. That change
does occur is undeniable, but it occurs in the tangible or actual world.

The change is the manifestation of an order which, intangible, is

comprehensible to the mind or reason; because it is unchanging, it is

15Idea of’Nature, p. 8.

11

the real. The senses perceive the actual change; only the mind can
perceive the reality of the order underlying the change.

The implication of order as underlying creation in Nature is
emphasized by E. M. W. Tillyard, who, citing Shakespeare, Hooker, More,
and Donne, finds this concept expressed "under three main forms: a
chain, a series of corresponding planes, and a dance."16 In a catalog
of the concepts of Nature determined in part from the literature of
the Renaissance, Lovejoy defines Nature as "The cosmic order as a
whole, or a half-personified power (natura naturans) manifested
therein, as exemplar... ."17 He distinguishes some twenty shades of
meaning. Wilson, using Lovejoy's catalog as a base, cites at length
the correspondences found in Renaissance expressions of literary
theory between the concepts of Nature and literary practice.l8 Though
both Lovejoy and Wilson are concerned with Nature as literary norm
while Tillyard is concerned with phiIOSOphic concepts of Nature
reflected in literary works, in all three studies are found definitions
which depict Nature as described by Perdita: as "great creating"; as
ordered and ordering; as linked with man and with God; as susceptible
to improvement by man in terms of external Nature and of human nature;
and, in Lovejoy and Wilson particularly, as objects to be represented

with verisimilitude in literary works.

 

16The Elizabethan world Picture (New York, 1943; reprinted
Vintage Books), p. 24.

17
444-450.

18
Harold S. Wilson, "Some Meanings of 'Nature' in Renaissance
Literary Theory," JHI, 2(1941), 430-448.

A. O. Lovejoy, "Nature as Aesthetic Norm,"4MLN, 42(1927),

12
Modern studies by several scholars dealing with Spenser, alone or

in part, likewise reflect concepts of Nature consonant with those
already cited. Woodhouse writes that

"Under the term Nature is comprehended the whole

range of existence from formed but still

inanimate matter up to and including man.

Nature ... is an ascending scale, at whose

successive levels are added first life, then

consciousness, then rationality and a moral

sense... ."19
Nature terrestrial is ordered creation which is nevertheless in con-
tinuous process of becoming, of change. LaGuardia agrees in a reading
which, as did Feinstein, equates the poet to God as Creator because he
creates a world as a locus for the action of his story.20 Knowlton
cites the evidence for Nature as goddess or agent of God in his study.2
Berger emphasizes an apparent shift from Fortune in Cantos One through
Six of Book II to the purpose, seemingly Providential, directing events
in the following cantos.22 A concern with the function of Nature and
the role it plays in depicting character is evident in a study by
Cheney.23 He imputes to the Red Cross Knight the fault of over-reliance
upon the evidence of his senses in comprehending the world about him.

Alworth, relying mainly on evidence outside The Faerie Queene, states

that "Spenser's concept of nature ... comprises among other topics, ...

 

19ELH, 16(1949), p. 218.

20Eric LaGuardia, Nature Redeemed: Imitation of'Order in Three
Renaissance Paems (The Hague, 1966), p. 55.

21E. C. Knowlton, "Spenser and Nature," JEGP, 34(1935), 366-376.

. 22Harry Berger, Jr., The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality
in Book II of'Spenser's The Faerie Queene (New Haven, 1967).

23Donald R. Cheney, Spenser's Image of'Nature: Wild Man and
.Shepherd in The Faerie Queene (New Haven, 1966).

13

The origin of life, and the concept of immortality."24 Kathleen
Williams makes of the poem a world of glass wherein "Spenser marshals
... the 'secret rules' in Nature, who speaks for God."25 Woodhouse,
in the article cited, states that

"At every level nature connotes a principle of

dynamism, a law and a norm; and on the human

level the law and the norm are recognized as

rational and moral. Thus ... the law of nature

holds sway over the whole natural order, though

its rational character can be apprehended and

its dictates consciously consulted, only at the

highest level, that is, by man."26

It is apparent that these studies of Spenser are in accord with
the general principles discussed by Lovejoy, Wilson, and Tillyard.
Nature includes all of the created universe, but especially the ter-
restrial. Nature is linked to human nature. Nature is orderly, and
ordered by some Authority. Nature is represented with more or less
verisimilitude in literary works. From Woodhouse's former comment we
recall that, in the welter of conceptions of Nature, confusion is
possible.
Some of the apparent confusion results from perhaps inadvertent

tangling of "naturans--naturata" concepts, or an insistence that only

one or the other is "true."

Woodhouse represents the "naturata" posi-
tion by such terms as "formed but still inanimate matter." Tillyard's
findings echo Wbodhouse's graduated levels (e.g., "corresponding

planes"). Lovejoy's use of the term "natura naturans" as a

 

24E. Paul Alworth, "Spenser's Concept of Nature," in His Firm
Estate: .Essays in Honor...Eikenberry (Tulsa, 1967), 11-23.

25Kathleen Williams, Spenser's warld of Glass: A Reading of
.The Faerie Queene (Berkeley, 1967), p. xix.

26ELH, 16(1949), 218.

14
"half-personified power ... manifested [in] the cosmic order as a
whole" represents the other position. Perdita of course with "great
creating nature" is also expressing the "naturans" position. Implicit
in the "naturata" concept is control; in the "naturans", self—direction
or independence. That is, the human mind as rational--able to under-
stand the laws by which a relatively passive phenomenal Nature is
ruled--comforts the human psyche which is often troubled by the
apparent unruliness of Nature and which is apprehensive of man's own

' We shall see

security in a world autonomous, or "natura naturans.‘
that in the course of Book II some personages attempt to control

Nature, including their own human nature, while others express dis-
orderliness, or inability to control themselves. Paradoxically, some

of the apparently successful attempts at control, as in the Bower,

mask a basic disorderliness, while recognition of Nature as creative
force--"naturans"--is a necessary first step, as we shall see, towards
control, or Temperance. Indeed, the tension between force and control
may be that Temperance. Comprehending, accepting, and achieving such
tension is not without confusion, as the Medina episode testifies in
Canto Two. Confusion, of course, for the personages of Book II, but

it is apparent that it is possible for readers--past and present--to
have "falsely conceived" Nature. It is also evident from Woodhouse's
final comment above that the appearance of Nature depends upon the
perceiver's rationality and morality. A personage whose mind is not
Operating rationally will not perceive "the law and the norm." From

the concern of all of these studies with the concept of Nature appearing
in the literature of the Renaissance we can surmise that how man under-
stands Nature is of major consequence to man, and that how the artist

employs Nature in his poem is of major consequence to the work.

15

At the same time, from the c0piousness of the commentary on the
subject of Nature in Renaissance literature, as well as from the all-
inclusiveness of the term's meanings, it would seem that agreement
among them on a definition of the term "Nature” is unlikely. Sidney
claimed that the poet delivers a golden world, improving upon the
brazen one of Nature, while Polixenes asserts that

Nature is made better by no mean

But nature makes that mean. 80, over that art

Which ... addes to nature, is an art

That nature makes ... [Grafting] is an art

Which does mend nature--change it rather; but

The art itself is nature. (WT IV.iv.89ff)
Spenser himself after a certain fashion depicts Nature as a personage
in the Mutability Cantos, but she who is paradoxically "Unseene of
any, yet of all beheld" (vii.l3), appears veiled: "Her head and face
was hid, that mote to none appeare" (vii.5).

Thus at one extreme we find a Nature, which, inclusive even of
the art of man, seems omnipresent and omnifunctional. Definition of
such a Nature seems impossible by reason of its generality. A defini-
tion among students of the meaning of the term Nature seems to draw
itself out into complexities the more it is attempted—-witness Wilson's
and Lovejoy's efforts. At the other extreme we find a nature whose
gender, and even more, whose very identity, is undiscoverable. In,
fact, her raiment is so bright that it "dazes” the eye, as the defini—
tions in Lovejoy, for example, daze the mind. Perhaps it is well to
begin with a definition recorded in the OED:

"The material world, or its collective objects
and phenomena, especially those with which man
is most directly in contact; frequently, the fea-

tures and products of the earth itself, as con-
trasted with those of human civilization" (IV.13).

16
This agrees with the popular concept of Nature: the trees, the grass,
the lakes and streams, the sun and wind that surround us out-of-doors.
It suggests external Nature (the material world) and the "creating"
concept (products of the earth); however, it omits much of what we
have seen was included in the Renaissance concept of Nature. In this
study, Nature is the environment the poet creates for the poem's narrat-
ive action and which the personages perceive by their senses. Although
it is most often identical to the world created and ordered by God,
it is sometimes unnatural, or perversely ordered.

The environment of Book II is like enough to the world we know
that we may categorize the natural forms under the headings of Ground,
Water, Vegetation, and Atmospherics. Ground or earth includes inanimate
objects such as rocks, and formations of ground such as hills and
valleys; water, that which runs or stands upon the ground or under the
ground; vegetation, flowers, grass, bushes and trees; atmospherics, an
event in or condition of the air immediately above the earth, usually
weather, but including light and dark. A fifth category of animate
beings other than personages will appear also. These beings-~birds,
lions, insects, et cetera--are encountered on or in the four categories
above. Commonly the poet employs them in similes.

With our definition of Nature the instrument of selection we will
observe such aspects of Nature in the four categories as appear in
Book II. The questions to be asked are:

1. What aspects of Nature does Book II contain?

2. What are their functions?

3. What does Spenser express through the medium of Nature images?

4. How do such expressions support or establish the meaning of

Book II?

17

This study will, to avoid prejudiced selectivity, consider nearly
all aspects of Nature as defined above, by category, in Book II. The
following chapter will consider natural Nature, and the images therefrom,
answering the questions concerning function, expression, and meaning
in accordance with them. The succeeding chapter will do the same for
unnatural Nature. Chapter Four will correlate the answers from Chapters
Two and Three insofar as possible. It will derive a concept of
Temperance growing out of a study of Guyon's character. From this,
the meaning of Book II should be determinable. This procedure, rather
than a canto-by-canto presentation and discussion, better suits the
apparent organization of Book II whereby several themes, or variations
on a theme, are developed side by side rather than sequentially. If
there is sequential development, it seems to be from natural Nature
to unnatural Nature; therefore the images are discussed in that
sequence. The meeting and resolution of the themes occurs in the final

canto .

CHAPTER TWO

THE PRINCIPAL USES OF NATURAL IMAGERY

In one sense, a catalog of natural objects in Book II, in cate-
gories more specific than our four of Ground, Water, Vegetation, and
Atmospherics, already exists.1 For any one of our four categories we
can obtain from Osgood's concordance a kind of statistical analysis
showing the total number of occurrences of, for example, "earth":
the word appears 19 times in Book II. When we add to that total the
occurrences of words equivalent to "earth" (ground, soil, land, etc.),
the total swells to 137. Of our three remaining categories, Water and
its variants occur 112 times; forms of Vegetation 128 times; and
Atmospheric events or conditions 251 times. Some of these occur in
figures such as similes and metaphors. Arthos has declared the setting
to be unimportant.2 The poet himself asserts "Faerie lond" (IIProl.iv)
to be the setting of the tale--hardly the world we know. "This-world"
word occurrences suggest rather an insistence on Nature-—the world we
know.

But word occurrence by itself can be misleading. One way in which

a statistical analysis is inadequate is that while it is indicative of

frequency over the whole of Book II, and indicates also that such

 

1Charles G. Osgood, A concordance to the Poems of'Edmund
Spenser (Washington, D.C.:Carnegie Institute, 1915).

2Chapter One, p. 3.

l8

l9
occurrences are sometimes in clusters in particular cantos, a simple
tabulation does not indicate the importance of a given natural object
in a given episode. Ground, for example, occurs 5 times in Canto
Seven, and 6 times in Canto Twelve, but the events of Canto Seven—-
occurring almost entirely in Mammon's Cave--make ground much more sig-
nificant there than in Canto Twelve, though the frequency of the word
is in both cantos nearly equal. Indeed, on occasion a form of Nature
as "place" becomes a focus in and for itself. The personage and event
are merely agents to bring into view a place--Phaedria's island, e.g.--
and the hero's reaction to that place. The place is the dominant
object.

As the foregoing comments imply, Ground and Water function most
commonly as place of the narrative action. Vegetation functions as
place less often, and Atmospherics almost never. In this respect,

Book II is similar to most narrative fictions, especially in Renaissance
as contrasted to medieval fictions, where it is commonplace for person-
ages to be extraterrestrial. Examples are Pearl and Chaucer's Troilus
and Criseyde. Spenser's setting is also similar to the world we know.
The events of the narrative occur on land and on'sea, and sometimes in

a forest. The occurrences are in places seemingly entirely natural.

We shall examine first that environment which, though perhaps corrupt
since the Fall, is as it was made by the Creator: natural.

Sir Guyon appears to us first as "Faire marching vnderneath a
shady hill" (i.5). Archimago deceives him with a tale whose allegedly
raped virgin is actually Duessa. Archimago has found her wandering
"in waste wildernesse /Lurking in rockes and caues farre vnder ground"
(1.22), "with greene mosse cou'ring her nakednesse." He assigns her

the role of ravished maiden in his plan to discredit Guyon. Archimago

20

then guides Guyon toward the alleged rapist (the Red Cross Knight)

Through woods and mountaines, till they came at last

Into a pleasant dale, that lowly lay

Betwixt two hils, whose high heads ouerplast,

The valley did with coole shade ouercast:

Through midst therof a little riuer rold,

By which there sate a knight with helme vnlaste,

Himselfe refreshing with the liquid cold. (1.24)
The encounter with the Red Cross Knight ended, the Palmer then guides
Guyon "ouer dale and hill" (1.34). The two "chaunst them by a forest
side / To pass" (1.35). From within come a lady's shrieks of anguish
"that through the wood reecchoed againe" (1.38). Guyon then "rusht
into the thicke" (1.39) to find a wounded lady whose blood "into a
deep sanguine dide the grassie ground" (1.39). The lady Amavia is
lying "Beside a bubbling fountaine...

Which she increased with her bleeding hart,
And the cleane waues with purple gore did ray. (1.40)

Nearby, a dead knight, who once rode "on greene gras" (1.49), lies
"Vpon the soiled gras" (1.41), dead from a drink of "this well" (1.55).
The lady, partly reviving and starting up at Guyon's words of pity,
casts herself down "to ground" (1.45) at sight of him. Guyon and the
Palmer, after Amavia's death, bury her and her knight Mordant in what
the poet calls "The great earthes wombe", lining it "with sad Cypresse",
covering"with a clod their closed eye" (1.60), and throwing into the
grave a lock "of all their heare / ... medling [the hair] with their
blend and earth." Then they "closd the earth againe" (1.61). And so
ends Canto One--the events of which occur in a place eminently natural.
Nature is used as a medium to express apparently no more than a commonv
place setting for an adventure story. The setting is rustic and wild.
No buildings or human artifacts except clothing and armor are present.

The scene is as the Creator made it.

21

Canto Two discovers a castle "Built on a rocke adioyning to the
seas" (12). The battle thereby between Huddibras and Sansloy, some-
times joined by Guyon, is not explicitly located on ground. Except
for the opening ten stanzas, where the locale is that fountain by which
Amavia and Mordant died, the locale of the narrative action is first
outside, then inside Medina's castle. Time is still normal:

Night was far spent, and now in Ocean deepe,

Orion, flying fast from hissing snake,

His flaming head did hasten for to steepe.
* * * * * * * * * *

At last when they had markt the chaunged skyes,
They wist their houre was spent... (11.46)

In Canto Three, Braggadocio Spies Trompart "sitting idle on a sunny
bancke" (6); at Braggadocio's threatening approach, Trompart "fell flat
to ground for feare" (6). Archimago flies "From off the earth" on

"the Northerne wind" (19), to obtain Arthur's sword for Braggadocio.
The vain knight-semblant and his new squire flee to and hide in "a
forrest greene" (20), where "Each trembling leafe, and whistling wind
they heare" frightens them. The sound of a born "that shrilled cleare /
Throughout the wood ... / And made the forrest ring" (20), coupled with
the noise of someone approaching "Through the thicke" (21), causes
Braggadocio to fall "to ground", where he "crept into a bush" (21).
Belphoebe partakes of the forest which is the locale of Canto Three:

in her hair "sweet flowres themselves did lap / And flourishing fresh
leaues and blossomes did enwrap" (30). Trompart thinks her a goddess
because her face does not "terrestriall shew" (33). She spies a move-
ment in that "bush" where Braggadocio is hiding "in shade" (35).
Emerging, he asks Belphoebe why she lives "In this wilde forrest"

(39), since "The wood is fit for beasts", but not for her. She replies
that the place to seek Honor is "In woodes, in waues, in warres" (41).

When she flees his lusty assault, Braggadocio dares not "Pursew her

22
steps, through wild vnknowen wood" (43); besides, he remembers that
she began to shoot an arrow at him "Whiles in the bush he lay." He
wonders aloud to Trompart why she did "Depart to woods vntoucht." He
boasts that no "earthly thing" can frighten him-dwhen Belphoebe's
horn sounded, he hid because he thought "it had beene thunder in the
skie" (45).

Whereas in Canto Three the scene is primarily the forest, in
Cantos Four and Five the action occurs almost entirely on a plain.
Guyon's encounter with Phedon and his tormentors, Furor and Occasion,
and with Pyrochles, begins when

He saw from farre, or seemed for to see

* * * * a * * s a
A mad man, or that feigned mad to bee,

Drew by the heare along Vpon the ground

A handsome stripling with great crueltee. (iv.3)
The bag Occasion provokes Furor to beat Phedon. She provides Furor with
"stones, wherwith to smite" (iv.5) Phedon. When Guyon grapples with
Furor,

and, haling to and fro,

To ouerthrow him strongly did assay

[He] ouerthrew himselfe vnwares, and lower lay, (iv.8)
as had Phedon, on the ground. Guyon, then rising, "to the ground
[Occasion] threw" (12). Having bound and gagged her, he finds Furor
easy to defeat: "him to ground he cast" (14). Guyon then addresses
Phedon, their victim, who is "Lying on the ground, all soild with bland
and mire" (16). Phedon's story explains his predicament. Betrayed in
love of Claribel by Philemon, his best friend, he was caught by Furor
as he was pursuing Pryene, Philemon's mistress and accomplice, "Through
woods and plaines" (32). A new arrival, seen at first "far away" as

Guyon had noticed Phedon at first, is Atin, "Whose flying feet so fast

their way applyde / That round about a cloud of dust did fly" (37).

23

The same plain is the scene of Guyon's encounter with Pyrochles,
Atin's master, in Canto Five. Like Atin's, Pyrochles' approach is so
fierce that the "smouldring dust did round about him smoke" (v.3).
His horse beheaded by Guyon's sword, Pyrochles is "Sore bruzed with
the fall" (5). Guyon is victorious when he strikes Pyrochles so hard
"That [he] streight on ground made him full low to lye" and "thus low
[him] laid in dust" (12). Allowed to rise, Pyrochles stands with his
"sandy lockes ... / Knotted 1n bloud and dust" (14). At Pyrochles'
request, Guyon unbinds Furor and Occasion, who promptly Pyrochles "in
bloud and durt deformed quight" (22). Furor "cast [Pyrochles] downe
to ground, and all along / Drew him through durt and myre" (23).

The place of the action then shifts as we go with Atin to the
Bower of Bliss. This environment, though seemingly natural at first,
is not so, for here Art, "striuing to compaire / With Nature" (v.29),
presents an environment which is not made by the Creator. All such
places we will consider in the following chapter. As we look back,
meanwhile, it is apparent that the action is never, up to this point
at least, allowed to escape what seems the natural world. In fact,
the environment persists noticeably in making itself known and felt.
If this be "Faerie lond", then that land is like to our own, nor are
we out of it.

The river which Cymochles desires to cross in Canto Six seems at
first natural (2). As he waits on the shore, however, Phaedria draws
near him in

A little Gondelay, bedecked trim

With boughes and arbours wouen cunningly,

That like a litle forrest seemed outwardly. (v1.2)
Phaedria's gondelay-top is a false forest, a miniature of those floating

islands encountered later on. The island to which they come is unsuited

24

to a Nature conceived as "economical" in the Renaissance-—i.e., shunning
"excess"-4but there is no evidence that it has been created or controlled
by artifice. Its purpose--it is "framed fit / Fbr to allure fraile
mind to carelesse ease" (l3)--allies it to evil ends such as was
Archimago's 1n deceiving the Red Cross Knight in Book I and Guyon in
Book II. But the place, and the objects in it, are all such as might
be found in the "real" world:

It was a chosen plot of fertile land,

Emongst wide waues set, like a litle nest,

As if it had by Natures cunning hand

Bene choisely picked out from all the rest,

And laid forth for ensample of the best:

No daintie flowre or herbe, that growes on ground,

No arboret with painted blossomes drest,

And smelling sweet, but there it might be found

To bud out faire, and her sweete smels throw
all around.

No tree, whose braunches did not brauely spring;

No braunch, whereon a fine bird did not sit;

No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing;

No song but did containe a lonely dit ... (Vi-12-13)
Phaedria leads Cymochles "Into a shadie dale ... / And laid him downe
Vpon a grassie plaine" (14). Her song, the import of_which is that
man should rest, since labor is futile and foolish, points to "The
flowres, the fields, and all that pleasant growes" (15) as example for
man, especially "The lilly, Ladie of the flowring field / And the
Flowre-deluce" (16). To fail to follow their examples, she asserts,

will earn the toiler nothing but scorn:

Who shall him rew, that swimming in the maine,
Will die for thirst, and water doth refuse? (17)

To the natural "strond" (19), where she embarked the now-sleeping
Cymochles earlier, Phaedria returns. Guyon there boards her vessel.
"But when as Guyon of that land had sight / He wist himselfe a-misse"

(22). His goal is the Bower. He knows from Amavia's tale that the

25

Bower is a "cursed land." To reach it he must traverse a "perilous
gulfe" (1.51). This island, reached easily, cannot be that of the
Bower, nor, natural as it is, can it be "cursed." So when they
"issewd forth on shore" and he sees that

The fields did laugh, the flowres did freshly spring,

The trees did bud, and earely blossomes bore,

And all the quire of birds did sweetly sing,

And told that gardins pleasures in their caroling, (24)
Guyon remains firm in his desire to depart. Cymochles, now awake,
battles Guyon on the way to the "strond" (27). Phaedria intercedes,
begging the two not "To shed their lines on ground" (32). When her
pleas succeed, a relieved Phaedria brings Guyon "to that further
strand", on the "shallow sand" of which "Guyon salied forth to land",
where Atin meets him "Vpon that shore" (38). Since Atin was left there
when Cymochles (enroute from the Bower) boarded Phaedria's bark, Guyon
is now traveling in the right direction. Ignoring Atin, Guyon proceeds.
He does not see what Atin, "Backe to the strond retyrd" (40), sees:
his master Pyrochles running pell mell "from farre" "towards the idle
flood" (41). Pyrochles and Atin are rescued by Archimago, who on the
"shore" (48-51) cures Pyrochles' inner fire, as his plunge into the
water could not.

Canto Seven Opens with Guyon traveling "through wide wastfull
ground / That nought but desert wildernesse shew'd all around" (2).
He finds Mammon exulting over his gold in "secret shade" of a "gloomy
glade / Couer'd with boughes and shrubs from heauens light" (3).
Mammon thereafter

Through that thicke couert he [Guyon] led, and found
A darkesome way, which no man could descry,
That deepe descended through the hollow ground. (vii.20)

Since none of the aspects Of Mammon's Cave are natural, we pass it over

for the time being.

26

Canto Eight Opens with Guyon fainted in that "shadie delue" (4)
where he met Mammon, and where the Palmer is called to Guyon's side.
When Archimago, the "Sarazin" brothers, and Atin arrive from "that
idle strond" where Pyrochles has been cured, Pyrochles states that
Guyon's prone position "where he now inglorious doth lye" (12) is
proof Of Guyon's "ill" life, and that a fitting burial for Guyon would
be to "be entombed in the rauen or the kight" (16). Arthur knocks
Pyrochles "to ground"; unhorsed by Cymochles, Arthur then fights on
foot on the ground; he knocks Cymochles "tombling downe on ground"
(45) to die there. Pyrochles he wrestles down "under him" (49) and,
beheaded, the Paynim's "body [lies] bleeding all the place" (52).
Guyon, awakening, sees the "two Sarazins ... / Whose carcases on
ground were horribly prostrate" (54).

Arthur and Guyon, as they approach Alma's Castle in Canto Nine,
"wasted had much way, and measurd many miles" (ix.9). The castle is
"plaste / Foreby a riuer, in a pleasant dale" (10). The two are
attacked by "villeins" who "swarmd / Out of the rockes and cause
adioyning nye" (13). Victorious, the knights are greeted by Alma,
who, like Belphoebe, has flowers in her hair, but not carelessly
strewn there; rather, she wears on her head "a garland of sweete
Rosiere" (19). The castle is built not "of stone and slime" but "of
thing like to that AEgyptian slime / Whereof King Nine whilome built
Babell towre", and "Soone it must turns to earth" (21). The "porch"
is of "hewen stone" and over it is a "wandring vine / Enchaced with a
wanton yuie twine" (24). Of the two maidens the knights court there,
one "a Poplar braunch did hold" (37), the other a "bird" (40). The
castle tower is "deckt with flowers and herbars daintily" (46).

Phantastes' chamber is "filled ... with flyes" (51). Memory's "books

27
[and] parchment scrolles [are] all worms-eaten, and full of canker
holes" (57) .

From the foregoing catalog of natural aspects, whose primary
function is as place for the narrative action, several conclusions can
be drawn. Some of the natural aspects--those of ground, for instance-—
are hardly more than commonplace, and thus seem without any special
significance. But when considered as a whole, they suggest an
insistence by the poet on a locale recognizable as the natural every-
day world. We have a firm sense of the "place" of the episodes. That
place is not any obviously fantastic world, but very like the real
one. The environment created by the poet, in and for the episodes,
is identical to that made by the Creator.

With our entry into Alma's Castle, however, the environment
becomes ambiguous. Up to the stone porch, we are in the presence of
natural substance, but it is "hewen" stone. The substance has been
altered by an artificer. Now Of course God is the artificer of the
human body/Alma's Castle. But none of His other creations are "hewen."
Also expressive of control other than the Creator's is Alma's garland
crown. It is of sweetbriar, but the roses are not carelessly joined
or placed: they are made into a garland crown. Paradoxically, what
we soon understand to be the human body and mind--certainly created by
God--is expressed in terms Of artifact. In spite of the vine and ivy
over the porch, the flowers and herb shoots atop the tower, and so
forth, the body is described as if it were a castle: rooms, hall, walls,
pictures, peOple, and medieval stateliness.

Moreover, we have previously been able to bypass episodes the
locale of which is unnatural: the Bower in Canto Five, the Idle Lake

in Six, Mammon's Cave in Seven. The narrative, which for the first five

28
cantos is plainly placed in a natural world, at times veers into the
unnatural, until in Alma's Castle the two are mixed. Where before we
could focus entirely on the natural, avoiding the unnatural, we are now
obliged to see both if we would see one. To this mingling of natural/
unnatural we shall return.

The circle draws even tighter in Canto Ten. Still in the human
mind, which is yet described as three rooms in a tower, we desert the
present and, with Guyon and Arthur, view the action of the past in
their two chronicles. We move backward to a beginning of Time, or,
as Spenser might say, to the "seed" of the narrative.

In the British chronicle the emphasis on the actual, and the
natural, is marked. At the Opening of the history, the people are
unnatural. But throughout the chronicle the poet's repeated mention
of "this land", "this realme" fixes the narrative of the past firmly
in the natural world. In fact, the British chronicle can be called a
historical geography. In the beginning, it was a "saluage wildernesse /
Vnpeopled, vnmanurd, vnproud, vnpraysd", nor was it an "Island" (5),
but connected to the continent. "Farre in land" dwelt "halfe beastly
men" (7) who though they held "this land ... / Polluted this same
gentle soyle" until "their owne mother"--Nature--loathed and abhorred
them, "All were they borne of her owne natiue slime" (9). Twenty-seven
times Britain is called a variant Of ground. When the description is
not insistent on ground, it is specifically the North, South, East, or
West of Britain whose history is recounted. Or it is specific as to
which of the provinces, the facilities (such as at Bath), or the cities
whose history it tells. Like the ground as locale of the narrative
action, this is of course to be expected, but the degree of insistence,

and the fact that this information is for a personage--Arthur--seems

29
noteworthy. Arthur is "quite ravisht with delight, to heare / The
royall Ofspring of his native land" and "Cryde out, Deare countrey"
(x.69).
Conversely, theAntiquitie of'Faerie hwuiwhich Guyon reads

focuses on the unbroken descent from Elf, with only a few general
references to the realm ruled by his and Tanaquil's ancestors:

It told, how first Prometheus did create

A man, of many parts from beasts deriued

And then stole fire from heauen, to animate

His worke, for which he was by Iove depriued

Of life him selfe, and hart-strings Of an AEgle riued.

(x.70)
The Elfin sire originated from a compound of beasts and heavenly fire.
The lineages of the two protagonists begin at opposites: Arthur's,
from a land polluted by the original inhabitants; Guyon's, from heaven.
That heaven is not the Christian one, but that Of Jove. Arthur's birth
results from an exercise of what must be called black magic: alteration
of Uther's appearance in order that he might enjoy Ygerne sexually.
The agent was Merlin. Guyon's ancestor, Elf, was animated by fire from
above. The agent was Prometheus. Like the narrative locale, the two
knights are fast-fixed in Nature. Both, like Alma's Castle, mingle
the natural and the artificial/unnatural. Such mingling of Nature and
Art, and, as we shall see, of control and violence evident in Arthur
and Guyon, to be apparent also in places unnatural and in Alma's Castle,
suggests that Nature and man's physical nature are close parallels in,
Book II.
Cantos Eleven and Twelve separate the knights, joined since Canto

Eight. Each encounters his supreme test far distant from the other.

Guyon and his Palmer depart for the Bower. As before, the poet is

specific concerning the place: "So to the riuers side they both

30
together far'd" (xi.3). The boatman "them awaited ready at the ford"
and "fast the land behind them fled away" (4). The poet turns from
them to Arthur's battle outside Alma's Castle, but not before saying
confidently that "wind and weather right / [Will] serue their turnes"
(4). It would appear that their journey to the Bower will be under
natural conditions.

Arthur is left to defend Alma's Castle. The battleground is a
natural one: the besiegers are so numerous "that all the land they
vnder them did hide" (xi.5). Time is still normal, or at least
expressed in natural terms: the besiegers "battred day and night"
(6,7,9) the five bulwarks (the senses) of Alma's Castle. His Opponent,
Maleger, rides a "tigre" so swift that "scarse his feet on ground were
seene to tred" (26). Maleger's legs, while he rides the tiger, "nigh
raught vnto the ground" (20). During the fight, pursuit of Maleger
is useless, for not only is his tiger swift--"Through hils and dales
he speedie way did make"--but nothing interferes with his passage:

"Ne hedge ne ditch his readie passage brake" (26). Like so many we
have seen earlier, Arthur is downed, "flat lying on the marle" (33).
The causes of his downfall are Impatience and Impotence, the two hags
serving Maleger. Maleger receives a blow from Arthur's mace so hard
"That groueling to the ground he fell, and fild his place" (34).
Arthur then feels "that field ... his owne", but Maleger springs up
and casts at him "An huge great stone" which seemed to be some "land—
marke" (35), as did Godmer throw "three monstrous stones" (x.ll) at
Canutus, in Arthur's chronicle. Arthur gives "ground" (36). He eXpects
that from a swordcut Maleger's "dead corse should fall Vpon the flare"
(37), but it does not. Arthur then squeezes Maleger, and casts him

"vnto the senselesse grownd" (42), but each time Maleger rises "From

31
th'earth" with "new spirits" (44). Remembering that "th'Earth [Maleger's]
mother was", Arthur resolves that he will "to ground ... him cast no
more / Ne him commit to graue terrestrial" (45). SO after again squeez-
ing the life out of Maleger, Arthur carries him "Aboue three furlongs ...
/ Untill he came vnto a standing lake" (46)-1.e., one in which the
water is motionless--and ends Maleger by casting him therein. The two
hags attending Maleger kill themselves, one by casting herself "into
that lake" (47). Arthur is led to the castle "by the beaten way" (48)
so that his wounds can be dressed.

Unlike Arthur's, Guyon's quest soon finds him midst unnatural
Nature. The poet intimates that the journey to the Bower will be
served by "wind and weather right" (xi.4), and at first in Canto
Twelve it seems so. Guyon sails "two dayes ... in that sea" without
any sign of "land" (xii.2). But when "the third Morrow bright" shone
on "the waues", "streight ... the raging surges reard / Vp to the
skyes" (2). From this irregularity, and from the boatman's naming of
the next hazard as the "Gulfe of Greedinesse" (3) and the poet's
naming "an hideous Rock" (4) as the "Rocke of vile Reproch" (8), it
is plain that the trio are in an unnatural world, nor do they leave it
during this final canto.

During this survey of natural Nature as place of the narrative
action several themes or concerns become evident. Spenser repeatedly
employs aspects of Nature as a medium to express an environment for
Book II that, with the exceptions of the Bower, the Idle Lake, and the
Cave, is the natural phenomenal world, "natura naturata", with only a
few widely-spaced castle-communities. In this environment of plain and
forest there are never any casual, insignificant encounters. The

countryside, relatively unpopulated, contains no "extras" whose only

32
function would be to make the locale seem a civilized one. The narrat-
ive deals only with people who have a function. Guyon meets most of
them. Population sparsity heightens the sense Of a Nature overshadow-
ing, at times, the personages. They seem to be diminished figures
moving against a background of a sometimes inimical Nature. The inci-
dence of defeat and death "on ground", hardly noteworthy in individual
occurrences, is subtly established by repetition of "groundedefeat"
sequences until, with Arthur, we are astonished that Maleger is not
defeated thereon but rather refreshed. Until then, Nature had been
a benign offstage personage, the "great mother of vs all", according
to Archimago (1.10); or she who was ashamed of the beastly Britons
(x.9). Nature becomes a present personage, an antagonist to Arthur.
She was "natura naturans", and is still, but not to be taken for
granted. And Spenser expresses those qualities of Nature through the
medium of Nature's own aspects.

However, the emphasis on Nature as ubiquitous and somewhat
formidable varies. Sometimes it is only an undertone. At Other times
the presence and force of Nature is strongly felt. In Canto Two, the
Palmer's dissertation on the "fruitfull pap" of "Dame Nature" intro-
duces Nature as a personage; she "feedes each liuing plant with liquid
sap" (6), and accordingly is everywhere busily present. But.then this
theme subsides during the Medina episode, to reappear strongly in
Canto Three, where Belphoebe meets Braggadocio. In Cantos Four and
Five the role Of Nature as ground subsides to an obligate for the
combat of Furor, Phedon, Pyrochles, and Guyon, strongly associated with
their ignominy and defeat. Personages who are shamefully intemperate
are struck "to ground", dragged on ground "through durt and mire", and

are covered with dirt or raise dust by their movements. In this they

33
act out the fiction related by Archimago to Guyon concerning the raped
maiden, whom the alleged rapist, the Red Cross Knight, "drew ... on the
ground" (1.11). This dusty plain then yields to the Bower, a place
unnatural.

The rhythm continues in succeeding cantos. The Idle Lake, only
moderately significant as natural in Canto Six, yields place to the
overpowering natural delights of Phaedria's island. We shall see that
the pattern of emergence-submergence holds for Nature unnatural. As
Nature natural is a potent force in Canto Ten, for example, so in
Canto Twelve Nature is, while unnatural, powerful.

Aspects of Nature natural are employed also as figures. That is,
while the poet's representation of the actual world uses Ground, Water,
and Vegetation to function as place, all four of the categories are
employed in imagery to characterize personages and to form a commentary
on them. A fifth category of animate Objects such as animals, birds,
and insects is additionally so employed. The result is an action,
complementary to the narrative action, called the "poetic action."3
The significance Of the poetic action will become apparent, as will
its parallel to the narrative action.

The poet's use of natural aspects to express poetic meaning is
ostensibly motivated to allow us to see "this antique Image" and land
which like its queen is so glorious that "feeble eyes ... would be

dazled with exceeding light" (IIProl.4,5) were it not wrapped in,a

 

3Berger, Vision and.Reality: "The fable has an action of its
own--the doing of the hero--and this action is not only presented but
interpreted by words, by another kind of action related to the under-
standing of the reader which may be termed poetic action. Poetic
action may be seen as a whole which includes the fable or, in the
aspect exemplified by a comparison, as a series of asides to the reader
about the fable." pp. 132ff.

34
veil. It is appropriate that the poet, inra work which presents Nature
so incessantly, should state that to allow us to see, he will "wrap
this antique image in shadbwes light" (IIProl.5). But lest the shadows
become too thick we must define "imagery."

An image is "a device of language by means of which one thing is
said while something else is meant."4 Since this is a study of Nature
in Book II of The Eaerie Queene, the devices of language considered will
be those in which the poet employs Nature. Imagery herein means an
aspect of Nature which is employed to say one thing but which means
something else. What such imagery says is either directly or indirectly
a statement about the personages of Book II. Many of these images limit
personages to the mortal, circumscribing them by this world, as is the
action's place. Most speak of certain traits of personages--their
appearance, their physical, emotional, and mental states-—and of
mankind in general. Some express a personage's attitude toward life
in general and Nature in particular. Some express the manner in which
personages act. Some personate Nature. As the perspective for the
narrative locale is from Nature, so it is for the personages.

A number Of images seem intended to identify Guyon, along with
other personages, as mortal, or to limit their habitation to this
world. Guyon calls himself one Of "the noblest knights on ground"
(11.42), but yet professes to be an "Vnworthy match" for Philotime,
since he is but an "earthly wight" (vii.50). Philotime is called "the
fairest wight that wonneth vnder skye" (vii.49), by her father Mammon,

self-styled as the "greatest god below the sky" (vii.8). Archimago

 

4Princeton Encyclopedia of'... Poetics, p. 365.

35

warns Braggadocio that Guyon and the Red Cross Knight "be two [of] the
prowest knights on ground" (111.15). Trompart is unsure whether
Belphoebe is "an earthly wight" (111.34), but Braggadocio addresses
her as "fairest vnder skie" (111.38). Mammon's minions are amazed at
sight of Guyon--"as earthly wight" (vii.37)--in the Cave. The press
around Philotime's dais is "of every sort [of people] ... under sky",
dressed in clothing so fine "That neuer earthly Prince" (vii.44) wore.
Tantalus, deep in the river Cocytus, calls himself the ”Most cursed of
all creatures vnder skye" (vii.59). Cymochles and Pyrochles swear
revenge on Guyon "Where euer that on ground they mote him find"
(viii.ll). Pyrochles cannot avoid his death at Arthur's hands "by
earthly skill or powre" (viii.43). Guyon is sure that Arthur can
attain meed Of grace fitting to "earthly Prince so soueraine" (1x.6).
Arthur himself is limited; even he, the "greatest and most glorious
thing on ground", needs help-—"So feeble is mans state ... / Till it
dissolued be from earthly band" (xi.30). The link of personages to
earth is most explicit in Alma's Castle-~the human body-dwhich is
built of "thing like to that AEgyptian slime" and therefore "Soone ...
must turne to earth; no earthly thing is sure" (1x.21). Even though
the turret (housing the human mind) of Alma's Castle is "lifted high
aboue this earthly masse" it still overlooks the body "As hills doen
lower ground" (ix.45). The Faery Queen herself derives her lineage
"from earth" (x.2) though by that lineage she "all earthly Princes ...
doth farre surmount" (x.l); and to describe her lineage the poet
desires

wings, with which from ground

My lowly verse may loftily arise,
And lift it selfe vnto the highest skies. (x.l)

36
Nor does the poet concentrate only on the middle, as it were, of

Nature. The extremes of source and final and of qualities, actions,
and personages are expressed in natural imagery. When Mammon asserts
that mankind is avid for riches, Guyon responds that "The antique.
world, in his first flowring youth" (vii.l6) was satisfied with what
Nature provided. In "later ages, pride, like corn-fed steed" (v11.16),
led mankind to seek riches. Relating that antique world to the present
one, Guyon states that

At the well head the purest streames arise;

But mucky filth his braunching armes annoyes,

And with vncomely weedes the gentle waue accloyes. (v11.15)
When mankind "fovnd / Fountaines of gold and siluer" (vii.l7) in the
earth, his downfall was assured: "riches ... [are the] roote of all

disquietnesse" (v11.12). Mammon claims that

Riches, renowme, and principality,

Honour, estate, and all this worldes good
* * * a * * * a *

Fro me do flow into an ample flood, (v11.8)

and to prove it shows Guyon his smeltery, calling it "the fountaine of
the worldes good" (vii.38). Guyon equates Shamefastness' heart to the
sea when he likens her "troubled cheare" (ix.42), rising from a "feare"
"That in the secrete of [her] hart close lyes," to "cloud from sea"
(ix.42).

More important for an expression of Guyon's character, including
its source; of his appearance; of his emotional and mental state; and
of his action--all in one image--1s the bird which Shamefastness holds
upon her fist. It is

the bird, which shonneth vew,

And keepes in couerts close from liuing wight,
... as yet ashamd, how rude Pan did her dight. (ix.40)

37
Scholars are of several minds about the kind of bird this is, but it
is probably the 1ynx, or wryneck,5 a bird which holds its head turned
away, and which "caput et collum celeriter reflectere et circumrotare
possit."6 What is important is that the bird "shonneth vew" not only
Afrom the eyes Of others, by keeping "in couerts close", but, its head
turned aside, shuns a direct view of that which confronts it. As such
it is a mirror of Shamefastness, who

SO long as Guyon with her commoned,
Unto the ground ... cast her modest eye. (ix.4l)

Then follows Guyon's remark comparing her blushes that "euer and anone
with rosie red / The bashfull bloud her snowy cheeks did dye" (ix.4l)
to "cloud from sea" (42). Shamefastness'embarrassment increases:

She answerd nought, but more abasht for shame,

Held downe her head, the whiles her louely face

The flashing bloud with blushing did inflame,

And.the strong passion mard her modest grace,

That Guyon meruayld at her vncouth cace;

Till Alma him bespake; Why wonder yee,

Faire sir at that, which ye so mush embrace?

She is the fountaine of your modestee;
You shamefast are, but Shamefastnesse it selfe is shee.

Thereat the Elfe did blush in priuitee,
And turnd his face away ... (ix.43-44)

Expressed in this image complex, which, extending through Shamefastness
to Guyon, exemplifies poetic action, is Guyon's "source": modesty,
the fountain of which is Shamefastness;his appearance: blushing like

Shamefastness;his emotional and mental state: a loss of poise, and its

 

5A diversity of opinions, none conclusive, are expressed in
Alice E. Randall, The Sources oj’Spenser's Classical Mythology (New
York, 1896), pp. 96-97; Variorum, II, 295-96; Henry G. Lotspeich,
Classical Mythology in the Poetry of'Edmund Spenser (Princeton, 1932),
p. 96.

6Joannes Rumpel, Lexicon Theocritum (Hildesheim, 1961), p. 134.

38

replacement with confusion; and his action: a turning away as do
Shamefastness and the bird. What confronts Guyon is a vision of
himself--from which he turns "his face away." We shall return to
this image, and its like, in.a discussion of Guyon's character. So
much for the source of personages in imagery.

The other extreme, that of apex, apogee, or summa, is likewise
expressed by Nature imagery. Guyon mistakenly (Duessa is far from
beauty's apex!) speaks in such terms to the raped maiden:

Great pittie is to see you thus dismaid,
And marre the blossome of your beautie bright. (1.14)

The poet speaks of Alma as in the "flowre ... of her freshest age"
(ix.l8), and the Bower Song equates the bloom of the rose to the high
point of mortal life (xii.75). Concord, says Medina, "winnes an Oliue
girlond for her meeds" (11.31); Braggadocio claims that all his noble
deeds are done to win a "laurel girlond" for his name "Aboue the Moone"
-(iii.38). Belphoebe's legs are likened to the marble pillars support-
ing the temples of the gods "Whom all the peOple decke with girlands
greene" (111.28). The "fairest Tanaquill ... they Glorian call that
glorious flowre" (x.76), says the poet of the Faery Queen. The ivory
gate of the Bower of Bliss depicts the "Argo, which ... / ... bore all
the flowr of Greece" (xii.44). The more realistic or ominous end of
acts and life is eXpressed by Arthur's hope that Pyrochles' "treasons
fruit ... shalt taste / Right sowre" (v111.31); Lear's approaching
senility is described as his "drouping day" (x.30); the combination

of blooming freshness with death is expressed in the Bower Song, where
in the blossom of the "springing flowre" one sees "the image of thy
day" (xii.74)--followed by its withering soon after. The besiegers

before Alma's Castle fall before Arthur's charge "As withered leaues

39
drOp from their dryed stockes" (x1.l9). Nature imagery then not only
limits the kind of personages present in the narrative by describing
them in terms of this world, but expresses their achievements, their
source, and their end--be it pleasant or grim.

Guyon, approPriately carrying a hyperbolically "sunbroad shield"
(11.21), asserts that the Faery Queen, whom he serves, "is the flowre
of grace and chastitie" (1x.4)-—thus joining a character and two
qualities in a Nature image--and that her glory is such that "As
morning Sunne her beames dispredden cleare" (11.40). He tells Arthur
that his shield's portrait is of the Faery Queen,

Whose glory shineth as the morning starre,
And with her light the earth enlumines cleare. (ix.4)

Like the Faery Queen, Prince Arthur is also the "flower of grace."
Archimago, who can tell the truth when it serves his purpose, adds
that Arthur is also the flower of nobleness (viii.l8).

When in adversity, personages are described by Nature imagery.
Arthur arises from the "marle" where Impatience and Impotence have
downed him "As one awakt out of long slombring shade" (xi.3l). Even
near-defeat does not divest Arthur of majestic stateliness as evoked
by the image of one even whose stasis is grander than most. For others,
however, their quality as expressed in Nature imagery is sometimes
poignantly moving. Mordant lies beside the fountain in Canto One
seemingly aglow:

rosy,red
Did paint his chearefull cheekes, yet being ded,
Now in his freshest flowre of lustie bed,
But that fiers fate did crop the blossome of his age. (41)

His lady Amavia, having stabbed herself in anguish at Mordant's death,

shrieks

40
As gentle Hynd, whose sides with cruell steele
Through launched, forth her bleeding life does raine, [and]
Brayes out her latest breath ... (1.38)
The same figure of raining blood characterizes the entire reign of King
Rivall in the British chronicle, "In whose sad time bloud did from
heauen raine" (x.34).

For the dissolute personages, the imagery has a tone of scorn.
Braggadocio is one of the "kestrell kind" (111.4); on Guyon's horse,
carrying Guyon's spear, he approaches Trompart "As Peacocke, that his
painted plumes doth prancke" (111.6), and when Trompart is cowed, "the
Scarcrow" Braggadocio is "prowd" (111.7). Braggadocio is fit "To

serue at court" since he, like any

Vaine-glorious man, when fluttring wind does blow
In his light winges, is lifted Vp to skye. (111.10)

The wind serves to characterize Phaedria also. She tells Guyon, in one
of several instances where personages, intending to sway others, utter
a remark in which they unconsciously describe themselves, that "The
wind [is] vnstable, and doth neuer stay" (v1.23). She intends her
words to convince Guyon that they cannot yet depart her island, but as
her former and subsequent conduct demonstrate, it is Phaedria who is
"vnstable."

For Acrasia, whose qualities are complex, the imagery is mixed.
When the Bower Song directs the hearers' fantasy to the "virgin rose"
as the summa of life's bloom, and then to its "bared bosome" in full
bloom (xii.74), and when shortly thereafter we see Acrasia in a gown
which "shewed more white" (xii.77) than it hides, it is plain that she
is the rose of the song, albeit no virgin. Her true quality is
expressed when her gown is described as so transparent that "More

subtile web Arachne can not spin" (xii.77). The Spider is a subtle

41
trapper, a devourer of her own kind, who, having injected her digestive
juices into her victim, sucks out the body contents, leaving only the
pale husk. Such, as we shall see, is Acrasia.

Nature imagery sometimes expresses the physical appearance of
personages perfunctorily. We read of hair which is "hoarie"; faces,
limbs, and breasts which are "snowy"; and cheeks which are "rosy."
They seem of little importance or significance. In a limited fashion
the colors red (of the rose) and white (of the snow and lily) suggest
red for evil and white for good. Alma wears a lilydwhite robe (ix.l9),
while Acrasia, her evil Opposite, is the rose of the song, and is
lying, in the Bower, on a "bed of roses" (xii.77). Belphoebe, in this
scheme, would then possess both qualities of evil and good, since her
cheeks are "Like roses in a bed of lillies shed" (111.22). But the
scheme breaks down when we see that the lily is associated with evil,
and sloth, in Phaedria's song (v1.16). Moreover, Acrasia's skin is
as white as "alablaster" (xii.77), and Cymochles is "On a sweete bed
of lillies ... laid" (v.32). Thus, while the "lily white" robe which
Alma wears may signify purity, white is not regularly employed to
express "noble" personages. Indeed, at times the reverse is true.
Arthur's blood, for instance, is "Red as the rose" (v111.39), and
Prays-desire, his essence as Shamefastness is Guyon's, is "fresh as
morning rose" (ix.36). Moreover, one of the damsels playing in
Acrasia's fountain pool "her two lilly paps aloft displayd" (xii.66)
to Guyon. Since she is attempting to lure Guyon into a lustful
response, her paps should, if red signifies passion, be, rather,
"rosy."

Yet, while single images are not always consistent, some congruence

is apparent in the images expressing a given personage. The combination

42

of red and white in Belphoebe's cheeks, taken to suggest the co-
existence of potential passion or evil with as—yet-ruling-good, is
consonant with the imagery of

Her daintie paps; which, like young fruit in May

Now little gan to swell, and being tide,

Through her thin weed their places only signifide. (111.29)
With a face so pure it is as "clear as the skie" (111.22), we see that
Belphoebe is a mixture. She is in a deveIOping state in which her
current state of purity, almost unthinking (as her instantaneous
repulse of Braggadocio's attempted embrace shows) may become more of
a struggle to maintain should she become more of a woman and less a
woodnymph. The stronger the passion, of course, the more praiseworthy
the victory, if gained.

The ambivalence of Belphoebe's character extends to the imagery
expressing her vision. Her initial assessment of Braggadocio is
formed from his superficial appearance, and from Trompart's report of
his "warlike name" (111.35). When he attempts to embrace her, she
holds him off with her "javelin bright" and then "fled away apace"
(111.42), a foreshadowing of Guyon's turning away from Shamefastness

as woman. Though in Belphoebe's

faire eyes two liuing lamps did flame,
Kindled aboue at th'heauenly makers light,

she does not seem particularly perceptive of Braggadocio's true baseness.
Her repulse of his lust acts out the remainder of the eye-image begun
above:

In them the blinded god his lustfull fire

To kindle oft assayd, but had no might;

For with dredd Majestie and awfull ire

She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desire. (111.23)

Sight is the primary sense by which personages apprehend Nature. In

turn, we view the personages often through visual images. Yet here the

43
eye imagery reflects the duality 1n Belphoebe's character of good and
evil. Cupid is the "blinded god" who cannot ignite lust in Belphoebe's
"two liuing lamps"; Belphoebe does not perceive Braggadocio's true
quality; and he does not see that his advances will surely be repulsed.
But for her defense, a blind Cupid would pierce her heart; her eyes of
heavenly power do not pierce Braggadocio's guise. Belphoebe, like
Guyon, often perceives poorly.

Belphoebe seems eminently apprOpriate in a tale of temperance.

So delectable she seems, the very incarnation of invitation to Love,
yet she is more adamantly resistant than any maiden in Book II. Her
forehead seems to be a broad white tablet "dispred / For Loue his
loftie triumphes to engraue" (111.24), but if Belphoebe remains as
she is, the tablet will remain blank. An apparent mixture of purity
and latent fruitfulness, she typifies the battleground for Temperance.
She and Guyon seem closely related.

Nor is there a complete correlation between brightness of appear-
ance for good personages and darkness for evil or intemperate person-
ages. Pyrochles' armor glitters as he approaches Guyon "as the Sunny
beames doe glaunce and glide / Vpon the trembling waue" (v.2), and
when both he and Cymochles reappear they are "armd as bright as skie"
(viii.lO). Acrasia's gown, already expressed in terms of a spider's
web, is further likened to the glancing light of_those "fine nets,
which oft we wouen see / 0f scorched deaw, [which] in th'aire ...
lightly flee" (xii.77).

Yet darkness and shadow sometimes do suggest suffering or evil.
Death makes "darke clouds" (1.45) appear on Amavia's eyelids. The
Palmer tells the Sarazin brothers that "cloudes of deadly night /

A while [Guyon's] heauie eyelids couer'd haue" (viii.24). Guyon's

44
coma is the result of an overlong stay in the Cave, where he intemper-
ately subjects himself to a test of denial. In the Cave, the light
was such as is on earth when the moon is "cloathed in clowdy night"
(v11.29). Atin, as does Pyrochles, appears in clouds of dust (iv.37,
v.3). Maleger combines the nightshade of death and the blackness ofv
a crow when we see him with "skin all withered like a dryed rooke"
(xi.22), and as a "lifelesse shadow" (xi.44).

Closely connected with images of physical appearance are images
of physical, emotional, and mental states. As with red and white,
dark and light, these images do not group themselves into one kind
for evil, one kind for good personages. Amavia's physical state,
already expressed by the bleeding hind, is expressed in terms of a
flood when Guyon stOps up the "floudgate" of her wound (1.43); also,
"drery death did sit, as sad / As lump of lead" (1.45) on her eyelids.
Her emotional state is expressed when Guyon asks her to tell him her
sorrow "if the stony cold / Haue not all seized on your frozen hart"
(1.46). Amavia parallels the nymph changed into the stone fountain,
who fled in "stony feare" of Don.Faunus (11.8). Guyon's heart "gan
wexe as starke, as marble stone / And his fresh bloud did frieze with
fearefull cold" (1.42) at sight of Mbrdant lying dead. His "mone",
the evidence of "inward paine", is like that of a lion who cannot keep
his inward mourning pent. The Palmer describes the fainted Guyon as
one with "cloudes of deadly night" on his eyelids, and "all [whose]
senses [are] drowned in deep senseless waue" (viii.24). Thus both
Amavia and the nymph, one in grief, the other in fear, are expressed
by the stone imagery, and Guyon is joined to them both by the same
imagery. "Stony" expresses Pyrochles' emotional state when, Cymochles

dead by Arthur's blow, he feels "the stony feare / [Run] to his hart"

45

(viii.46). And when Arthur casts Maleger to the ground, Maleger
bounces like "The stone-dead quarrey" (xi.43) of a stOOping eagle.

Tempest imagery is employed to express the emotional state pri—
marily, as we would expect, of intemperate personages. The Palmer
speaks of the "tempest of [Furor's] passion wood" (iv.ll). He adds
that "Wrath is a fire, and gealosie a weede / Griefe is a flood"
(iv.35). The poet expresses Cymochles' content with Phaedria by like
imagery:

So easie is, t'appease the stormie wind
0f malice in the calme of pleasant womankind. (v1.8)

Phaedria has a way with tempests. When Guyon and Cymochles fight, she
is able "to calme the sea of their tempestuous spight" (v1.36). It
seems curious that Guyon, ostensibly the Knight of Temperance, should
indulge in an excess of emotion--usua11y, the lust to fight. In this
as well as in the other images of "stony", "darkness" and brightness,
then, he joints the intemperate or evil personages. Yet it is he who
speaks to Mammon of the effect of riches on the inner man as storms
injurious to calm of mind:

Long were to tell the troublous stormes, that tosse

The priuate state, and make the life vnsweet;

Who swelling sayles 1n Caspian sea doth crosse,

And in frayle wood on Adrian gulfe doth fleet,

Doth not, I weene, so many euils meet. (vii.l4)
And the "storme of despight" the Sarazins brew over the prostrate
Guyon (viii.27), so expressed by Arthur; or Shamefastness' blushes
expressed, as we have seen, by Guyon's own image of "cloud from sea"
(ix.42), are far exceeded by the "tempest of [Guyon's] wrathfulnesse"

(xii.83), though perhaps righteous, as he tears down the Bower of

Bliss.

46
An abundant variety of Natural images, excepting Ground, express
a given personage's state of mind. They vary from the homeliest of
homilies to stately Homeric similes. As before, Guyon is caught.up
with the intemperate or evil personages in some of these images. Having
failed to secure Una's downfall, Archimago now more boldly pursues his
malice,
for well he kend,

His credit now in doubtfull ballaunce hong;

For hardly could be hurt, who was already stong. (1.3)
Conversely, the Red Cross Knight is "wise and wary", for "The fish
that once was caught, new bait wil hardly bite" (1.4). Archimago can
change his mind with ease compared to Medina's two sisters. Again,
expressed in homely terms is an intemperate or evil personage's state
of mind when Elissa and Perissa, denied by Medina the deep pleasure of
seeing Huddibras and Sansloy (their lovers) fight with Guyon over them,
or at their instigation,

at their second sister grutch

And inly grieue, as doth an hidden moth,

The inner garment fret, not th'vtter touch. (11.34)
Cymochles is "like an adder lurking in the weeds" (v.34), watching the
erotic games in the Bower; engaged thus, he is called the "shade" of
"that manly person" he once was (v.35) by Atin. In Arthur's grip
Pyrochles is as hOpelessly recalcitrant "as a Bittur in the Eagles
claw / That may not hope by flight to scape aliue" (viii.50). Earlier,
a crude directness of speech reveals Pyrochles character as well as his

hatred when he calls Guyon a "dead dog" (v111.15). Particularly vivid

is the activity in Phantastes' chamber of the mind/castle-tower, for it

47
filled was with flyes,

Which buzzed all about, and made such sound,

That they encombered all mens eares and eyes,

Like many swarmes of Bees assembled round,

After their hiues with honny do abound. (ix.51)

In hardly a better state of mind than Phantastes is Guyon-himself

enroute from his apparent escape from Phaedria's blandishments to his
encounter with Mammon. Ostensibly asserting Guyon's justifiable con-
fidence in his ability to maintain his course--not only to the Bower,
but presumably in the moral way of life-awithout help, the first
stanza of Canto Seven compares Guyon to a sea-pilot

well expert in perilous waue,

That to a stedfast starre his course hath bent,

When foggy mistes, or cloudy tempests haue

The faithfull light of that faire lampe yblent,

And couer'd heaven with hideous dreriment,

Vpon his card and compas firmes his eye,

The maisters of his long experiment,

And to them does the steddy helme apply,

Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward fly.
The image suggests that Guyon equals one "expert in perilous waue."
But Guyon's most recent journey on water must give us pause. The
poetic action of the simile comments indirectly on Guyon's mental state.
During his travel to Phaedria's island, the wave of the Idle Lake was

not perilous in itself, but Guyon nevertheless was in danger. For it is

A Harder lesson, to learne Continence
In ioyous pleasure, then in grieuous paine, (v1.1)

and Phaedria's island, as we have seen, is a place of pleasure. More-
over, she is, rather than a "stedfast starre", an erratic Lady "of
immodest Merth" (viArg). The "pilot well expert" "Vpon.his card and
compas firmes his eye", whereas Guyon "himselfe with comfort feedes /
Of his owne vertues and praise-worthy deedes" (vii.2). The "card and
compas" are the fruit of experience (the card) and a constant pointer

(the compass), whereas Guyon's experience with Phaedria demonstrates

48
rather his own instability and his lack of constant direction. One'
who leaves his reason behind (v1.19,20), lacks firmness with a flighty
girl (26), fights with her latest lover (29), and stops fighting at
her plea to change from war to love: "And in Amours the passing houres
to spend" (35), exemplifies rather that "his owne vertues and ...
deedes" are hardly "praisedworthy." "Foggy mistes or cloudy tempests",
especially the former, are the true images for Guyon's state of mind,
not the ”pilot well expert." Rather than "bidding his winged vessell
fairely forward fly", he has gone a markedly circuitous route over
water to the Opposite shore of a ford so narrow that Atin can see
Pyrochles across it (vi.43)--hardly the route of one who has applied
a "steddy helme."

Water imagery frequently expresses the mental state of personages
in Book II. Perissa, very much the forerunner of Phaedria, is "Full
of disport, still laughing, loosely light", showing

No measure in her mood, no rule of right,

But poured out in pleasure and delight;

In wine and meats she flowd aboue the bancke. (11.36)
Braggadocio tempts Belphoebe to come to court, where she may "swim in
pleasure" (111.39); Belphoebe speaks disparagingly of any vainglorious
courtier:

Whoso in pompe of proud estate, (quoth she)

Does swim, and bathes himselfe 1n courtly blis,

Does waste his dayes in darke obscuritee. (111.40)
MOst explicit is the water imagery expressing Cymochles' state of mind
as he luxuriates in the Bower. Atin, there to rouse him to revenge on
Guyon for Pyrochles' supposed death, finds Cymochles

In secret shadow from the sunny ray,

On a sweet bed of lillies softly layd,

Amidst a flocks of Damzels fresh and gay, (v.32)

delighting in the erotic sport so completely that

49
he has pourd out his idle mind

In daintie delices, and lauish ioyes,

Hauing his warlike weapons cast behind,

And flowes in pleasures, and vaine pleasing toyes, (v.28)
from which Atin, seeing him "Thus in still waues of deepe delight to
wade" (v.35), fiercely rouses him. We shall have occasion to recall,
when we consider the Idle Lake as Nature unnatural in the following
chapter, that what Cymochles has "pourd out" is his "idle mind"--that
is, his mind is water.

Nature imagery often directly or by suggestion expresses outward
show. It expresses the physical, emotional, and mental state of
personages. That imagery also describes a personage in action. As
in all Nature imagery so far cited, no clear correlation exists between
kind of imagery and kind of personages; yet, as before, traces of a
pattern do exist. The pattern is visible especially in the animate
Nature images.

Some of the images are so commonplace as to be insignificant.
"Thundring Jove" (v1.10) exemplifies these. Of the rest some are
nearly as commonplace, but, like the recurrence of Ground as place,
for example, support certain hypotheses when they are considered all
together. Mbst of the action images are those of Animates and Atmospherics;
those of Ground and Water are few. None are of Vegetation.

Archimago's action begins the narrative movement of Book II. The
expression of action by Nature images also beings with Archimago. The
spider-like arch-imaginer, when he views Guyon and the Palmer, "gan
weaue a web of wicked guile" (1.8). His story of alleged rape told,
Archimago assures Guyon that he will lead him to the alleged rapist "as
sure, as hound / The stricken Deare doth chalenge by the bleeding wound"

(1.12). Ironically, it is Amavia who, as we have seen, is expressed as

50

the wounded and bleeding deer (1.38). We are reminded.of Satan's vow
(Paradise Lost, IV, 110): "Evil, be thou my Good"--not realizing that
every evil act of his is turned to good and his efforts to thwart
God's will lead inevitably to the working out of God's will. Archimago
intends to lead Guyon to his downfall, but, as his imagery, borne out.
by later events, suggests, he leads Guyon the first stage of his
journey to Amavia and the beginning of Guyon's quest.

Archimago does not seem to mind characterizing himself as a dog.
To beta dog, however, is elsewhere a term of opprobrium, as when
Pyrochles thinks to heap scorn on Guyon (v111.15). The Palmer earlier
reproaches Pyrochles for being one of those who "barke at sleeping
fame" (viii.l3). When Atin re-encounters Guyon after the Phaedria
episode, he begins to revile Guyon

As shepheardes curre, that in darke eueninges shade,
Hath tracted forth some saluage beastes trade. (v1.39)

Sheep, gnat, and deer images form a matrix for intemperate personages.
Guyon and Arthur drive away their attackers on their arrival at Alma's
Castle "Like scattered sheepe” (ix.l4); these assailants are then
likened to a "swarme of Gnats at euentide" which

Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise,

it * * is * it it * *

That as a cloud doth seems to dim the skies;
* * t * * * * a a *

Till the fierce Northerne wind with blustring blast
Doth blow them quite away, and in the Ocean cast. (ix.l6)

The giants who lived in ancient Britain flew "fast as Roebucke through
the fen" (x.7); Maleger's two hags, Impatience and Impotence, are "swift
on foot, as chased Stags" (xi.23).

The imagery for the enemies of Alma's Castle, and therefore of
Arthur's and Guyon's, includes Atmospherics. From mere annoyances,

like the gnats, and from animal qualities of sheep-like fright and the

51
speed of wild deer, they become more elemental, more ragingly violent,
an ominous reflection of the power of Nature unstoppable. Whereas
Huddibras and Sansloy attack Guyon "As ... Beare and Tygre" (11.22),
and Furorfights Guyon "as a blindfold Bull at randon fares / And
where he hits, nought knowes, and whom he hurts, nought cares" (iv.7)
(certainly violent enough images), the combat between Huddibras and
Sansloy is turbulent as if "lowde thunder with amazement great / Did
rend the ratling skyes with flames of fouldring heat" (11.20). The
two Sarazins, Pyrochles and Cymochles, belabor Arthur's shield with
blows "thicke as stormie showre" (v111.35). The British Chronicle
speaks of invaders "Like Noyes great flood" (x.lS). The besiegers at
Alma's Castle, when Arthur sallies forth to fight Maleger, "at him let
fly / ... arrowes, thicke as flakes of snow", and attack him
Like a great water flood, that tombling low
From the high mountaines, threats to ouerflow
With suddein fury all the fertile plaine,
And the sad husbandmans long hope doth throw
A downe the streame, and all his vowes make vaine
Nor bounds nor banks his headlong ruine may sustains. (x1.l8)
On his shield Arthur bore their "heaped hayle", and they
him fell before,
As withered leaues drOp from their dried stockes,
When the wroth Western wind does reaue their locks. (x1.l9)
From images of violence for intemperate personages (frightening,
but who, as recognizable enemies, can be Opposed), the shift is to
gentle images expressing Acrasia in action. Already we have seen her
as a sinister parody of the "bloom" or "flower" of a quality, the "rose"
of a life whose goal is delight rather than honor. In the Bower she
is "her selfe now solacing / With a new Louer" (xii.72) named Verdant,

by whose name is expressed the very essence of beginning growth, of

greening:

52
right ouer him she hong,

With her false eyes fast fixed in his sight,

As seeking medicine, whence she was stong,

0r greedily depasturing delight:

And oft inclining downe, with kisses light,

For feare of waking him, his lips bedewd,

And through his humid eyes did sucke his spright,

Quite molten into lust and pleasure lewd. (xii.73)
The Nature image is immediately apparent in "his lips bedewd." We recall
that Acrasia's gown was of such light material as "the fine nets ... /
Of scorched deaw" (xii.78). "Seeking medicine whence she was stong"
recalls the figure for Archimago 1n Canto One: "For hardly could be.
hurt, who was already stong" (3). Her eyes "fast fixed in his sight"
implies the clutches of the spider already suggested by her dress as
the ”subtile web" of Arachne (xii.77); the web recalls that one of
"guile" which Archimago wove to entrap Guyon at the opening of the
narrative. The phrase "did sucke his molten spright" not only recalls
the spider sucking out the substance of her prey, and the liquid mind
of Cymochles in much the same position earlier (v.28), but reflects
a Renaissance belief that the sun drew up vapors and exhalations from
the earth.4 Acrasia here however is a parody of the beneficence of the
sun. Rather than creating or motivating growth, she kills, albeit in
the spiritual, moral, or abstract sense rather than the physical sense.
Left to her, Verdant will become sere; as desiccate as Maleger, the
"dryed rooke" (xi.22). Solicitous that Verdant should sleep, she yet
empties him of honor. As the sun.scorched the dew to which her gown.

is compared, Acrasia as sun-image scorches Verdant's nobility until it

is as evanescent as her gown. That such reversal of the sun's function-

 

4S. K. Heninger, Jr., A Handbook of'Renaissance Meteorology

(Durham, 1960), pp. 38, 48-49.

53
is congruent to the Bower as unnatural in other respects will be
evident in the next chapter.
Several bird images describe intemperate personages. Phaedria,
in brief, glancing images appropriate to her nature and action, "Some-
times ... song, as loud as larke in aire" (v1.3); her boat, guided by
her mind, "More swift, then swallow sheres the liquid skie" (v1.5) as
it darts on the Idle Lake. Maleger falls, when Arthur strikes him,
as does a "flying heron" when struck by "Ioves harnesse-bearing Bird"
(xi.43)--the eagle.5
The most extensive bird imagery, however, expresses Braggadocio

in action. His progress on Guyon's horse shows him ”As Peacocke, that
his painted plumes doth pranck" (11.6); later, he emerges from the
bush in which, frightened by Belphoebe's noisy approach, he hid himself:

As fearfull fowle, that long in secret caue

For dread of soaring hauke her selfe hath hid,

Not caring how, her silly life to saue,

She her gay painted plumes disorderid,

Seeing at last her selfe from daunger rid,

Peepes foorth, and soone renewes her natiue pride;

She gins her feathers foule disfigured

Proudly to prune, and set on euery side;

So shakes off shame, ne thinks how erst she did her hide.

(iii.36)

Braggadocio's re-establishment of his "natiue pride" as he "shakes off
shame" at once serves the normal function of images--to cause us to see,
as if we were present, a sight presented in words--and, by a combina-
tion of the action it presents with poetic action, expresses a personage

by that image. For a bird, the action is entirely natural and blame-

less. When the poet characterizes the bird, the commentary glances to

 

5So in Henry G. LotSpeich, Classical Mythology in the Poetry
of'Edmund Spenser (Princeton, 1932), p. 75; Alice Randall, The Sources
of'Spenser's Classical Mythology (New York, 1896), p. 75.

54
Braggadocio, who, unlike a bird, can be faulted for shamelessness.
Braggadocio merges into one with the "Fearfull fowle" who is "foule
disfigured."

Although the Palmer cares for the fainted Guyon "tenderly / As
chicken newly hatcht" (viii.9), the image, while expressive of Guyon's
helplessness, does not express his action. His superiority to
Huddibras and Sansloy in battle with them is expressed in a sea-
storm image:

As a tall ship tossed in troublous seas,

Whom raging windes threatning to make the pray

Of the rough rockes, do diuersly disease,

Meetes two contrarie billowes by the way,

That her on either side do sore assay,

And boast to swallow her in greedy graue;

She scorning both their spights, does make wide way,

And with her brest breaking the fomy waue,

Does ride on both their backs, and faire her selfe

doth saue. (11.24)

It is fitting that the Knight of Temperance be expressed by the use of
"two contrarie billowes." The image places him as the master of passions,
even if again in a battle context. In the only Animate simile expres-
sing Guyon in action, it is again not his prowess, but rather his use
of a force and rage not his own but which he turns to his own use, just
as, in the "troublous waues" image, he "Does ride on both ... backs"
of his Opponents. In his battle with Pyrochles, Guyon makes Pyrochles
expend his energy, husbanding his own, until Pyrochles is exhausted:

Like as a Lyon, whose imperiall powre

A prowd rebellious Vnicorne defies,

T'auoide the rash assault and wrathfull stowre,

Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applies,

And when him running in full course he spies,

He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast

His precious horne, sought of his enemies,

Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast,
But to the mighty victour yields a bounteous feast. (v.10)

55
By association with the lion image, Guyon in linked to a measure of
nobility-ébut the lion in this image is more shrewd than noble.

While Guyon's action is seldom expressed through Nature imagery,
Arthur's is commonly so. These images are in two clusters. The first
cluster expresses Arthur battling Pyrochles and Cymochles in defense
of the comatose Guyon (viii.40,42,48); the second, Arthur's defense
of Alma's Castle (x1.32,33,36). In the first, Arthur fights at a
disadvantage. His sword having been stolen earlier by Archimago (and
now in Pyrochles' hand, though it cannot harm its true owner), Arthur's
only weapon is his lance—-broken early in the battle. When the Palmer
gives Arthur Guyon's sword, however,

Glad was the knight, and with fresh courage.fraught,
When as againe he armed felt his hond:
Then like a Lion, which hath long time saught

His robbed whelpes, and at the last them fond
Emongst the shepheard swaynes, then wexeth wood and yond.

So fierce he laid about him, and dealt blowes
On either side, that neither mayle could hold,

Ne shield defend the thunder of this throwes.
* * * * * * * * * * s

As saluage Bull, whom two fierce mastiues bayt,

When rancour doth with rage him once engore,

Forgets with warie warde them to awayt,

But with his dreadfull hornes them driues afore,

Or flings aloft, or treades downe in the flore,

Breathing out wrath, and bellowing disdaine,

That all the forrest quakes to heare him rore:

So rag'd Prince Arthur twixt his foemen twaine,

That neither could his mightie puissance sustaine. (Viii-40-42)

Cymochles dispatched, Arthur then shrewdly allows Pyrochles to expend
his strength while the Prince, as did Guyon earlier, contents himself

with waiting out the storm of Pyrochles' attack:

56

As when a windy tempest bloweth hye,

That nothing may withstand his stormy stowre

The cloudes, as things affrayd, before him flye;

But all so soone as his outrageous powre

Is layd, they fiercely then begin to shoure,

And as in scorne of his spent stormy spight,

Now all attonce their malice forth do poure:

So did Prince Arthur beare himselfe in fight,

And suffred rash Pyrochles waste his idle might. (viii.48)

And the battle ends with Pyrochles helpless in Arthur's grip "as Bittur
in the Eagles claw" (viii.50).

Just as Arthur's force in action against the Paynims is expressed
in Nature imagery which suggests the monumental force of Nature itself,
so in his battle against Maleger (x1.32ff) the Nature images eXpress
the same elemental massive power incapable of containment. Temporarily
restrained when downed by the two hags, Arthur's resurgence is
volcano-like:

as a fire, the which in hollow caue
Hath long bene vnderkept.and downe supprest,
With murmurous disdaine doth inly raue,
And grudge, in so streight prison to be prest,
At last breakes forth with furious vnrest,
And striues to mount vnto his natiue seat;
All that did earst it hinder and molest,

It now deuoures with flames and scorching heat,
And carries into smoake with rage and horror great.

So mightily the Briton Prince him rouzd

Out of his hold, and broke his caitiue hands,

And as a Beare, whom angry curres haue touzd,

Hauing off-shakt them, and escapt their hands,

Becomes more fell, and all that him withstands

Treads down and ouerthrowes. (xi.32—33)

Frustrated by Maleger's continued refreshment from contact with
earth, Arthur first dodges the stone Maleger throws at him, then returns

to battle Maleger

57
as a Faulcon faire

That once hath failed of her souse full neare,

Remounts againe into the Open aire,

And vnto better_fortune doth her selfe prepaire. (xi.36)
Arthur's third attempt to kill Maleger drops Maleger to the ground so
forcibly that he bounces:

As when loves harnesse-bearing bird from hie

Stoupes at a flying heron with proud disdaine,

The stone-dead quarrey falls so forciblie,

That it rebounds against the lowly plaine,

A second fall redoubling backe againe. (xi.43)

Arthur's might is figured forth by means of lion, bull, rain—laden
clouds, volcano, bear, falcon, and eagle. Neither bull nor bear connote
nobility so much as raw power; like the volcano image, they inspire
awe at the irresistible thrust they embody. Lion, falcon, and eagle
do connote nobility; the lion especially, however, nears the bull and
bear images when he waxes "wood and yond." Nor is the force of the blow
the eagle deals the heron negligible: "it rebounds" from the earth.

Yet in the same images Arthur's control is expressed: in each--from
bull through eagle--the force is released only after a period of
restraint, of endurance; or, first effort failing, the attempt is
resumed. Out of these images then emerges an Arthur both mighty and
relentless when aroused. His control aligns him with "natura naturata",
his force with "natura naturans." Ultimately, "naturans" overcomes
thepunnatural.

One final function of Nature imagery remains. Heretofore, the
direction of such imagery has been from Nature to personages. Those
images serve to vivify, display, and comment upon personages. The
expression we are about to observe reverses that direction. That is,

Nature, heretofore expressing the personages, is expressed by human

traits. Such personation is by poet and by personages.

58

Again, some of the images which personate Nature are commonplace:
e.g., the "living aire" (IIProl.1,i.43). Nor is there seemingly any
significance in Archimago's calling upon heaven to witness that.
Duessa (as maiden) was the fairest ever seen (i.10), or that the
"northerne wind" blows "with blustring blast" (ix.lé). When we read
that Pyrochles is the grandson of Phlegeton "the sonne of Night"
(iv.4l), though, the image has import. It expresses Pyrochles, and
personates an atmospheric aspect of Nature. This personation by
itself is significant, though a conventional figure. Since it is
part of a pattern of such personation, it were well to consider that
pattern.

One segment of the pattern traces the outline of "the heavens"
as seeing and hearing. Archimago, calling upon heaven to witness
Duessa's beauty, implies that heaven has seen her and could, now called
upon, testify to her beauty. Duessa speaks of heaven as a personage
when she wonders why she should ever "henceforth desire / To see faire
heauens face" (1.17); Amavia is antipathetic toward a heaven which
she believes to be "carelesse ... of iust reuenge" and delighting to
"see sad pageants of mens miseries" (i.36). When she begins her tale.
of woe to Guyon she does so

With feeble hands then stretched forth on hye,
As heauen accusing guiltie of her death. (1.49)

Hammon-claims that his treasure has never been seen: "I haue [it] kept
in secret mew / From heauens sight" (vii.l9); Guyon wonders how one

can "hide [gold] from heauens eye" (vii.20). Though "heauens eye" is
commonly a worn image for "sun", all of these remarks seem to personate
that heaven where God rules; some, like Amavia's, suggest that heaven

to be as malicious and careless as are mortals.

59
Furthermore, some of the imagery expressing the lapse of_time, or

the arrival of a certain time, personates the moon and the sun. Amavia,
describing her pregnancy to Guyon, says

Now had faire Cynthia by euen tournes,

Full measured three quarters of her yeare,

And thrise three tymes had fild her crooked hornes,

Whenas my wombe her burdein would forbeare. (1.53)
Guyon tells Medina that since he left Gloriana's court "hath faire
Phoebe with her siluer face / Thrise seen the shadowes of the neather
world" (11.44). Guyon, relating his adventures to Medina and her
court, takes a long time:

Night was far spent, and now in Ocean deepe,

Orion, flying fast from hissing Snake,

His flaming head did hasten for to steepe.
* * * * * * * * * *

At last when they had markt the chaunged skyes,
They wist their houre was spent. (11.46)

The next morning Guyon rises with the sun:

Soone as the morrow faire with purple beames

Disperst the shadowes of the mistie night,

And Titan playing on the eastern streames,

Gan cleare the deawy ayre with springing light,

Sir Guyon ... / Vprose ... (111.1)
Arthur tells Guyon that he has searched for Gloriana for a year, personat-
ing the sun also:

Now hath the Sunne with his lamp-burning light

Walkt round about the world, and I no lesse,

Sith of that Goddesse I haue sought the sight. (ix.7)
After Arthur rescues Guyon from the Sarazins, they journey all day,
until "faire Phoebus gan decline in hast / His weary wagon to the
Westerne vale" (ix.lO). And when Guyon is to depart at last for the
Bower, he rises

Early before the Marne with cremosin ray,

The windowes of bright heauen Opened had,

Through which into theiworld the dawning day
Might looke, that maketh euery creature glad. (ix.3)

60

The moon, the sun, the personages-~all are travelers. The figure
of Arthur and the sun joins the two into a seeming partnership of
traveling companions, elevating Arthur, to be sure, but personating the
sun as well. Naming the moon Phebe and the sun Titan is conventional;
nonetheless, such personation is consonant with a Christian heaven having
a "face", an "eye" by which it can enjoy "sight", and which fosters
malice for Amavia. It is consonant with the pagan heaven which exper-
iences weariness at evening, plays "on the eastern streames" at morning,
is midwife to Amavia, and like the thoroughly human Morn, opens "the
windowes of bright heauen." Heaven as a house with windows recalls
Alma's Castle as the human body. It joins the heaven as house to the
body as castle, much as the travel companion image joins Arthur and
the sun. Moreover, in such personation, personages and poet join. Nor
do any of the auditors seem surprised at such imagery. They take it
for granted.

Even more closely linking Nature and personages are images of
Nature's earth-aspect as "mother." Archimago, with and by whom so much
of the narrative action begins and is continued, enunciates this theme
when, relating the story of the alleged rape to Guyon and the Palmer,
he avers the former maiden to have been the fairest seen "on the earth,
great mother of vs all" (1.10). Guyon and the Palmer, digging a grave
for Amavia and Mordant, open "the great earthes wombe ... to the sky"
(1.60). The Palmer, explaining to a puzzled Guyon the powers of various
bodies of water, states that

some were so from their sourse indewd
By great Dame Nature, from whose fruitfull pap
Their welheads spring, and are with moisture deawd. (11.6)

Guyon lays the guilt for later ages' pride on that "cursed hand" which

61
dug for riches in the earth, "the quiet wombe / Of his great grand-
mother" (vii.l7).

And again, as with the preceding images, the earth is the mother
of intemperate or evil personages as well as of the temperate. Maleger's
corpse, cast down by Arthur, "gaue against his mother Earth a gronefull
sownd" (xi.42); Arthur notes in puzzlement that each time Maleger is
downed, he does "freshly ... arize / From th'earth, and from her
wombe new spirits ... reprize" (xi.44). He then

remembred well, that had bene sayd,

How th'Earth his mother was, and first him bore;'

She eke so often, as his life decayd,

Did life with vsury to him restore,

And raysd him Vp much stronger then before,

So soone as he vnto her wombe did fall. (xi.45)
Nature again appears as a mother when the British giants of "antique
times" (somehow not peopled like the "antique world" of which Guyon
reminds Mammon [vii.l6]), are so filthily beast-like

That their owne mother loathd their beastlinesse,

And gan abhorre her broods vnkindly crime,

All were they borne of her own natiue slime. (x.9)
Archimago, then, though telling Guyon a lie about the Red-Cross Knight
as rapist, speaks truth when he claims brotherhood with Guyon in saying
that the earth is the "mother of us all" (1.10). And like the heavens,
the moon, and the sun, Dame Nature is personated: at times solicitous
(of Maleger) just as are Guyon of Amavia, Palmer of Guyon, Acrasia of
Verdant; at times repentant of and repelled by the monstrous Britons _
just as is Phedon repentant of his fury, and as is Braggadocio repel-
lant tquelphoebe. "Natura naturans" is unpredictable.

The catalog of imagery from natural Nature completed, we can now

observe the general functions of that imagery. Quite as the narrative

action-—except for a minor portion of Cantos Five and Six, nearly all

62

of Canto Seven, and very nearly all of Canto Twelve--occurs in a world
emphatically the natural world we all recognize, so the-personages are
expressed by Nature images. In fact, a number of images, for "noble"
and "ignoble", temperate and intemperate alike, limit personages to
this world of "ground" "under skye." Alma's Castle-—the human body-—
is explicitly of earth, and is to return to earth, as did Amavia and
Mordant. From the womb of earth, "the mother of us-all", proceed the
personages, and to her womb they return. The Nature imagery expresses
also the concept of source and summa: of the "antique world", of.
quasi-abstractions such as the riches of which Mammon is the "fountain",
of abstractions such as glory, spread by the Faery Queen like sunbeams.

Nature imagery in the categories of Ground, Water, Vegetation,
Atmospherics, and Animates expresses the qualities of personages, along
with their appearance, their physical, emotional, and mental states,
and their conduct in action. Nature, in a reversal of such direction
of expressive imagery, is personated—-expressed in terms of human
traits. Some of the images, such as that of the bird, express most
or all of these aspects as for Braggadocio and for Guyon. For Guyon
particularly, the image functions as does a mirror. Some of the-images
are "signs" of the personages: the little forest atOp Phaedria's
gondelay, for instance, which also prefigures the Floating Island to
which she transports Guyon. Such structural function of Nature
imagery, the subject of a later chapter, is observable also in the
"troublous seas" imagery, first used by Guyon in his debate with
Mammon, which he then "rides over" against Huddibras and Sansloy;
which he journeys over first figuratively with Phaedria and then
actually with the Palmer and the boatman in Cantos Six and Twelve.

Water approaches the symbolic as well in imagery for qualities, states

 

[‘1‘

f

In

C."

63
of mind, and action: Perissa overflows the bank; Cymochles "pours out
his idle mind"; Guyon's mind is drowned in "deep senselesse wave";
Arthur overwhelms his foes like a furious shower.

But there exists no patent decorum of image and personage. Both
Furor and Arthur, villain and knight, are bull-like; both Alma and
Acrasia are clothed in white; both Braggadocio and Guyon are expressed
by birds. Alma's assailants are gnat-like, Phantastes' chamber is
filled with flies. Such sharing of imagery, suggesting parallels
between personages, invites the investigation of parallels between'
personages in other respects--such as that of Shamefastness and Guyon,
which parallel, through poetic action, is rather obvious. The images
invite consideration of other parallels perhaps more subtle, such as
that of Belphoebe and Guyon, or of Alma and Acrasia, or of Braggadocio
and Guyon, or of Guyon and all other-personages.

Or even of Guyon and all Nature. We have seen that the focus on
personages from and through Nature extends, in the opposite direction
as though the "glass" were reversed, to a Nature herself personated.
She is expressed by images of mortal beings. When Guyon, amidst the
carnage wrought by passion, says "Behold the image of mortalitie"
(1.57), we might well conceive the poet standing beside him, saying,
"Behold the image of Nature."

Acrasia's gown, a veil expressed as a natural image, discovers
her without dazzling our eyes. So Nature imagery in Book II veils the
whole subject--Guyon's destruction of Acrasia--so that it may become
visible. The "shadowes" lent by the Nature imagery provide, as do
shadows usually, a perspective in which the relationship of objects
becomes visible. In Book II, the objects are the personages. While

visual perception is of great significance in Book II—dwhat the

64
personages do most of all is watch—-this study's ultimate concern is
with the vision enabled by the poetic action. That vision--"shadowes
light"--veils the whole subject in a natural setting wherein personages
and Nature are interexpressed. For what Nature imagery reveals in
the unnatural setting we must visit Mammon's Cave, the Idle Lake,

and the Bower of Bliss.

CHAPTER THREE

THE PRINCIPAL USES OF UNNATURAL IMAGERY

Two fountains, one of stone (11.9), the other "Of richest substaunce,
that on earth might bee" (xii.60), stand as the Alpha and Omega of Book
II. In a narrative which as we have seen emphasizes the natural, these
two fountains, both artifacts, are complementary. The first locates the
scene where Guyon takes up his quest. That stone fountain is the agent
which precipitates his quest: Mordant, having drunk of its water, ful-
fills Acrasia's curse (1.55); because of his death, Amavia kills herself,
leaving their child Ruddymane to Guyon's care, and their revenge as the
matter of Guyon's quest. The second fountain, in whose waters Guyon sees
Acrasia's naked temptresses play, contains the final temptation designed
to divert Guyon from his quest. Between these two fountains, both
artificial--the first created by the power of Diana, the second, by the
power of Acrasia--we encounter, along with Guyon, Mammon's Cave, the
Idle Lake, and the Bower of Bliss.

The Cave and the Bower are modifications of nature naturata by a
demonic artificer, perverting the Creator's work and His intent. In the
Cave, that artificer is Mammon; in the Bower, Acrasia. The Cave's
product is an alteration of a natural substance to make it useful to man:
its form and appearance reflect the demonic interference with gold in
its natural state. The gold is literally stamped so that coins take on
the appearance of mortals. The Bower, likewise an alteration of His work,
is more artful in that it pretends a form and appearance like that which

65

66
it perverts: the golden grapes, the golden ivy, of the Bower fountain.
The Cave's challenge to Temperance is overt; the Bower's, insidious. The
Idle Lake, while fictively an actual body of water, is the furthest from
His work. Like Archimago, who is the least actual of all the personages
in Book II-ehe can assume any shape at will--the Idle Lake seems more
nearly the creation, ab nihilo, by a demonic artificer. It is the least
natural. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine unnatural Nature
in Book II, marking its similarities to and differences from the natural
Nature examined in the previous chapter.

The Cave, the Idle Lake, and the Bower illustrate the earlier state-
ment that at times a place assumes the major role in an episode, rele-
gating the personages to minor, diminished figures moving against an
ominous backdrop. The emphasis on natural Nature as place of the narrat-
ive, as in Phaedria's island, is here complemented by the emphasis on
unnatural Nature as place. The place is the object of primary focus,
rather than a locale more or less subordinated to the narrative. The
major personage in each is the master/mistress of each: Mammon of the
Cave, Phaedria of the Idle Lake (in Canto Six; Acrasia in Canto Twelve),
and Acrasia of the Bower. Phaedria is in addition mistress of the island
bower in Canto Six, whose delights, although created naturally, are
unnaturally luxuriant.

The first indication that the Cave, the Idle Lake, and the Bower
are unnatural is apparent in the way to each, or on their perimeters.

The "gloomy glade" where Guyon meets Mammon is "Couer'd with boughes
and shrubs from heavuens light" (vii.3). Mammon, with "griesly hew",
smoke—tanned face, bleared eyes, sooty head and beard, "coleeblacke
hands" and "nayles like clawes", "yron cote, all ouergrowne with rust
... darkned with filty dust" (4), seems entirely at one with his

environment. Guyon rightly "him selfe [was] at the sight [of him]

67
dismayd" (6). We shall see that, as Phaedria's "litle forrest" tOp-
ping her boat was her "sign", indicating what lay ahead for Guyon, so
Mammon's appearance is the indicator of the Cave's atmosphere-—actual
and moral.
To reach the Cave Mammon leads Guyon "Through that thicke couert"
where they find

A darkesome way, which no man could descry,
That deep descended through the hollow ground. (vii.20)

Vastness deserted, yet evoking a sensation that throngs have but just
disappeared from it, is characteristic of Mammon's realm at first view.
He and Guyon come to a
larger space,

That stretcht it selfe into an ample plaine

Through which a beaten broad high way did trace. (vii.21)
A "beaten" road is the result of heavy traffic. But this road and
plain are unnaturally void of peOple, as was the desert "wilderness"
(vii.2) which Guyon traversed from the Idle Lake. When we read that
the highway "streight did lead to Plutoes griesly raine" (21), it is
quite clear that we are not in this world, but in the netherworld.

That the Idle Lake is unnatural is not so soon evident. With

Cymochles, we at first believe it natural. It is at first merely a
"riuer" (v1.2), the "deepe ford" (v1.4) which Cymochles desires to
cross. Yet soon thereafter Phaedria names it as "this wide inland
sea, that hight by name the Idle Lake" (v1.10). The poet also calls
it "that great lake" (11). The water, though Phaedria calls it a
"perilous bourne" (v1.10) with "rocks and flats", has a "yielding
waue“ (v1.5), and does "worke and play" about the bow of her boat (7).

In its first appearance the waters of the Idle Lake are subordin-

ated to Phaedria and her marvelous boat, which moves when she "turnd

68

a pin" and "was taught the way, which she would haue" (v1.5). The
Idle Lake intrudes its presence more forcefully during Guyon's first
journey thereon. On her way from her island, where she has left
Cymochles sleeping, back to the ford, where she embarks Guyon, her
boat "clefte / The slouthfull waue of that great griesly lake" (v1.18).
It has "dull billowes thicke as troubled mire" (20), not subject to
wind or tide to drive them out of "their sluggish sourse." Such a
lake, its dominant trait that of inertia, is unnatural; when we set
sail upon it once more with Guyon in Canto Twelve, we eXpect it to
reveal its unnaturalness in time, though, as noted earlier, it seems
natural at first. The only surprise consists in the violence of a
lake we had thought inert; that the trio should hear "An hideous
roaring farre away ... / That all their senses filled with affright"
and then see "the raging surges reard / Vp to the skyes" (xii.2) is
fitting for an unnatural sea.

The unnatural quality present in the Cave, and especially in the
Idle Lake, seems inherent. The Bower, however, owes its unnatural
quality to an external influence. Unlike the Cave, the Bower is
pleasant and even delightful; unlike the Idle Lake, its falsity is
almost immediately apparent. We first hear of the Bower in Canto One,
when Amavia describes it to Guyon: it is

Within a wandring Island, that doth ronne
And stray in perilous gulfe ...
*

a s * * * * * * *
The cursed land where many wend amis. (1.51)
We first encounter the Bower in Canto Five, where Atin finds Cymochles

lying on a "sweet bed of lillies" (v.32):

And ouer him, art striuing to compaire
With nature, did an Arber greene dispred. (v.29)

 

69

When Guyon and the Palmer arrive, they encounter

A large and spacious plaine, on euery side

Strowed with pleasauns, whose faire grassy ground

Mantled with greene, and goodly beautifide

With all the ornaments of Floraes pride,

Wherewith her mother Art, as halfe in scorne

Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride

Did decke her, and too lauishly adorne. (xii.50)

Phaedria's island of delights is very like Acrasia's, but lacks

the influence of Art. Phaedria rules over a superabundance of Nature
only:

It was a chosen plot of fertile land,

Emongst wide waues set, like a litle nest,

As if it had by Natures cunning hand

Bene choisely picked out from all the rest, (v1.12)
containing samples of the best that Nature possesses: flowers, herbs,

and

Trees, braunches, birds and songs ... framed fit,
For to allure fraile mind to carelesse ease. (v1.13)

When Guyon steps ashore on Phaedria's island,

The fields did laugh, the flowres did freshly spring

The trees did bud, and earely blossomes bore,

And all the quire of birds did sweetly sing,

And told that gardins pleasures in their caroling. (v1.24)
Only Phaedria herself is artful:

And she more sweet, then any bird on bough,

Would oftentimes emongst them beare a part,

And striue to passe (as she could well enough)

Their natiue musicke by her skilful art. (v1.25)

Whereas earlier, Nature imagery has expressed the states of mind

of personages, here Nature-in—excess employs delights to sway the minds
of personages. It is effective with Cymochles; not so with Guyon.

The delights eXpress or mirror Cymochles' state of mind; not Guyon's.

For Guyon, the sight of the island bower is a cause of anger:

 

 

70
But whenas Guyon of that land had sight,
He wist himselfe amisse, and angry said:
Ah dame, perdy ye haue not doen me right,
Thus to mislead me, whiles I you obaid. (v1.22)
Guyon is not wholly in possession of his wits, however, for when Phaedria

claims that they cannot depart, since

Who fares on sea, may not commaund his way,
Ne wind and weather at his pleasure call, (v1.23)

he accepts her words as truth, and remains, though "halfe discontent"
(23). We might expect him to demand his immediate departure, since we
know that "the flit barke, obaying to her mind", might go "as she did
desire" (v1.20); but Guyon does not realize Phaedria's power, nor the
true nature of the Idle Lake.

This unnatural Nature as place has produced its effect then on
Cymochles, but not on Guyon. Its product is the dissolute, wavering
mind. All three of the other unnatural places also have a product.

The product or artifact of the Cave is gold--a material substance. The
products of the Idle Lake and those of the Bower are both material and
insubstantial.

But a consideration of the products of these unnatural places
discovers an ambiguity or bifoliation in their nature and in their
representation. An example of this duality is the gold produced by
Mammon's crew. Certainly palpable--"round about [Mammon] lay on
euery side / Great heapes of gold, that neuer could be spent" (vii.5)--
the gold is yet, states Guyon, the "roote of all disquietnesse"
(v11.12). That is, in a figure deriving from natural Nature, riches
are the source of a state of mind--an abstraction. The gold or riches
are then, while a product--an artifact not of the Creator--yet a

source. Riches as source--but of "disquietnesse"--thus parallel aspects

 

71

of natural Nature as source such as the figure Guyon employs for con—
tented man in his first state:

At the well head the purest streames arise:
But mucky filth his braunching armes annoyes, (v11.15)

to express the quality of the "antique flowering world" (16). Called
"worldly mucke" (vii.lO), gold is of the same earth Archimago calls

the "mother of us all" (1.10); stamped as was most of the gold first
seen above earth--bear1ng "the antique shapes of kings and kesars"
(v11.5)--the gold, like personated Nature earlier, is now expressed

in mortal terms: it assumes shapes of "crownes and Diademes" (vii.43).
Art-—the coin-and-crown-maker's--has made a natural substance more
viable in the world of mortals; perversion and perfection go hand in
hand. The interrelation of man.and gold is plainer in the function

of "a great gold chaine ylincked well" (vii.46), up which ambitious

men strive to climb. A natural substance of Nature becomes, as arti-
fact, a means by which men paradoxically descend into bestiality as
they labor to rise (vii.46ff). Cold as an artifact thus functions with
a complexity not seen_in any of the images from natural Nature. The
product of an irrational--1n the purest sense-—desire, it is reciprocal
in initiating surrender to the passion of avarice.

Nor does the function end with the chain. In Proserpina's garden
is "a goodly tree ... // ... loaden all with fruit as thicke as it
might bee" (vii.53). The fruit is "golden apples glistring bright"
(vii.54). As Acrasia is the parody of the sun when she sucks up
Verdant's "molten spright" (xii.73), so are these apples the parody
of earthly apples: "On earth like neuer grew, ne liuing wight / Like
euer saw" (vii.54), for these apples, not limited in effect as is

the chain, spread deceit, enmity, and finally war on earth (at Troy)

72
and in the pagan heavens (the judgment of Paris) far above the topmost
“branch of the tree from.which they hang.

An artifact then is both substantial and intangible; that is,
both object and effect. It can parallel the expression of an abstrac-
tion seen in a natural object: the gold is the wellhead of evil. It
can be more complex and more inclusive than an image from natural
Nature, albeit having assumed a natural appearance, as have the apples.
But, like those natural images, the artifact ultimately expresses a
mental state of personages.

When we first enter the Cave, we see that Mammon's "houses forme",

 

though crude, is a golden shell

From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches hong,

Embost with massy gold of glorious gift,

And with rich metall loaded euery rift

That heauy ruine they did seeme to threat. (vii.28)
The unnatural ruin of the Cave by the imminent fall of the golden
ceiling suggests the intended moral ruin by the gold here so plentiful
that "both roofe, and floore, and wals were all of gold" (v11.29).
The yellow of the gold reflects figuratively by its imagery and by its
associations--by poetic action--the meaning of the Cave, and expresses
the baser passions of man. Such excess, were it of even natural crea-
tion, as are Phaedria's island delights, would, like hers, be unnatural.
But the Cave and all therein are artifact: the work of that "cursed
hand" which began "the quiet wombe / Of his great Grandmother with
steele to wound" (vii.l7): the hand of man.

The gold is a substance of earth, which, joined to the life of

man as artifact, arouses and mirrors the mortal sins of Avarice, Ambi-

tion, and Pride. The reverse is true of the stone fountain beside

which Guyon finds Mordant dead, Amavia dying, and Ruddymane a babe.

73
From the Cave, an inert substance moved among mortals; conversely,
the stone fountain was once a nymph who, fleeing Don Faunus, was
turned into motionless stone by a compassionate Diana. The Palmer,
in Canto Two, tells Guyon that

Vpon a day,
As she the woodes with bow and shafts did raunge,
The hartlesse Hind and Rdbucke to dismay,
Dan Faunus chaunst to meet her by the way,
And kindling fire at her faire burning eye,
Inflamed was to follow beauties pray, F‘
And chaced her, that fast from him did fly;
As Hind from her, so she fled from her enimy.

At last, when fayling breath began to faint,
And saw no meanes to scape, of shame affrayd, : 3
She set her downe to weepe for sore constraint, ' J
And to Diana calling lowd for ayde, L
Her deare besought, to let her dye a mayd.

The goddesse heard, and suddeine where she sate,
Welling out streames of teares, and quite dismayd
With stony feare of that rude rustick mate,

Transformd her to a stone from stedfast virgins state.

 

Lo now she is that stone, from whose two heads,

As from two weeping eyes, fresh streames do flow,

Yet cold through feare and old conceiued dreads;

And yet the stone her semblance seemes to show,

Shapt like a maide, that such ye may her know;

And yet her vertues in her water byde;

For it is chaste and pure, as purest snow,

Ne lets her waues with any filth be dyde,

But euer like her selfe vnstained hath beene tryde. (11.7-9)

In the Palmer's story are evident the functions of natural Nature

observed in Chapter Two for like episodes. The nymph was hunting in
a natural locale--"the woodes." She fled as fast "As Hind"--the image
used to express the speed of the British giants and Maleger's two bags.
The tears welling out of the nymph's eyes are "streames"; her fear is
"stony." Moreover, her mental and emotional state are perfectly
expressed by her present substance and her present action: she is of

stone, and the waters from that stone are "fresh streames" which flow

from it "As from two weeping eyes." Nevertheless, the nymph fountain

74
is an artifact. Diana, the chaste huntress and the patroness of
chastity, "Transformd [the nymph] to a stone from stedfast virgins
state."
To be consistent with the far-reaching effects of artifacts seen
in the golden apples of Proserpina's garden, the nymph-fountain should
influence men's lives. Most surely it has, for Mordant lies dead from

a drink from it, fulfilling Acrasia's curse (1.55). It is a contribu-

tory cause of Amavia's suicide. These effects are hardly to be expected

from.water so chaste, so pure. They seem, rather, evidence of the

 

water's virulence. If, as the Palmer asserts, the fountain's water

 

"ever like [the nymph] unstained hath beene tryde" (that is, proved r'
unstained), the water itself may be pure, but the guilt of Mordant's

and Amavia's deaths is a kind of stain on the waters. In fact the

waters have not always proved unstained, for Amavia's blood, flowing

from her self-inflicted wound, "the cleane waues with purple gore

did ray" (1.40). It is true that the water refuses to cleanse Amavia's
blood from Ruddymane's hands: Guyon "washt them oft and oft, yet

nought they beene / For all his washing cleaner" (11.3). There exists

in the representation of the artifact-image as well as in its effects,

as noted earlier, a duality. Guyon's state of mind--a confusion as

to why the infant's hands remain so bloody--is a reflection of the

reader's confusion. Either the Palmer is wrong, or the refusal must

be because the blood is on the hands of Ruddymane, for the same blood

the water first accepts, then refuses. An artifact natural in appearance--
the golden apples--has, by inflaming man's passions, caused strife,
turmoil, and war in individuals and in societies. Here, in the appar-
ently natural water of the stone fountain, the issue of an artifact--

the nymph-turned-stone-—causes like strife, turmoil, and war in

individual personages.

75

But the role of the artificer is considerable. Gold and water
unaltered in themselves are not evil. The gold is a catalyst which
precipitates suffering in man from his heretofore latent immorality.
The water likewise is pure; it precipitates suffering in its interaction
with sinful mankind. The function of gold (as artifact), and this
water (at least in Book II) is to actualize man's tendency to cause--
and then suffer from--disruption of contentedness. The poet's employ-
ment of the gold product and water from this artificial fountain
expresses that trait of personages in the narrative. The water of
the stone—nymph's fountain then does not influence man for evil--or
for good. It simply reveals.

But the water itself seems unnatural. Guyon assumes that the
water, like any natural water, will cleanse Ruddymane's hands. When
it does not, he assumes that it is because

blot of foule offence

Might not be purged with water nor with bath;

Or that high God, in lieu of innocence

Imprinted had that token of his wrath,

To shew how sore bloudguiltinesse he hat'th;

Or that the charme and venim, which they druncke,

Their bloud with secret filth infected hath. (11.4)
But only Mordant has "druncke", and the charm can only apply to him.
The Palmer, laughing "With goodly reason" at Guyon, who "cause not well
conceiued" has mistaken, explains that "secret vertues are infusd /
In euery fountaine, and in euery lake" (11.5). Some receive those

powers from

Dame Nature, from whose fruitfull pap
Their welheads spring ...

Not all waters, however, receive their powers naturally:
But other some by gift of later grace,

Or by good prayers, or by other hap
Had vertue poured into their waters bace. (11.6)

 

76
The nymph, we recall, did pray to Diana. And the "other hap" is the
power of Diana by which she created the fountain from which these
waters flow. The Palmer confirms that this water is unnatural:

Such is this well, wrought by occasion straunge,
Which to [Diana's] nymph befell. (11.7)

Rather than speculate on the theological implications, as some
have done,1 let us consider the parallels between the water and its I.
context, and the apples and their context. Water and apples, both
unnatural, issue from the earth, the "mother of us all." Neither are ‘

what they appear to be. The water's duality--pure, yet stained--

 

matches its deceptiveness. Drunk to assuage thirst, it kills; laved
on bloody hands, it refuses to cleanse. The former is Acrasia's doing;
the latter, Diana's. The two ladies are opposite: Acrasia, the witch
inviting erotic dalliance; Diana, abstinent chastity.’ Though they
oppose each other, the battleground is Love. The context of the apples
is also Love; not in the narrative present, as is Amavia, but in the
past as was the nymph. Hippomenes tricked "Swift Atalanta, when
through craft"--casting golden apples behind him as he ran--"he her
out ran" (vii.54). Like the nymph now a fountain, Atalanta refused
lovers. Acontius tricked a maiden.and "got his lover true" by tossing
into the temple where she sat a golden apple upon which were engraved
the words "I swear to wed Acontius"; she reading them aloud, the words

became an oath which she might not break.2 Paris awarded the golden

 

lE.g., Evans, Heroism, pp. 118-119.

2Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968 ed., 1.97. Frank Kermode,
Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne (London, 1971), p. 72, admits no discover-
able source for the myth amongst mythographers: "... this may be one
that Spenser made up himself."

77

apple to Venus, who rewarded him with Helen. The apples, like Acrasia,
express deceit in Love. The water of the stone nymph-fountain, like

the nymph herself, expresses rejection of Love, and of Amavia--literally,
the way of Love. Each artifact is created by and expresses the will of

a personage. Mammon creates the apples; his will is to degrade and
imprison Guyon. Diana, changing a flesh and blood nymph into stone,
makes her forever secure from Dan Faunus. She wills unfruitfulness, H
sterility. The significance is in the water, not the blood. The
water objectifies the gap between those who love, and those who do

not. Amavia's anguish will end; the nymph's is perpetual.

 

Acrasia's fountain and its lake are likewise expressive of her

‘1

will. Like the gold apples and the stone fountain, her fountain and
its lake are artifacts, yet seemingly natural. The fountain is

Of richest substaunce, that on earth might bee,

So pure and shiny, that the siluer flood

Through euery channell running one might see:

Most goodly it with curious imageree

Was ouerwrought, and shapes of naked boyes,

Of which some seemd with liuely iollitee

To fly about, playing their wanton toyes,

Whilest others did them selues embay in liquid ioyes.

And ouer all, of purest gold was spred

A trayle of yuie in his natiue hew:

For the rich mettall was so coloured,

That wight, who did not well auis'd it vew,

Would surely deems it to bee yuie trew:

Low his lasciuious armes adown did creepe,

That themselues dipping in the siluer dew,

Their fleecy flowres they tenderly did steepe,
Which drops of Christall seemd for wantones to weep.

Infinit streames continually did well

Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see,

The which into an ample lauer fell,

And shortly grew to so great quantitie,

That like a litle lake it seemd to bee;‘

Whose depth exceeded not three cubits hight,

That through the waues one might the bottom see,

All pau'd beneath with Iaspar shining bright,

That seemd the fountaine in that sea did sayle vpright.

78

And all the margent round about was set,
With shady Laurell trees, thence to defend
The sunny beames, which on the billowes bet. (xii.60—63)

Its environment, described as we enter the Bower area, prepares us for
the fountain as unnatural. The Atmospherics of the Bower site are in
a state of perpetual pleasant arrest:

Thereto the Heauens alwayes Iouiall,
Lookt on them louely, still in stedfast state,
Ne suffred storme nor frost on them to fall, a
Their-tender buds or leaues to violate,
Nor scorching heat, nor cold intemperate,
T'afflict the creatures, which therein did dwell,
But the milde aire with season moderate
Gently attempred, and disposd so well,
That still it breathed forth sweet spirit and
holesome smell. (xii.51)

 

I" ’

The other aspects of Nature in the Bower--
The painted flowres, the trees vpshooting hye,
The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,
The trembling groues, the Christall running by--
are the result of "The art, which all that wrought" (58).

We are not surprised then that the fountain and its lake are arti- .
facts as well. Strikingly apparent is the same two-fold character
evident in the stone nymph and the golden apples. The fountain is
transparent: "The siluer flood / Through euery channel running one
might see." Yet it is substantial: "Of richest substaunce that on

' some like

earth might bee." Combined upon it are "curious imageree,‘
"shapes of naked boyes", and ivy "of purest gold" yet in its "natiue
hew." The lake supplied by "Infinit streames" is yet not deep but
shallow: "one might the bottom see." The bottom is a reflector: "All
pau'd ... with Iaspar shining bright."

Acrasia's will is revealed by the two maidens who romp in the

pool. Again, the subject is a guise of Love: the two naked damsels,

at times under water, would

79

Then suddeinly both ... themselues vnhele,
And th'amarous sweet spoiles to greedy eyes reuele.

As that faire Starre, the messenger of morne,

His deawy face out of the sea doth reare,

Or as the Cyprian goddesse, newly borne

Of th'Oceans fruitfull froth, did first appeare,

Such seemed they ... (Xii-64r65)

The "messenger of morne" is usually Venus. "His deawy face", while a
common neuter possessive being displaced by "its" during the 16th
century, also suggests Aphroditos, the bearded Venus.3 The allusion
in "the Cyprian goddesse" is certainly to Venus--not Venus Urania,
nor even Venus Genetrix, but Venus Meretrix. For
when they spide the knight to slacke his pace,

Them to behold, and in his sparkling face

The secret signes of kindled lust appeare,

Their wanton meriments they did encreace,

And to him beckned, to approch more neare,

And shewd him many sights, that courage cold
could reare. (xii.68)

 

Acrasia's will is to degrade Guyon. The naked damsels arouse "lust";
they draw him toward the water wherein, once drowned, he will desist
from his quest to avenge Mordant and Amavia upon Acrasia.

Actual drowning, actual near-drowning, and figurative drowning
recur in Book II significantly. Drowning, and the water in which it
takes place, become symbolic of personages' mental and emotional
states. A symbol is an image "presented in such a way as to ...

encourage a more than merely literal interpretation."4 Evans, for

example, speaking of The Faerie Queene as a whole, says that the forest

"... is a sinister symbol, drawing its significance from the primitive.

 

3Jean Seznec, The Survival of’the Pagan Gods (New York, 1961),
p. 252‘.

4Princeton Encyclopedia...Poetics, p.834.

80

roots of our nature."5 Spenser employs water symbolically as the name
of the "great inland sea" indicates: the Idle Lake. The Idle Lake
is a "something else" which we "attempt to read through its sensible
imitation"6 as a real lake. In contrast to allegory, which personates
the "given"-passions (e.g., Horror et alia in Canto Seven, stanzas
22ff.), the symbol "leaves the given to find that which is more real.”7
In short, to be allegorical, the Idle Lake would have to be a personage: fin
Idleness.

But Spenser employs the Nature image to get to something more

real in the sense of essential, unchanging, or true, not actual: a

 

mental state of personages. Water as symbol of mind--the nonactual-— V
is consonant with water, or the journey over water, as symbolic of
entrance into the Other world, or the Other World itself in Medieval
Romances. The Other World is a place where "the normal operations of
time, space, and logical connection are suspended."8 Normal the Idle
Lake is not-wwind and tide do not affect it (v1.20).
Not only is the water itself sluggish, but many of the personages
encountered on its surface are purposeless and slothful. Phaedria, like
the Floating Islands themselves, is aimless; her song celebrates idle-
ness. Cymochles sinks into sleep in her bower; Guyon is forced to be

idle from his quest upon the Idle Lake. Even the most violent activity

 

5Heroism, p. 53.

60. S. Lewis, The Allegory of'Love (New York, 1958), p. 45.

7119M.

8Arnold Williams, "Medieval Allegory: An Operational Approach,"
Midoest MM, 1(1969), 83. Crossing water to enter the Other World
occurs in, among other romances, Marie de France's "Lay of Graelent."
The best-known incidence is perhaps Arthur's journey with the Lady of
the Lake to Avalon.

81
(Guyon's battle with Cymochles) on her island, which is on the Idle
Lake, is idle in the sense of useless, as Phaedria herself asserts
(v1.34-45).
Presentation in such a way as to encourage more than a literal

interpretation is apparent early in Book II. The stone fountain con-
nects its waters and the nymph's tears--a product of her mental and
emotional state--so that the purity of her mind is cited to explain F
the purity of the water and its refusal to cleanse Ruddymane's hands. .
Water as a symbol for Cymochles' state of mind is evident when we see
him first, in the Bower, in Canto Five:

And now he has pourd out his idle mind

In daintie delices and lauish ioyes,

Having his warlike weapons cast behind,

And flowes in pleasures and vaine pleasing toyes,
Mingled emongst loose Ladies and lasciuious boyes. (v.28)

:"f

 

We have seen that the ivy on the fountain in Canto Twelve "Low his
lasciuious armes adown did creepe / ... themselves dipping in the
siluer dew" (61). Continuing the immersion figure, Cymochles "His
wandring thought in deepe desire does steepe" (v.34), watching the
"loose Ladies" who, as do the damsels of the pool for Guyon, by degrees
reveal their bodies to Cymochles:

Euery of which did loosely disaray

Her Vpper partes of meet habiliments,

And-shewd them naked, deckt with many ornaments. (v.32)
They then engage in a contest:

One boastes her beautie, and does yeeld to vew

Her dainty limbes.aboue her tender hips;

Another her out boastes, and all for tryall strips. (v.33)
For his behavior Atin chides Cymochles ”when him he spide / Thus in
still waues of deepe delight to wade" (v.35). The substance of his

reproach is that while Pyrochles lies dead by Guyon's hand (so Atin

believes), Cymochles, Pyrochles' brother, "here in ioyes art dround"

:1

.Q
Q.
.9

 

82
(v.36). Clearly, Spenser employs water to symbolize a state of mind,
or even the mind itself.
And the symbolism is consistent. Phaedria's merriment as she
and Cymochles flit across the Idle Lake

Gave wondrous great contentment to the knight,
That of his way he had no souenaunce. (v1.8)

That is, his memory of his revenge and will to pursue it are drowned:
So easie was to quench his flamed minde I1
With one sweet drop of sensuall delight; '
So easie is, t'appease the stormie wind
Of malice in the calme of pleasant womankinde. (v1.9)

Just one drop is enough to drown Cymochles' mind; if "this wide inland

 

sea" (v1.10) symbolizes certain aspects or operations of the human g»
mind, Cymochles' portion is but a narrow segment of it.

When Guyon, however, who resists Phaedria's merriment and the
blandishment of her island's Nature—in-excess, is upon the Idle Lake,
it seems different from the water which, when Cymochles sailed upon
it, "did worke and play / About her litle frigot, therein making way"
(v1.7). The course Phaedria and Guyon take is the same, but now the
Idle Lake mirrors Guyon's mind, troubled at his separation from the
Palmer, yet resistant to Phaedria's "dalliance" (v1.21): the lake
consists of

dull billowes thick as troubled mire,
Whom nether wind out of their seat could forse,

Nor timely tides did drive out of their sluggish sourse.
(v1.20)

In her song (v1.17), Phaedria employs the figure of the swimmer "in the
maine" who "Will die for thirst, and water doth refuse." In this Other
World of the mind Guyon now is that swimmer. He refuses Phaedria's
attempts at seduction "that might his constant hart / / ... drowne in

dissolute delights" (v1.25). Just the opposite is Cymochles, who,

83
awakening from Phaedria's spell,
Gan him auize, how 111 did him beseeme,
In slouthfull sleepe his molten hart to steme,
And quench the brand of his conceiued ire. (v1.27)
The consistency of the Idle Lake, or water, as symbol of the mind is

demonstrable in the Opposites: Cymochles, a thirsty swimmer, drinks

and turns his mind and heart to water; Guyon refuses to swallow

Phaedria's artful delights and remains firm in mind and in heart. E‘
From figurative drowning the figure shifts to actual immersion. ?

Pyrochles, whose wrath has at last kindled him internally, leaps into

the Idle Lake to quench his inner fire. Guyon, having turned his

back on Atin to proceed without the Palmer, does not witness this- 1»

 

episode. Pyrochles' once sun-bright armor is expressed by Nature
imagery--it is "soyld with durtie gore, that no man can / Discerne
the hew thereof" (v1.41). Leaping into the Idle Lake,

with his raging armes [Pyrochles] rudely flasht

The waues about, and all his armour swept,

That all the bloud and filth away was washt,

Yet still he bet the water, and the billowes dasht. (v1.42)
Pyrochles, still burning, learns that "Nor sea of licour cold, nor
lake of mire" can "quench [his] inly flaming syde" (v1.44). But the
education of Pyrochles is not the subject of Book II, nor does his
action cure his 111. The episode shows the ease with which the Idle
Lake accepts "bloud and filth", in contrast to the water of the stone
nymph's fountain earlier. As the latter objectified a pure.and chaste
mind, so this objectifies the opposite: it shows the perturbation of

the mind. "He rudely flasht / The waues about" and "bet the water, and

the billowes dasht"-4Wrath churns the mind.9 The perturbation of the

 

9Thomas Rogers, The Anatomie of’the Mind (London, 1576), Ch. 13.

84

water by Pyrochles demonstrates the inability of an idle mind, focused
on outward appearances (washing Pyrochles' outer self), to penetrate,

as does a functioning Reason, to the essence or core: his "inly flaming
syde." Rather, his suspension in the water illustrates the proclivity
of an idle mind to harbor,.or be empathetic to, perturbations such as
Wrath. While Archimago prObes, cools, and cures Pyrochles, the "cure"
is symptomatic, or superficial: "he balmes and herbes ... applyde" F1
to "euery place that was with bruzing harmed / Or with the hidden I
fire too inly warmd" (51). But the fire still burns in Pyrochles.

Archimago "him restor'd to health, that would haue algates dyde",

 

but insures only that Pyrochles can continue his wrathful course, as .1
Canto Eight demonstrates.

Meanwhile, as Pyrochles is restored, Guyon marches toward
Mammon's Cave, bolstering his self-image with remembrance of his
"prayse-worthy-deedes" (vii.2). Thus fantasy is kindling the perturba-
tion of Pride in Guyon even while ”with mighty spels" Archimago cures
Pyrochles' "secret wounds." Though Guyon.has literally turned his
back on Atin, Pyrochles, Archimago, and the Idle Lake, the "hidden
fire" goes with him. The contrast of cure and infection is evident.
The infection, unlike the cure, however, will prove more than
superficial.

When Atin joins his master in the water, the ostensible reason
is to save him “From drowning", and the motivation ostensibly Love
(in yet another guise) for his master—-"(So Loue the dread of daunger.
doth despise)" (vi.46)-4but the poetic action of a figure from Nature:

The waues thereof so slow and sluggish were;

Engrost with mud, which did them foule agrise,
That euery weightie thing they did vpbeare, (v1.46)

85
expresses the truth that the "slow and sluggish" mirrors Atin's as.
well as Pyrochles' mind. Atin "Of that seas nature did him not auise"

(v1.46);
thus they strugled in that idle waue,
And stroue in vaine, the one himselfe to drowne,
The other both from drowning for to saue. (v1.47)

Archimago, finding the two "drenched deepe ... in that dull ford"
(v1.47), "in hast approched to the shore" (v1.48) but does not enter
the water. Pyrochles relates that his inner fire results from the
beatings given him by Furor's "infernall brond of spight" (vi.50)--
which "brond" Occasion kindled for Furor in the "Stygian lake, ay
burning bright" (v.22): i.e., the mental or emotional state of spite
originating in.water. On shore, Archimago searches out and cools
Pyrochles' inner heat, "And him restor'd to health, that would haue
algates dyde" (v1.51).

Though Guyon did-not witness the effect of Wrath on the mind, he
does witness immersion in another unnatural body of water: the
"blacks flood ... / That is the riuer of Cocytus deepe" (vii.56) that
flows around Proserpina's apple tree in the Cave. Like the ivy of
the Bower fountain, the tree's branches "themselves ... steepe / In,
that.b1acke flood" (vii.56). Among the "many damned wightes / In those
sad [i.e., heavy] waues"

One cursed creature he by chaunce espide,

That drenched lay full deepe, vnder the Garden side.
(vii.58)

fflhis is Tantalus, whose.position and circumstance recall Pyrochles' in

the Idle Lake. To Atin, Pyrochles grieved that he was

most wretched man.aliue,
Burning in flames, yet no flames can I see,
And dying dayly, dayly.yet reuiue. (v1.45)

 

86

To Guyon Tantalus groans that he is,

MOst cursed of all creatures vnder skye,

Lo Tantalus, I here tormented lye

Of whom high Iove wont-whylome feasted bee,

Lo here I now for want of food doe dye. (vii.59)
But this is not the whole truth. Tantalus, although "Deepe was he
drenched to the meost chin" and just underneath Proserpina's tree of
fruit, cannot drink or eat because the water and fruit recede from

him. Yet even death, the end of his torment, is denied him: I]

The whiles he steru'd with hunger and with drouth,
He daily dyde, yet neuer throughly dyen_couth. (vii.58)

Tantalus is presumably amonst the damned for offering his son Pelops'

 

flesh to the gods as a feast. As appropriate a punishment as his LT
present state seems, Guyon, refusing to help "greedy Tantalus",
announces that Tantalus is to be "vnto all that line in high degree"
(Tantalus, a son of Zeus, some say, was customarily a dinner companion
of Jove) "Ensample ... of mind intemperate" (vii.60). We would expect
Guyon to reproach Tantalus for, perhaps, his total engrossment in
filling his stomach. But Guyon explicitly locates Tantalus' crime in
his mind. Possibly Tantalus' sin lies 1n.the affront to the gods--not
filicide--in presuming that he could trick them into an act which
would lower them to his level, or demean their god-hood. Pride, the
motivator of his attempt, is the inhabitant of a "mind intemperate."
Unnatural Nature on the mortal level is figured forth by monsters.
Monsters are of two kinds in Book II: those, like Tantalus, seemingly
natural, and those.whose outward appearance proclaims their.monstrosity.
Of the first kind is Pilate, whom Guyon next sees,
whose carcas deepe was drent
Within the riuer, which the same did hyde:

But both his hands most filthy feculent,
Aboue the water were on high extent,

87

And faynd to wash themselues incessantly;

Yet nothing cleaner were for such intent,

But rather fowler seemed to the eye;

SO lost his labour vaine and idle industry. (vii.6l)
Like Tantalus' and Pyrochles', Pilate's labor is vain. As did Tantalus,
Pilate betrayed a trust: he was "the falsest judge"

And most vniust; that by vnrighteous

And wicked doome, to Iewes despiteous

Deliuered up the Lord of life to die,

And did.acquite a murdrer felonous:

The whiles my handes I washt in puritie,

The whiles my soule was soyld with foule iniquitie. (vii.62)

In the natural world his clean hands hid a soiled soul. In the-
unnatural world the filth is evident: the once-clean hands are "most
filthy feculent." The unnatural world then is a place where inner
qualities of the soul.beoome visible. The water of the black Cocytus,
instead of washing his hands clean, discovers the soul's filth. .Unnatural
water in the Cave proclaims Pilate to have a monstrous soul. It is
that soul-more "real" than the clean hands-dwhich the water symbolizes,
or mirrors. And appropriately the water renders his hands the mirror
of his soul. MOreover, Tantalus bemoans that he, who once feasted
with Jove, is tormented in circumstances paralleling the criminal act
for which he was damned. For an abominable feast, he is expelled to
Hades by Jove. His torment consists of a feast which, though so near,
is denied. The very propinquity of satisfaction is his punishment.
Pilate's act of washing, his apparent escape from guilt on earth, is
here in the Cave his punishment.
Just as water unnatural occurs early in Book II, so monsters

whose physical appearance identifies them as monsters occur at the

beginning. First is-Duessa. Archimago, before he "Did ... revest"

her as the allegedly raped maiden, found her ”forlorne and naked"

 

88

And with greene moss cou'ring her nakednesse,
To hide her shame and loathly filthinesse. (1.22)

A "wicked Hag" personates Occasion, who, one leg lame, dressed "In
ragged robes, and filthy disaray", her "face 111 fauourd, full of
wrinckles Old", is the standard personation of Opportunity, to be
seized only by the forelock:

Her lockes, that loathly were and hoarie gray,

Grew all afore, and loosly hong vnrold,

But all behind was bald, and worne away,

That none thereof could euer taken hold. (iv.4)

But these monsters are more or less incidental. More functional to the

tale of Tenperance are Acrasia's victims:

 

Whom she does transforme to monstrous hewes, l

And horribly misshapes with vgly sightes,

Captiu'd eternally in yron mewes,

And darksom dens, where Titan his face neuer shewes. (v.27)
Mammon's Cave has its monstrous personations of mental and emotional
states (vii.21ff); a particular "feend" who follows close behind Guyon
during his visit in the Cave (vii.26); and the ”huge Gyant of the
Titans race" called Disdayne (vii.4l). Except for the fiend who
treads close behind Guyon, all of the monsters in the Cave evince a
figuring forth of a mental state of a personage. Acrasia's prisoners,
as we shall see, assume an outward form which mirrors their inner
qualities. Disdayne in particular mirrors Guyon's state of mind as
he tours the Cave. Guyon has already voiced his disdain of riches
before entering the Cave prOper (vii.lO-19). Because Disdayne threatens
violence to him, Guyon prepares himself to do battle, but Mammon

dissuades him:

For nothing might abash the villain bold,
Ne mortall steele emperce his miscreated mould. (vii.42)

And although Guyon's disdain for Philotime is cloaked in tactful words,

he disdains to help Tantalus bluntly. Unnatural personages as well as

89
unnatural water mirror states of mind in personages, for Guyon in
particular.

Even more functional to the narrative are the monsters of the
final four cantos. Guyon and Arthur together encounter one group of
them first outside Alma's Castle, another group inside the tower of
her castle; Arthur then reads of monsters in the British Chronicle;

he fights monstrous besiegers of Alma's Castle, led by Maleger, again

m '1: ii,

outside the castle; and Guyon encounters monsters on the Idle Lake
and near the Bower. The essential characteristic of all the mon— ;

strosities is that they parody living creatures, mostly human. Addi-

 

tionally, some of them waver between substance and fancy, the material 1
and the immaterial.
As Guyon and Arthur approach Alma's Castle, they are surrounded
by a swarm of a thousand "Vile caytiue wretches, ragged, rude, deformd",
armed variously with crude weapons. Their "looke" is "like wild
amazed steares / Staring with hollow eyes, and stiffe Vpstanding
heares" (ix.l3). Thrice they attack the two knights, who repel and
finally rout the attackers. In their last charge against the attackers,
the two knights find themselves
Hewing and slashing at their idle shades,
For though they bodies seeme, yet substance from
them fades. (ix.lS)
In Phantastes' chamber, where lives the sage who "could things to
come foresee" and whose "working wit / ... neuer idle was" (ix.49),
the two knights behold walls painted with "infinite shapes of things

dispainted thin", combining some shapes "such as in the world were

neuer yit" with "Some daily seene":

90
Such as in idle fantasies doe flit:
Infernall Hags, Centaurs, feendes, Hippodames,
Apes, Lyons, Aegles, Owles, fooles, louers, children, Dames.
(ix.50)
Mere pictures, this mixture of humans, beasts and combinations thereof
are, like the outside attackers, insubstantial. More important, they
exist in the mind itself. We have seen the unnatural as symbol for
and mirror of mental states: here the monstrosities are in the very
mind. At the same time, Phantastes' chamber contains the already- 1
cited flies, personations of
idle thoughts and fantasies,
Deuices, dreams, Opinions vnsound,

Shewes, visions, sooth-sayes, and prophesies,
And all that fained is, as leasings, tales, and lies. (ix.51)

 

{TI ,_,_ _.

Though Phantastes is one of "three honorable sages" (ix.47) who
"counselled faire Alma, how to gouerne well" (ix.48), we realize that
in Alma's mind are not only the "good" thoughts, but also the evil
ones. Alma's mind parallels Belphoebe in this respect. And such
ambivalence is rightfully in a tale of Temperance, whose essence is
not the denial or erasure of evil, but its recognition and control.

To harbor such propensities is not blameworthy in man. To yield con-
trol to them, engaging in the activities and passions which they
occasion, is blameworthy. Finally evident in Phantastes' chamber is
the work of the fantasy not dependent on the senses: those shapes "as
in the world were neuer yit." The fantasy can join parts of things
sensed, creating wholes which are unnatural and monstrous.10

We have moved through the whole range of imagery, completing a

circle. From natural Nature images expressing mental states on into

 

10J. Bamborough, The Little WOrld’of'Mbn (London, 1952), p. 38.
Appendix One to this study discusses this function more fully.

91
unnatural Nature likewise expressing comparable states of mind, we
come to the mind creating unnatural images as a reflection of its own
state. In this activity the mind and Nature are parallel. Latent in
Nature's "owne native slime" (x.9) are monsters, as we have seen in
the British Chronicle. Before civilization reached Arthur's homeland,
the native Britons, "hideous giants, and halfe beastly men" (x.7)—-
some say the offspring of "feends and filthy Sprights" (x.8)--so
monstrous that Nature, "their owne mother" (x.9), loathed "their
beastlinesse" and "vnkindly [unnatural] crime" (x.9). What the poet
promised in the proem to Canto Nine seems true of Cantos Nine and Ten:
man's body well governed is "Of all God's workes" the most "faire and
excellent"; but, "Distempred through misrule and passions bace" the
human body "growes a Monster": "Behold, who list, both one and other
in this place“ (ix.l).

The battle outside Alma's Castle in Canto Eleven continues the
expression of inner qualities through outward appearance observed in
the discussion of Nature imagery. It continues the ambivalence of
good and evil, of strength and weakness; the relationship of substance
and fantasy, of body and mind. The battle and its two Opposing troops
continue the expression of human unnaturalness as monsters. Those
who besiege are expressed as deformities of that castle/body which
they attack, and those who defend are, though created by the Creator,
expressed as if created by man.

The poet introduces the battle as that of "strong affections"
against "the forte of reason" (xi.l). Guyon departed,

That wicked band of villeins fresh began
That castle to assaile on euery side. (xi.5)

 

 

92
Maleger, their captain, sets five of his twelve troops against "the
fiue great Bulwarkes of that pile." They are to "assayle with open
force or hidden guile" (xi.7). Each of the trOOps is in the main
matched to the sense they attack. The first troop, "a monstrous
rablement / Of fowle misshapen wightes", though variously headed and

beaked like owls, dogs, or gryphons, all have "Lynces eyes" (xi.8).

They assail "the bulwarke of the Sight" (9). The second trOOp, F1

"Deformed creatures",
Some hauing heads like Harts, some like to Snakes,
Some like wild Bores late rouzd out of the brakes;
Slaunderous reproches, and fowle infamies,
Leasings, backbytings, and vaine-glorious crakes, 1
Bad counsels, prayses, and false flatteries, (xi.lO)
attack the "Hearing sence." The third is of "hideous shapes" like "to
feends ... houndes ... Apes ... and Puttockes", whose "vgly formes ...

pourtrayd"

Foolish delights and fond abusions,
Which doe [Smell] besiege with light illusions. (xi.ll)

The fourth trOOp, a "grysie rablement / Some mouth'd like greedy
Oystriges", some "fast / Like loathly Toades", some thick like swine,
assail Taste; the fifth and "most horrible of hew / And fierce of
force", snail-, spider-, or urchin-like, assail Touch, the "feeling
pleasures" (13). The defenders are the Castle's arms:l "those two
brethren Giaunts did defend / The walles so stoutly with their sturdie
maine [hands]" (xi.lS). The senses, though weakening, are not taken
over.

The battle stalemated, Arthur sallies out to defeat Maleger, the
enemy captain, in the conventional battle of champions--although
Arthur also routs his troops enroute to the confrontation. The troops'

appearance has demonstrated their nature. All are perverted by the

 

93
intensity of their sense-assault to the point of moral depravity.

' But most

They are monsters, quite unnatural; some are "illusions.'
are or seem corporeal enough to the defenders.
With Maleger the fusion of substance and illusion, of a kind of
strength and of weakness, even of death and life, is marked. Though
"Full large ... of limbe, and shoulders brode", he is "of such subtile
substaunce and unsound / That like a ghost he seem'd" (20): F1
As pale and wan as ashes was his looke,
His body leane and meagre as a rake,
And-skin all withered like a dryed rocke,
Thereto as cold and drery as a Snake. (xi.22)

That Maleger rides a tiger as swift "as the winged'wind"

 

That vew of eye could scarse him ouertake,
Ne scarse his feet on ground were seene to tred, (xi.26)

suggests an oblique or indirect attack on the viewer's sight, to
diminish his trust in that sense. Its relation to Guyon through
Arthur will become apparent.

Maleger's two hags personate Impatience and Impotence. Impatience
is a state of mind; Impotence, the physical or moral state resulting
from impatience. They down Arthur and bind him. Freed by his squire,
Arthur then in vain "kills" Maleger twice. The second failure leaves
Arthur bewildered, as was Guyon by the still bloody-handed babe:

His wonder farre exceeded reasons reach,

That he began.to doubt his dazeled sight,

And oft of error did him selfe appeach:

Flesh without bloud, a person without apright,

Wounds without hurt, a bodie without might,

That could doe harme, yet could not harmed bee,

That could not die, yet seem'd a mortall wight,

That was most strong in most infirmitee;

Like did he neuer hear, like did he neuer see. (xi.40)
The third effort to kill Maleger failing, Arthur then "remembred well"
(xi.45)--as did the Palmer remember the fountain's history (ii.7ff)--

that to cast Maleger "to ground" is to renew his force "with vsury"

94

(xi .45). He thereupon makes an end of Maleger in "a standing lake"

(x1 .46) .

A consideration of the meaning of this episode onthe basis of
11

the evidence before us only, and not on extrinsic hypothesizing,
suggests that as his troops attack the senses, which lead to the mind,

so Maleger is in some way, as their captain, linked to the mind--the

"captain" of the senses. The five senses, the major objective of "I

f ive of his troops, are physiologically and in military terminology

Channels of communication to the mind or castle-tower which is pre—

8V-ltllalbly Maleger's objective. As captain of the besiegers before

Alma's Castle, Maleger, should the attack succeed, would then rule

 

he): castle. While his triumph would affect Memory least. 1"143138er

w°uld certainly usurp Phantastes' chamber; that occupation would

8""‘T-‘ely alter the decisions of the Reason in the middle chamber, if

not paralyze the faculty.
Exactly what Maleger personates, or enbodies, has engaged the

a":tention of scholars. In addition to the definitions already cited

(below, n.ll), Kathleen Williams agrees tentatively with Hoopes and

E"ans: "Maleger is perhaps original sin, the body of this death";

th en adds :

"...he is certainly the diseased source of those
assaults on the senses which Alma's castle has
to sustain ... his strength is, as critics have
pointed out, his weakness, the diseased impulses
which give power to strong affections."12

\

 

11E.g., "Maleger, though obviously involving sin, is essentially
the symbol of mortality", Evans, Heroicm, p. 134; Maleger is "original
sin", to be overcome only by baptism, Robert Hoopes, Right Reason in

the English Renaissance (Harvard, 1962), p. 157.

12Glass, p. 68.

95
O ther definitions center either on "disease" or "passions", sometimes

combining them. Nelson, proceeding from etymology, and citing "the

13

s tandard Latin—English dictionary available to Spenser", calls

Maleger "evil-sickness" from "aeger", which "COOper defines as 'Sicke;

v "14

sorrowfull, pensive, or heavie. It is true that the poet suggests

sickness in the opening stanza of Canto Nine when, after praising
a. well-governed body as the most "faire and excellent" of "all Gods 1
workes", he adds:
But none then it, more fowle and indecent
Distempred through misrule and passions bace:
It growes a Monster, and incontinent

Doth loose his dignity and natiue grace.
Behold, who list, both one and other in this place.

 

"Distempred" in the sense of "rendered unhealthy or diseased; to
sicken" (OED) fits Maleger's appearance in Canto Eleven. If Alma's
Castle is the wisely—governed body, then Maleger, as the "other" who
appears "in this place", is distempered. OED cites Newton, Lemmie's
Cormlex (1576;1633), p. 128, for distemperance: "When moisture is all
wasted, a man falleth into a cold and dry distemperance ..." Maleger
is "cold" and "withered" (xi.22) .
But distemper can apply to the mind as well: "To derange or

disorder in brain or mind" (OED). ”Malegerg[is] the incarnation of

evil passions," states Padelford."5 Brooke builds a triangular base

”Thomas COOper, Thesaurus linguae romanae et brittanica
(London, 1565); Alice Blitch sees Maleger as "very or badly diseased",
in Etymon and Image in the Faerie Queene (unpublished dissertation,
Michigan StateUniversity, 1965), p. 94.

14
p C 1970

15F. M. Padelford, "The Virtue of Temperance in The Faerie
Queene," SP, 18(1921), 343.

William Nelson, The Poetry of Ednund Spenser (New York, 1963) ,

96
for Maleger as personating "evil-eagerness"16 by stating first that
title tiger on.which Maleger rides (xi.20ff) represents animal passion.
fITtme tiger as personation of passion is supported by Marotti:

"Tigers are emblematic of a complete inversion
of reason and passion, and represent that state
in which man is most inhuman.and animal-like.
One Renaissance scholar glosses the tiger as an
image of wrath and lust, or the concupiscible
and irascible passions."l7

]![£1rotti cites Ripa, Valerian, and Cartari in support of his first
Eitzatement; Landino, of the second. Brooke's other two points are
JEnnpatience and Impotence, Maleger's two bags; the resolution of animal
Iaeission, impatience, and impotence is "evil-eagerness": "This is an

allegorical study of desire in the abstract represented'as a

"18

nnamn. Miller, referring to Brooke, states that

"Maleger undoubtedly represents those excesses
which oppose the goodly rule of Temperance ...
Can we not say that Maleger's curious appella-
tion also suggests 'malicious eagerness'? and
that the airy thinness of his body confirms
this suggestion?"19

"h1al-eager" brings Maleger etymologically into the present.
Mythology also seems relevant to Evans. He finds Maleger linked
t:c> Disdayne (vii.41) as borne of Gaea, the Earth, and therefore to

IXIJtaeus; "Arthur's fight with Maleger recalls ... that of Hercules

16N. S. Brooke, "C. S. Lewis and Spenser: Nature, Art, and the
Bower of Bliss," CJ, 2(1949), 420-434.
17Arthur F. Marotti, "Animal Symbolism in The Faerie Queene:
Tradition and the Poetic Context," SEL 5(1965) , 69-86.

181bid. , p. 429.

19Lewis H. Miller, "Arthur, Maleger, and History in the Alle-
Sorical Context," UTQ, 25(1966), 181.

 

97

faith Antaeus."20 Another scholar finds evidence for Antaeus as the

personation of lust in Boccaccio: "... in The Genealogy of the Gods

[he] takes from Fulgentius his allegorical interpretation of Antaeus,

image of earthly lust ..."21

To concernourselves solely with Maleger as a physical or actual
person is to make the same mistake as Arthur does in his fight with

Maleger. Even those definitions cited which discuss his physical

aspects relate them to passions; many link Maleger to the mind by such
words as passion, lust, desire, and eagerness--a11 emotional or mental -

qualities. From myth and etymology the strongest support is of Maleger

as a personation of a mental state--and of concupiscence. Lust is

an earthly passion .

While many of the personage names in Book II are etymologically

Greek--e.g., Pyrochles, Cymochles, and Acrasia--some, like Medina,

are Latinate. Maleger might combine "mal" with "gerere": "to carry

conduct, wage, do"; with "egerere": "to bring about"; or with "egere":

"to be in want of; need, lack."22 Maleger could "doe harme"; he

"brings out" evil monstrosities and disposes them to attack the castle.
Further, he is most dangerous when, fleeing, he shoots arrows at his
pursuer (xi.21-22). Arthur is downed during his "greedy" (27) pursuit
Of Maleger; he is drawn out of his usual fighting technique into fruit-
less acts and frustrated patience--which logically becomes Impatience.

From Maleger as actively opposing Arthur in "mal + gerere" is visible

2Oiler'oism, pp. 37, 135.

21Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (Harper Torch-
book. 1961), p. 223.

22C'assell's Latin Dictionary, rev. J. R. V. Marchant and J. F.
Charles (New York, 1959).

98

sa.shift to Maleger as bringing out mal + egerere (in the sense of
"eliciting") in Arthur a state whereby Arthur's defeat stems from a
j].atent weakness--Impatience--in himself leading to Impotence.

Certainly Maleger cannot be said to "lack, or be in need of, evil"
(fmale + egere). Unless, rather, his survival depends upon evil in
1c>thers. His renewal of force from contact with Earth--"his mother"--
21.8 consonant with "needing evil" if we remember that, as Gaea, Earth
t>ore Orgoglio to Aeolus (I.vii.9), and is the mother of Argante and
()11yphant by her own son, Typhon (III.vii.47). "His strength naturally
esprings from the source Of human weakness, namely, man's earthly
Iiature."23 Maleger then depends upon the force of his intended
\rictims, which he turns against themselves, so that they are their
c1wn.conquerors. He is the agent for "self-overthrow."

But man's earthly nature--how is it a weakness? Surely because
:Erom it arise the desires sensual or animal--G1uttony, Lust, and so
(JnP-and the desire to gratify those desires. To read "egere" as
"desire" seems a logical transfer from "need": to express a need or
‘vrant is commonly to express a desire for the object needed or wanted.
130 read "egere" as "desire" is not without precedent. In his letter
t:O Aristius Fuscus (Epistles, 1.10.11), Horace writes:

"pane egere iam mellitis potiore placentis,"
Which two translators render as
"I need plain bread" and "I desire plain bread",

respectively . 2"

23Evans, Heroism, p. 134.

24Bovie, Smith P., ed., The Satires and Epistles of'Horace
Cliixiago, 1959), p. 191; works, tr. Christopher Smart (Everyman), p.
230. The equation of "egere" to "desidero" is in Gassell's, sense 2.

99
Maleger then personates "evil-doing"--not so much by positive

action as by evoking evil or degrading acts in others--and ultimately,
"evil desires." We witness no positive evil deeds of his. As evil
desires, the object of his attack should be the mind. His troops
attack the senses, which are the ways to the mind. The significance
of his name however is less important 'than the object of his attack-—
the mind--and the means by which he carries it out. While the overt
attack by his troops engages Alma's forces, Maleger carries out his
(lesign by indirection: he flees to overcome.‘ The attack on Alma's
(lastle found the Castle stationary: the defenders secure on their
base, the attackers pressing forward. Maleger's tactic is to attack
by fleeing. Thus he draws Arthur into the clutches of Impatience,

then Impotence, and then near-defeat. Arthur's patient endurance

of the arrows Maleger directs at him while Maleger flees is frustrated
when Impotence gathers up the spent arrows and returns them to Maleger.
Impatience then downs Arthur. The veryrcourage and spirit which led
Arthur to sally forth to the attack—-movement, rather than stationary-
defense--become the agents of his downing. His own aggressiveness

is his downfall; his overthrow initiated by himself. Omnes vincio
fugiendo might well be Maleger's motto. For he depends upon his
Opponent to defeat himself, just as Guyon, battling Furor, is self-
overthrown. The tactic Guyon uses on Pyrochles--expressed in the lion-
unicorn simile (v.10)--is the same as Maleger's against Arthur. Guyon
Chided Pyrochles, warning him against self-overthrow, the enemies within
being the agents. Impatience is Arthur's inner enemy: he overthrows
himself. Maleger can "doe harme"--but by making his opponent the agent
of that harm. Maleger--evil desires--inspires evil conduct-anal +

gerere, Arthur showed consternation when Prays-desire named his

lOO
weakness; his failure to kill Maleger bewilders Arthur. His desire
for praise or glory is his gravest weakness or intemperance. Maleger's
personation of desire links him to the mind. Should he conquer Alma's
Castle, evil desires would, in place of the three sages, governthe
human body. The body then would become the evil—doer, at Maleger's
instigation. Maleger in himself is powerless. He can "lay his lode"
only on an Arthur prone and helpless (xi.29) . It is Arthur's mind
which he attacks—-not directlyuthe rock he throws he throws at
Arthur's body--but by the bewilderment his failure to stay "dead"
causes Arthur (xi.39ff) . Conversely, he gains strength from contact
With earth, his mother--which earth is the substance of Alma's Castle
as well. That is, Maleger needs man's "base" nature to work upon and
through- Like the 801d 01‘- the Cave and the stone-fountain water,
Maleger "brings out" the evil latent in man; unlike these, pure in
their natural state, Maleger embodies, though quite insubstantially,
that evil in man. He is those evil desires. In the original Creation,
gold and water were not evil. Man's artifice perverts gold; Diana's
artifice perverted the nymph. Man too was not evil when first issuing
from his Creator. By his own act man fell. Thus perverted, in each
man is Maleger, or evil desires. Maleger is created when each man
literally yields his body to evil desires.

His quietus in a "standing lake"--quite probably the Idle Lake--
is logical. Even if not the Idle Lake, the water--stagnant as the
"fennes of Allan" and of "troubled mire" perhaps as well--will quite
certainly allow nothing to "sinck down to the bottom there"; i.e.,

‘30 touch the earth. Especially will it uphold Maleger, who is near

to the insubstantial. The "standing lake" then continues what Arthur

101
began: it keeps Maleger from contact with his mother earth, or the
vitality necessary to perpetrate evil desires.

Much the same battle as that fought at Alma's Castle recurs in
Canto Twelve as Guyon approaches the Bower of Bliss and in the Bower
itself. Once more, the five senses are assailed. Here the assailants
work mostly by the "guile" urged by Maleger but not employed against
the castle in Canto Eleven. Guyon's "castle" is now the particular
objective of the assailants, whereas earlier they assailed Alma's
Castle, the type or analogical diagram of the human body. At first
\riolence and threats confront Guyon. But blandishment is the primary
weapon against his sensibilities. As before, some of the obstacles
seem more substantial than others; as before, states of mind and
external Nature--sometimes plainly unnatural, sometimes apparently
r1atural--are reciprocal. We shall see that Guyon is in need of "pilot
well expert in perilous waue."

A major characteristic of all the categories of Nature he en-
counters--Water, Atmospherics, Animates, Ground, and Vegetation--is
their independence from normal operation of "natural law." At the
same time, aspects of Nature are personated in human terms: the Idle
Lake is by turns playful, troubled, sluggish, raging; heaven has eyes;
fruit either flees or offers itself. Some of the Animates have their
counterparts in Phantastes' chamber. Somewhere in this conglomerate
where (as in the Other World) natural law is suspended may exist that
"10nd of Faerie."

In rapid succession Guyon, the Palmer, and their boatman encounter
the Gulfe of Greedinesse (5), the Rock of vile Reproch (7), the Quicke-
Band of Unthriftyhed (18), and the Whirlpooleof Decay (20). The Gulf

is Presaged by "An hideous roring farre away / That all their

102
senses filled with affright" (xii.2). The Gulf by its excessive

25 for "all

swallowing and vomiting works "to make nature afraid,"
the seas for feare doe seeme away to fly" (xii.3). When the trio
pass by the Gulf, it "Doth rore at them in vaine, and with great
terror raue" (xii.5). Those not evading the Gulf are therein "drent"
(xii.6). They are, like those now "exanimate" (7) on the Rock of
Reproach, "ensamples ... / Of lustfull luxurie and thriftlesse wast"
(9). The Quicksand of Unthriftyhood makes vain the labor of those
who, thereon stranded, try to extricate themselves: "neither toyle
nor trauell might [their ship] backe recoyle" (19); the Whirlpool of
Decay "Did couet" to draw in the trio, "and then to haue them drownd"
(20). Quite plainly one can, in the now personated aspects of the
Idle Lake, find death and drowning, as Pyrochles could not earlier.
These Obstacles passed, the sea itself, in a final attempt at
violence, rises up in the trio's path:
Suddeine they see from midst of all the Maine
The surging waters like a mountaine rise,
And the great sea puft Vp with proud disdaine,
To swell aboue the measure of his guise,
As threatning to deuoure all, that his powre despise.
(xii.21)
Suddenly, becoming outsized as was Disdayne in the Cave (vii.4l), the
sea exceeds its disguise; the threat is to those who despise his power.
The "billowes rore / Outragiously, as they enraged were" or as if
driven by a "wrathfull Neptune" (22). This aspect is unnatural: "For

not one puffe of wind there did appeare" (22). The natural law no

longer governs. Visible in the wave is an array of monsters "such as

 

25Ben Jonson, Induction to Bartholomew Fair (1631, folio ed.);
quoted in Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective (New York, 1965), p. 70.

103

liuing sence dismayd" (22):

Most vgly shapes and horrible aspects,

Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see,

Or shame, that euer should so fowle defects

From her most cunning hand escaped bee;

All dreadfull pourtraicts of deformitee. (xii.23)
With the appearance of these, and "more deformed Monsters thousand fold"
the "fomy waues", like the waters by the Gulf, "seem'd to fly for
feare, them to behold" (25).

These monsters are not real. They are the work of Acrasia:
fears engendered in the imagination. The Palmer, smiting the sea with
his staff, dismisses them. Since the Palmer, as Reason, or some allied
power of the mind, can so dispel them, they must be of the mind, as were
those "hippodames" in Phantastes' chamber; these are unnatural not by
appearance--most of them, at least, correspond with known sea-creatures--
but because they are "into these fearefull shapes disguis'd / By that
same wicked witch [Acrasia]" (26). The power of the sea despised is,
then, the reason for these monsters' appearances. If water symbolizes
in part the human mind, then the power of the imagination is despised
at one's peril.

Interspersed with and following these violent aspects are deter-
rents illusory and/or seductive. The Floating Islands--the "straggling
plots which to and fro doe ronne / In the wide waters" (11)--seem,

"to him, that farre doth vew",

Both faire and fruitfull, and the ground dispred

With grassie greene of delectable hew,

And the tall trees with leaues apparalled,

Are deckt with blossoms dyde in white and red,

That mote the passengers thereto allure. (xii.12)
These islands, possessing both white and red, the poet links through

simile to Delos, where Latona (Leto), pregnant by Zeus with Apollo and

Artemis, fled to escape Hera's wrath. From one of these Floating

104
Islands Phaedria darts out as the trio pass near. They first ignore
her; the Palmer then upbraids and dismisses her. The bay of mermaids,
with whose song—-its import much like that of Phaedria's earlier--the
wind and waves join, tempts Guyon to slow the boatman's pace. The
Palmer "from that vanity / With temperate aduice discounselled" (34)
Guyon. The boatman earlier had advised Guyon of the true nature of
the damsel-in-distress; like her a snare and delusion

For she is inly nothing ill apayd,

But onely womanish fine forgery,

Your stubborne hart t'affect with fraile infirmity, (xii.28)
the mermaids are designed to degrade Guyon. The boatman's warning
that should Guyon heed the "seemely Maiden", she would "her guilefull
bayt ... / ... embosome deeper in your mind" (29) applies to the
mermaids as well.

In sight Of the land "to which their course they leueled" (34)
the trio are nearly halted by the last fearsome illusion on the Idle
Lake:

suddeinly a grosse fog ouer spred

With his dull vapour all that desert has,

And heauens chearefull face enueloped,

That all things one, and one as nothing was,

And this great Vniuerse seemd one confused mas. (xii.34)
Dismayed in this "darkenesse wide", the trio are beset by innumerable
"harmefull fowles" (35) such as "by nature men abhorre and hate" (36):
"The ill-faste Owle" (perhaps from Phantastes' chamber, ix.50); ravens,
bats, ostriches, whistlers, and "hellish Harpies, prophets of sad
destiny" (36)--who can, like Phantastes, "things to come foresee" (ix.49).
But the trio persist and finally reach "the sacred [accursed (OED, 6)]
soile where all our perils grow" (37): The Bower of Bliss.

The Bower's position in the narrative suggests its several func-

tions. It is the final episode in Book II. As such, we would expect

105
that it is, as have been some of the Nature images, expressive of the
summa of the tale of Temperance, the root being the Amavia episode, and
all in between the stalk of which the Bower episode is figuratively
the "bloosme." Such imagery as occurs intermittently or in fragments
throughout Book II should appear herein gathered. Those images appear—
ing before were "certaine signes ... set in sundry place" (IIProl.4);
in the Bower the signs, like parts of a puzzle, should combine to form
a picture of the whole. As its narrative position, paralleling its
place function as Guyon's goal, makes it the end of Guyon's quest, so
its end position should make it the flowering of Nature imagery in its
various functions as expressive of personages, as symbolic of their
minds, and as personation of Nature.

As the roaring of the Gulf of Greediness signified Guyon's
entrance into the overtly unnatural on the Idle Lake, so here, on,
shore, a roaring greets his entrance to the Bower. The trio hear

an hideous bellowing

Of many beasts, that roard outrageously,

As if that hungers point, or Venus sting

Had them enraged ... (xii.39)
Although these "wild beasts" offer violence, they are, "soone as they
approcht with deadly threat" (40), quelled by the Palmer's staff,
"that could all charmes defeat." These monsters then are Acrasia's
work: "charmes" which Reason reverses from a threat to such as "them
selues did feare / And trembled" (40). They are, as were the monsters
of the seadwave (xii.26), not actual, but of the mind. The power of
the Palmer's staff is clear: it could "All monsters ... subdew to him,
that did it beare" (40). The beasts of the Bower area did not intend
an assault against the senses only. They threaten force to the entire

bodies of "those vnexpected guests." Being insubstantial, of course,

106
they could not execute that threat. They depend upon the arousal of
fright-in the mind of the beholder.

The place "Whereas the Bowre of Blisse was situate" (42) is no
less intended to assault the whole man. But the assault is by blandish—
ment, not by threat of force. The Bower works not only through natural
Nature but by the unnatural, or Art: it is

A place pickt out by choice of best aliue,

That Natures worke by art can imitate:,

In which that euer in this worldly state

Is sweete, and pleasing unto liuing sense,

Or that may dayntiest fantasie aggrate,

Was poured forth with plentifull dispence,

And made there to abound with lauish affluence. (xii.42)
"Lauish" is itself an indication of unnatural excess. But it is not
the only suggestion of the unnatural to rise up here. The Bower is
not representative in one sense: it has been "pickt out"; in the
other sense it is completely representative: "whatever in this worldly
state / Is sweete" is here to be found. None of the ugly, the horrible,
or the violent, however, is present—~the "sweete" only. "Poured",
like the drowning earlier, is figurative, but, along with "fantasie",
does recall the water/mind symbolism discussed earlier.. Indeed,
except for the exclusion of the ugly, the Bower echoes the c0piousness
of the three chambers of Alma's Castle tower; the "Infinite shapes of
things" (ix.50) of Phantastes' chamber in particular.

Of the five categories of Nature, Ground functions only as place.
Guyon and the Palmer "being entered, ... behold around / A large and
spacious plaine" (50)--but the image of "grassy ground" quickly turns

into a decoration of Nature as a young maid: the ground is "strowed

with pleasauns"

107
and goodly beautifide
With all the ornaments Of Floraes pride,
Wherewith her mother Art, as halfe in scorne
Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride
Did decke her, and too lauishly adorne,
When forth from virgin bowre she comes in th'early morne.
(xii.50)
Atmospherics and Vegetation are likewise unnatural and personated:
the Heavens alwayes Iouiall,
Lookt on them louely, still in stedfast state,
Ne suffred storme nor frost on them to fall,
Their tender buds or leaues to violate,
Nor scorching heat, nor cold intemperate,
T'afflict the creatures, which therein did dwell.
But the milde aire with season moderate
Gently attempred, and disposd so well,
That still it breathed forth sweet spirit
and holesome smell (xii.51)
Time has come to a stop in the Bower. The season will never change,
but will always be late spring or early summer. This is the Other
WOrld. The extended amplification immediately following, for the
"sweet spirit and holesome smell" this placeirbreathed forth", however,
qualifies the supposed delight of such air. The air here is "More
sweet and holesome" than that of four different classical mounts or
gardens, and of Eden itself (xii.52). But each of the four is named
so as to recall those suffering in Love: a nymph who killed herself
on Rhodope because she "bore / A gyaunt babe"; Phoebus, whose "hart
with loue Daphne did gore" in Tempe; the hosts who suffered because of
Paris' judgment, which MOunt "Ida" evokes. "Parnasse" recalls the
Muses, who, though they sang at weddings (those of Cadmus and Harmonia,
Peleus and Thetis), also sorrowfully collected Orpheus' bones and
buried him, and chanted the dirge at Achilles' funeral--Achilles,
Thetis' son. The fifth place is "Eden selfe." Certainly Eden's air

was sweet and wholesome. But by this time the unfortunates in Love of

the first four places with their undertones of anguish and sorrow

108
suggest, not the delights of Paradise, but our parents' anguish after
the Fall, and their sorrow at their expulsion from Eden. Love in
various guises, but with the undertone of pain, is present in the
Bower as it was at the nymph's fountain in Canto One.

Guyon's progress to the innermost area of Acrasia's realm is
interrupted by two gates. The first gate, at the Bower's verge, is
part of a wall by which the Bower area "was enclosed round about"
(xii.43). The wall is "weake and thin." It yet could

Aswell their entred guestes ... keepe within
As those vnruly beasts ... hold without. (xii.43)

Its builders feared not force but "wisedomes powre, and temperaunces
might." The first gate, a part of the wall, "was wrought of substaunce
light / Rather for pleasure, then for battery or fight."

Such pleasure as the first gate might afford is in its workman—
ship rather than in its subject. This artifact--the gate is of carved
ivory--depicts "all the famous history / Of Jason and Medea":

Her mighty charmes, her furious louing fit,

His goodly conquest of the golden fleece,

His falsed faith, and loue too lightly flit ...
Ye might haue seen the frothy billowes fry
Vnder the ship, as thorough them she went,

That seemd the waues were into yuory,

Or yuory into the waues were sent;

And other where the snowy substaunce sprent
With vermell, like the boyes bloud therein shed,
A piteous spectacle did represent;

And otherwhiles with gold besprinkeled,

Yt seemd th'enchaunted flame, which did Creusa wed. (xii.44—45)

More obvious in this gate than in the air amplificatio is the
connotation of Love's anguish and defeat. In its own right, it is the
"piteous spectacle" the poet explicitly declares it to be. More
emphatically, though of "substance light", the gate is heavy with

echoes from preceding cantos. ’Acrasia is a witch, Medea a sorceress.

109
Both intend moral enervation and social damage to their lovers.
Archimago deceived Guyon into the assault on the Red Cross Knight;
Pelias urged Jason to undertake the quest of the Golden Fleece in
order to get rid of him, for Jason was a threat to Pelias' hold on
his people. Creusa, the bride of fire, recalls Amavia, whose wedding
resulted in her death. The gold over all is an echo of the Cave; the
blood splattered over the ivory recalls the blood on Ruddymane's
hands. The ambivalence of red and white combined, as in the Nature
images previously, is again present; likewise the illusion of waves
into ivory, ivory into waves. One doubts one's senses, and is con-
fused. The end is deception, a glorification of the false. If suc-
cessful, the deception expresses the imperception of the viewer so
deceived.

Nor is the reminder of the past occurrences of Love's anguish all
that the gate suggests. The whole idea of the carving--a ship on the
sea--subsumes previous "sailing" imagery: in the figure describing
Guyon, during his fight with Huddibras and Sansloy, "As a tall ship
tossed in troublous waues" (11.24); in Guyon's own opinion that the
troubled inner state of the possessor of riches is worse than that of
the man who "swelling sayles in Caspian sea doth cross / And in frayle
wood on Adrian gulf doth fleet" (vii.l4); and finally in his own two
journeys on the Idle Lake: first, with Phaedria (v1.20ff); last, with
his two companions in this canto. Had Guyon succumbed earlier, this
carving might be of his own self and of his quest. Moreover, the
danger is not yet past: the carving might be prophetic as well as
historic.

Like the entrance to Alma's Castle, where "a Porter sate / Day

and night duely keeping watch and ward" (ix.25), this gate too has

110
its porter. His function however is not to ward off, but to welcome:

With diuerse flowres he daintily was deckt,

And strowed round about, and by his side

A mighty Mazer bowle of wine was set,

As if it had to him.bene sacrifide;

Wherewith all new-come guests he gratifide:

SO did he eke Sir Guyon passing by. (xii.49)

This is the "false Agdistes": "Not that celestiall powre" whose
charge is "life, and generation of all / That liues", who, like
Phantastes, can warn us of the future; not the Genius

That is our Selfe, whom though we do not see,
Yet each doth in him selfe it well perceiue to bee. (xii.47)

This false Genius at the ivory gate is

The foe of life, that good enuyes to all,

That secretly doth vs procure to fall,

Through guilefull semblants, which he makes vs see. (xii.48)

The name "Agdistes" is unsupported by any of the dictionaries

except as in Pape-Benseler27 where the "mother" or "creative" sense
is cited, usually, as in Crowell's Handbook of'Classical Mythology,
linking Agdistes to Cybele, or Rhea. Brumble elevates the term
"Genius", which Spenser here allies with "Agdistes", out of.the narrowly
progenitive in the sexual sense into that force which makes each "kind"
achieve its potential. Speaking of the Genius in Gower's confessio
Amantis, he says:

"Genius is ... an embodiment of the lover's 'own

power': the natural powers which are within him
as a result of his creation, his being; he is the
embodiment ... of those inclinations which are
man's because of his participation in the Form of
manhood; he is the embodiment of man's natural
inclination toward rational control."28

 

27Wilhelm Pape and G. Benseler, Worterbuch der Griechischen
Eigennammen (Graz, 1959). Variorum, 11, 374-376, quotes Comes, and
others, who do not comment on the "self" concept of Agdistes.

28Herbert D. Brumble, Genius and Other Related Allegorical
Figures in De Planctu Naturae, the Roman de la Rose, the Confessio
Amantis, and the Faerie Queene (Unpublished dissertation, University
of Nebraska, 1970), p. 91.

111
Brumble identifies the "false Agdistes" in the Bower with the "bad
Genius" as in Cartari, but who has disguised himself as pleasing to
the eye. The "good Genius"—-the "celestiall powre"--then, Brumble
says, in making us see "our selfe", is making us see that which, as
man, is our potential as God's noblest creation.
The second gate Guyon encounters when deeper into the Bower area.

It is

No gate, but like one, being goodly dight
With boughes and braunches, which did broad dilate
Their clasping armes, in wanton wreathings intricate:

So fashioned a Porch with rare deuice,

Archt ouer head with an embracing vine,

Whose bounches hanging downe, seemd to entice

All passers by, to taste their lushious wine,

And did themselues into their hands incline,

As freely offering to be gathered:

Some deepe empurpled as the Hyacine,

Some as the Rubine, laughing sweetly red,

Some like faire Emeraudes, not yet well ripened. (xii.53-4)

Among these are "some ... of burnisht gold / SO made by art, to beauti-
fie the rest" (55), which, so heavy are they, "the weak bowes ...
Did bow adowne" (55).

Like the first gate, this inner one is the abode of one who
personates its quality and its intent. This attendant is Excesse.
Like her arbor, which is formed of grape vines deformed by self-
offering superabundance, Excesse extends a welcome:

In her left hand a Cup of gold she held,

And with her right the riper fruit did reach,

Whose sappy liquor, that with fulnesse sweld,

Into her cup she scruzd, with daintie breach

Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,

That so faire wine-presse made the wine more sweet:

Thereof she vsd to giue to drinke to each,

Whom passing by she happened to meet:

It was her guise, all Straungers goodly so to greet.
(xii.56)

112
Like the first porter, who was dressed in unmanly robe, she wears
"garments loose" and "fowle disordered" (xii.55). Phaedria was able
to excell by art the native music of the birds on her island; Excesse,
in her arbor, makes the wine sweeter for having squeezed the grapes
with her fingers.

Her name suggests the unnatural: Excess. In addition, her appear—
ance underlines another theme or premise evident everywhere in the
Bower. She is "Clad in faire weedes, but fowle disordered." The
material is beautiful, but, being disordered, the effect is the oppo-
site of the intention. The fairness of the cloth emphasizes the dis-
orderliness. The effort to appear charming fails. The "faire weeds"
make the essential evil more gross. The artful effort to conceal
excess, the disguising of evil, results not in awe but disgust. Pre-
tense makes the contradiction more obvious. The same effect of the
ivory gateedwonderful in execution, but horrible in its ultimate
subject--obtains with Excesse. The Bower exemplifies contradiction:

a wall is insubstantial; a gate ostensibly extolling the glory of

the quest for the Golden Fleece evokes the anguish of those involved
in that quest instead; the air ostensibly sweet and wholesome reminds
us likewise of anguish and disorder; golden grapes are intended to
beautify real grapes; the true Genius is hidden while the false Genius
is notably present. Surely we must here alter Feste's pronouncement:
"That that is is" (Twelfth Night, IV.ii.l7) to "That that is is not."
The viewer is led to doubt his senses.

Artifact and personation, Nature and Art commingled persist as
Guyon approaches the fountain. Of the Bower delights, this more central

one is the "most daintie paradise on ground":

113
In which all peasures plenteously abound,
And none does others happinesse enuye:
The painted flowres, the trees Vpshooting hye,
The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,
The trembling groues, the Christall running by;

And that, which all faire workes doth most aggrace,
The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place.

One would haue thought, (so cunningly, the rude

And scorned partes were mingled with the fine,)

That Nature had for wantonesse ensude

Art, and that Art at Nature did repine;‘

SO striuing each th'other to vndermine,

Each did the others worke more beautifie;

So diff'ring both in willes, agreed in fine:

So all agreed through sweete diuersity,

This Gardin to adorne with all varietie. (xii.58-59)
And all "it selfe doth offer to [Guyon's] eye" (58), just as did the
false Genius offer Guyon the mazer bowle of wine, and the grapes of
Excesse's arbor offer themselves to be picked. Either Nature and
Art are personated, as earlier, by the poet, or this is one of the
"guilefull semblants" of "Pleasure's porter." The same ambivalence
the reader feels about the Bower-—is it actual or illusory?--is roused
in the personages, especially Guyon. Though the porter's staff is
broken, some of his "charmed semblaunts sly" (59) may yet remain. The
flowering of that "art, which all that wrought" is the acme of sub-
stance and insubstantiality: the substance or product is everywhere
apparent, but the art, or maker, of all this artifice "appeared in.no
place." That is, "that which all faire workes doth most aggrace" is
imperceptible. That that is is not.

By two paths we have come to the same place: Acrasia's fountain.

Pursuing the function of Nature-natural imagery, and the function of
Nature-unnatural imagery, we stand with Guyon at the edge of the pool

in which the two naked damsels play. The journey by way of the

unnatural has been strewn with Obstacles. Guyon has progressed along

114
this waylaboriously. He has been distracted, forced aside, downed,
and tempted. The obstacles grow more frequent, more intense, as he
nears the Bower. A law not Nature's operates to alter the Creator's
Nature, sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly. A power designed to
foster moral corruption in the protagonist seems to grow from morally
corrupt antagonists, chief of whom is Acrasia, "the wicked witch."
The shape of these obstacles begins as things: Mammon's gold, Phaedria's
island. Gradually they take on human form: the monsters outside
Alma's Castle, those of the IdleLake, the false Agdistes and Excesse.
Insofar as things and personages are linked to Nature, they demonstrate
that not all Nature is good; moreover, while Art mayimprove upon
Nature, its intended effect in Book II-to degrade personages--perverts
Nature. The Bower sums up the expression of Nature natural and un-
natural; the pool damsels are the summa of temptation in human form.
Guyon offers violence, early in Canto One, to the Red Cross Knight:
Personageshe thereafter encounters are violent--Huddibras and Sansloy,
Furor, the Sarazins. As Guyon becomes more sensible of delights, the
Personages he thereafter encounters, like aspects of Nature, become
1mliteasingly.blandishing, paralleling his own state. The violence
b‘P-Comes less frequent, less of substantial creatures, until he moves
in a world of gossamer shapes.

The symbolism of water for mental states becomes more pervasive
utit-1L1 in his last passage over the Idle Lake what the trio sees are
Guyon's own fantasies. His states of mind call up such urgings to
desist from his bewildering quest in order rather to execute such

simpledeeds as the rescue of a doleful maiden (xii.27-29), or to rest

in the mermaids' bay (xii.30-33).

115

To unnatural personages, or monsters, natural Nature is no
hindrance. Rather, they pervert natural Nature to their own ends.
Maleger experiences no difficulty in evading Arthur: "Ne hedge ne
ditch his readie passage brake" (xi.26); Phadria, Pleasure's porter,
and Excesse can by their art exceed the native music of the birds
(v1.25), make us see guileful semblants (xii.48), and beautify Nature
with artifacts (xii.55).

The fountain and its pool are then no less artful, no less
intended to corrupt Guyon. Nor is the image of the naked damsels,
their semblance of beauty, the intent of their temptation, any dif-
ferent from those preceding artifacts and perversions. And their
origin is the same as that of the earlier delights. As Shamefastness,
the fountain of Guyon's modesty, mirrors in herself and in the iynx
Guyon's trait of "turning away", so these damsels in their mirror-like
pool originate in and mirror Guyon's state Of mind. They are a trait
of Guyon's character-the existence of sexual desire--which trait is
that very one from which up till now he has consciously or unconsciously
"turned away." Guyon has come all this way to stand at last face to
face with himself. The temptation the damsels afford strikes a
responsive chord in Guyon's breast:

they spide the knight to slacke his pace,
Them to behold, and in his sparkling face
The secrete signs of kindled lust appeare. (xii.68)

For the first time in the tale of Temperance, Guyon feels the
power of Love in the guise of the damsels. They are Lust--and as they
mirror his lust, so in his "sparkling face" are they mirrored. In
substance, Guyon and the damsels are opposites; in essence--the "real",
the insubstantial--they are identical. The damsels are the "charmed

semblaunts" created by the false Agdistes to make Guyon fall; but, as

ll6
Satan's evil is God's good, so are these damsels, in spite of their
own purpose, the agents of the true Agdistes. Not only physically but'
thematically, Agdistes is hermaphroditic: the damsels are both tempta-
tion and savior in one. They are "straunge phantomes" by which
Agdistes "doth let [Guyon] foresee" his "secret ill", and thereby
"bids him beware": they are Guyon's "selfe, whom though [he would] not
see / [Now] doth in him selfe it well perceive to bee" (xii.47).

Admittedly, so precipitate a statement of Guyon's character,
and by implication thereby of the meaning of Book 11, requires the
support of a more deliberate consideration of Guyon's character. Such
a study entails a consideration of Guyon not at this moment of con—
frontation only, but a marshalling of all the evidence Book 11 offers.
If it be the intent of the poet to depict Guyon's character--and by,
transference the definition of Temperance--then a study of Guyon must
include a study of the structure of Book II. This chapter is intended
to present the functions of unnatural Nature in its own terms and in
comparison with those of natural Nature. A study of Guyon's character
involving a study of the structure of Book 11 must await the next
chapter.

But this chapter has shown that unnatural Nature assumes center
stage. It shoulders aside personages (as does natural Nature in the
early cantos) in places which become increasingly unnatural, from
Phaedria's island on through the Idle Lake, the Cave, and the Bower of
Bliss. The degree of sophistication, or of subtlety, grows as each is
encountered, until in the Bower only "wight ... wel auis'd" (xii.61)
can.differentiate between natural and unnatural. The unnatural is the
work of Acrasia and her minions. The unnatural is also closely related

to the mind: first, in the symbolism of water-—the Idle Lake in

117
particular; second, in the monsters who originate in the mind.
Morally corrupt personages and the imagination, working together, or
the first working through the second, project "semblaunts" which
personages take to be actual. They respond accordingly. Indeed, Art
becomes a synonym for unnatura1,for the misleading. Even if the intent
is to beautify Nature, artifice perverts Nature.

Again, the unnatural is linked to the mind by the insubstantiality
common to both. Monsters evaporate outside Alma's Castle, and are
but pictures inside the castle's tower. Maleger is ghostly. He dis—
appears from the narrative when he is tossed into water; the monsters
of the Idle Lake go tumbling back down "Into great Tethys bosome"
(xii.26). Explicitly personated states of mind greet Guyon at his
entrance near the Cave; beasts whose appearances reflect their soiled
minds and souls greet his entrance upon the Bower boundary.

"In that Faery Queene I meane glory in my generall intention,"
wrote Spenser to Raleigh, "but in my particular [intention] I conceive
the person of ... our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdom in Faery
Land." That is, the Queene is to glory as her kingdom is to Faery
Land. The Queen and her kingdom are actual, glory and Faery land are
real. We have seen that through the actual—-Nature--we apprehend the
real--Temperance--by means of the poet's Imagination. Pyrochles and
Cymochles die; Wrath and Irresolution remain. The mental state Guyon
must achieve to be temperate is the real subject of Book II.

This land of the imagination then is perhaps the Lond of Faery.
In it, natural law is suspended. Here that which Guyon encounters is
expressed through natural imagery-—even of the unnatural kind-~because
it is this veil which can make the "real" visible. The reason for the

emphasis on the apparently real, actual, or natural world becomes

118

evident. The natural is the means by which we are to apprehend the
"real"--the world which, while "Other", is yet the Ideal, or paradigmatic
in the Platonic sense. It must be translated so that it may be seen.
Purity becomes a stone fountain, with pure waters, that Guyon may

grasp its reality; Lust becomes two naked damsels, that he may see,

and know--and yet abstain.

To a detailed consideration of such Temperance we then proceed.

CHAPTER FOUR

NATURE AND TEMPERATE MAN

Commentary on Book II of The Faerie Queene tends to cluster around
two nodes concerning the Knight of Temperance. One node is the
question: What does Guyon mean? That is, such commentary attempts to
use Guyon as an ideograph--a symbol representing an idea--either moral
or religious. Explication thus centers on some doctrine outside the
narrative. On the assumption that the name "Guyon", like "Calidore",
"Belphoebe", or "Mammon", is either etymologically or mythologically
significant in itself, some attempt to answer the first question: What
does Guyon mean? by analogy from other works. One such search results
in an hypothesis that of the four rivers whose source is Eden, one--
"Geon" in Ambrose, "Gyon" in Caxton--signifies Temperance: "NO doubt
Spenser altered the spelling to make the name look more like that of
a romance hero, such as Guy."1 Typical of this first node is the con-
clusion that Guyon illustrates the natural virtues, while Arthur, a
figuration,2 is an ideograph for grace. Book 11 thus becomes a por-
trayal of the limits of natural virtues and the need of grace to
complement natural virtues in order that Guyon become acceptable to God.

From this perspective arise such comments as: "Arthur by destroying

 

1Alastair Fowler, "The River Guyon,".MLN, 75(1960), 292.

2Arnold Williams, "Medieval Allegory: An Operational Approach,"
[Midwest MLA, 1(1969), 79.

119

120

Maleger cleanses the Babe's hands, i.e., Grace can destroy Original
Sin. Guyon can only subdue, not destroy, Wrath."3 And the meaning
of Guyon's encounter with the naked damsels at Acrasia's fountain pool
is that though Arthur has purged Guyon of "the guilt of sin, ... the
infection of original sin remains. ...Freed from the guilt, but not the
infection, of original sin, Guyon confronts ... Eve."4 Commentary
making Guyon and Arthur ideographs of natural virtue and grace tends
to retract Spenser's technique to that of medieval personification,
where instead of a figuration called Mammon we find a personification
called Goods in Everyman, or Covetousness in The Castle of'Perseverance.

The second node, asking: What is Guyon? tends to find him frac-
tured into various aspects or qualities which, reassembled by the
critic, make Guyon a composite of human strengths and weaknesses.
They are personated with cue-names, such as Pyrochles for Wrath
(although Furor is also personified). Typical of commentary so defin-
ing Guyon is Evans': Guyon's faint

"... represents his descent into a state of in-

temperance in which he can no longer exercise

rational control over his passions, and Attin,

Pyrochles, Cymochles, and Archimago at once gallOp

up."5
That is, these four horsemen are aspects of Guyon which he at times
controls and which at times seem near to overcoming him. This perspect-
ive does not, as does the former, pull Spenser's mode back into the

medieval allegorical mode from which Book II no doubt rises; rather,

this perspective, viewing some personages as reflections or projections

 

3A. C. Hamilton, "A Theological Reading of The Faerie Queene,
II," ELH, 25(1958), 158.

4Hamilton, 161.

5Heroism, p. 131.

121

of Guyon's state of mind or point of progress in his quest, pulls
Spenser's mode toward a more modern or psychological mode wherein.
action arises out of character, and the character, rather than remaining
static, develops or retrogresses as the narrative proceeds. Thus the
first cluster views Guyon (subject to the limitations inherent in
natural virtue) as triumphant in his various encounters--the already
temperate man is being tested and found qualified. Commonly cited are
such episodes as his resistance to Phaedria and to Mammon. The second
cluster views Guyon as intemperate up to some point in the narrative,
after which, now fully qualified, he exemplifies Temperance in action.
Commonly cited is the episode of Guyon's recovery, with Arthur's
assistance, from his faint; after which, proceeding together, the two
knights are victorious. Even thereafter, separated, they triumph over
Opposition.6

Both perspectives can be justified more or less satisfactorily.
The first extrapolates a moral or theological meaning from Guyon. It
sees the poet's intent as primarily didactic. The second views centri-
petally: it looks from personages to Guyon. It sees the poet's intent
as dramatic. The first looks outside the book for its meaning; the
second looks within. This study of Nature in Book 11 views it as
pointing, along with personages and narrative structure, to Guyon. It
does not deny the doctrinal explications; it sees them as extensions
forsaking the story. Such extensions require a structure made of
elements not found in the story. The view from Nature is intended to

support the second or centripetal view by demonstrating how the poet

 

6Berger, Vision and.Reality, passim.

122
directs and controls that view. Its thesis is that Nature imagery is
the poet's tool.

We have seen that both natural and unnatural Nature reflect Guyon:
the iynx expresses Guyon's basic trait, personified in Shamefastness;
the water of the Idle Lake symbolizes the mind in part; and Acrasia's
pool acts as a mirror of Guyon's lust. Since natural Nature images
express man's physical and emotional traits, since unnatural Nature
images express man's mental and emotional state, and since Alma's
Castle seems a combination of the natura1--it is of earth--and of the
unnatura1--shaped, organized, and "peopled" as is a castle, complete
with a turret inhabited by Imagination, Reason, and Memory, the logical
beginning for a study of Guyon's character or of a definition of
Temperance is Alma's Castle. It is the archetype or exemplar of the
soul and body of which Guyon is the ectype or less perfect copy; pre-
sumably, it also exemplifies his goal of Temperance.

As noted earlier, Alma's Castle is of natural substance, yet it
appears as an artifact of man, or of an artificer-God, whose work is
indistinguishable from that of man:

The frame thereof seemd partly circulare,

And part triangulare; O worke diuine,

Those two the first and last proportions are;

The one imperfect, mortall, foeminine,

Th'other immortall, perfect, masculine:

And twixt them both a quadrate was the base,

Proportioned equally by seuen and nine;

Nine was the circle set in heauens place:

All which compacted made a goodly diapase. (ix.22)
That which is "imperfect" and "mortal"--the triangular—-is feminine;

"perfect" and "immortal."

that which is masculine-~the circular-~18
The shape is not as significant as is the identity of imperfect-mortal-
feminine and of perfect-immortal-masculine. If Guyon is to explore here

the examplar of his own "castle", he will encounter himself as mortal

123
and imperfect, and as immortal and perfect. Alma is feminine. As such
she is the mistress of the mortal part, as the curtsies and bows which
greet her entrance to the various rooms make plain. In the tower or
mind, the sages are all male, and Alma receives no salutations; such
"reuerence dew" (ix.59) as is rendered is that to Eumnestes by Arthur
and Guyon. The mind then seems perfect in the sense of complete; in
that it encompasses Future and Past (Phantastes and Eumnestes) it seems
timeless, if not immortal. How Alma's lower castle is imperfect we--
and Guyon perhaps--shall see.

Of the two gates, the mouth "Did th'other far in workmanship
excell"; "locked, none might thorough pas / And when it Opened, no man
might it close" (ix.23). Open to friends, it is closed to foes. The
porch or jaw is "Of hewen stone" more valuable, smoother, and finer
than Irish marble. Over it is the portcullis, or nose. Inside the
mouth, or barbican, is a porter, the tongue:

Day and night duely keeping watch and ward;

Nor wight nor word mote passe out of the gate,

But in good order, and with dew regard;

Vutterers of secrets he from thence debard,

Bablers of folly, and blazers of crime ... (ix.25)
Immediately apparent in this personation of the tongue is that an organ
of the human body, like phenomena of external Nature, is personated.
Apparent also is that, as in the unnatural places, notably the Bower,

a rigid control governs every aspect. In the Bower the air is mild and
temperate; the season is spring. Everything harmonizes: song, bird,
branches, trees, flowers. Here in Alma's Castle a like formal and
regulated atmosphere prevails. The teeth are "Twise sixteen warders ...

all armd bright" (ix.26) who bow as "By them ... Alma passed with her

guestes", as does the porter also.

124
The "stately Hall," which is the stomach, is filled with many
tables covered with "drapets festiuall" (ix.27). At the upper end is
Alma's steward, Diet:

yclad in red
Downe to the ground, a comely personage,
That in his hand a white rod menaged:
... rype of age,
And in demeanure sober, and in counsell sage. (ix.27)

Diet's counterpart is Appetite, a "iolly yeoman" who walks to and fro
in the hall. He knows how to organize "Both guestes and meat" fault-
lessly, "As him the Steward bad." Both Diet and Appetite "attone /
Did dewty to their Lady, as became" (ix.28).

Just as ordered and orderly is the kitchen force:

The maister Cooke was cald Concotion,

A carefull man, and full of comely guise.

The kitchin Clerke, that hight Digestion,

Did order all th'Achates in seemely wise,

And set them forth, as well as he could deuise.

The rest had seuerall offices assind:

Some to remoue the scum, as it did rise;

Others to beare the same away did mind;

And others it to vse according to his kind. (ix.31)

Quite a contrast to the kitchen is the parlor or heart. It is
"with royall arras richly dight"

In which was nothing pourtrahed, nor wrought,
Not wrought, nor pourtrahed, but easie to be thought.
(ix.33)

Possibly the arras is blank; one can fancy portrayed there what one
wishes (Fowler, Variorum, II.293). Or no scenes thereon cause painful
labored thoughts. Where heat and work and sweat characterize the
kitchen, in the heart the atmosPhere is leisurely and even courtly:

in the midst thereof vpon the floure,
A louely beuy of faire Ladies sate,
Courted of many a iolly paramoure,
The which them did.in modest wise amate,
And eachone sought his Lady to aggrate:
And eke emongst them litle Cupid playd
His wanton Sports, being returned late
From his fierce warres, and hauing from him layd
His cruel bow, Wherewith he thousands hath dismayd.

125

Diuerse delights they found them selues to please;

Some song in sweet consort, some laught for ioy,

Some plaid with strawes, some idly sat at ease. (ix.34-35)
But the note of discord becomes at last apparent. So far we have seen
nothing but pleasantry in the heart; elsewhere, the conduct has been
respectful, and duties performed with a will. Now we see the "grutching"
ones, like Elissa and Perissa earlier (11.34):

some could not abide to toy,

All pleasaunce was to them griefe and annoy:

This fround, that faund, the third for shame did blush,

Another seemed enuious, or coy,

Another in her teeth did gnaw a rush. (ix.35)
Nonetheless, all here, when Alma enters, "out of their seates arose /
And to her homage made, with humble grace" (ix.36). Of these, Arthur
and Guyon address two who obviously are not of those who "Diuerse
delights ... found them selues to please." Prays—desire responds
scathingly to Arthur's ill-phrased attempt to lighten her "sad and
solemne" (37) mien. "Whatever be the cause, [says Arthur], it sure
beseemes you 111" (37). His blunt honesty, guaranteed to strike sparks
from any lady, inspires Prays-desire to retort:

How is it, that this word [pensive] in me ye blame,

And in your selfe do not the same aduise?

Him 111 beseemes, anothers fault to name,

That may vnwares bee blotted with the same. (ix.38)
Her following remarks explain her riposte: Arthur is pensive, too:
Greatly desiring "glory and fame," he has "twelue moneths sought one,
yet no where can her find." Her words recall Arthur's to Guyon earlier:
that with the sun Arthur has sought Gloriana for a year (ix.7). By»
her words, Arthur recognizes himself and reveals his embarrassment in
his face "Now seeming flaming whot, now stony cold" (ix.39). As with

Shamefastness, Arthur's mental state, revealed in his face by physio-

logical response, is visible.

126

In the Castle proper several techniques and tendencies observed
earlier concerning Nature natural and unnatural recur. First, some
organs and functions are expressed, as was Dame Nature outside the
Castle, by personation. Such are the tongue and teeth (porter and
warders), Diet, Appetite, and Concotion. Personations express inner
conditions: Prays-desire, Arthur's mental state; Shamefastness,
Guyon's basic trait. An image from natural Nature appears in the
pOplar branch which Prays-desire holds. This is Alcides' tree. It
recalls the grove Of Alcides and Jove near Cymochles in the Bower
(v.31). The poplar branch is also Prays-desire's "sign" as the iynx
is Shamefastness', and the "litle forrest" atOp her gondelay is
Phaedria's (v1.2). Arthur should have known Prays-desire by that
sign, but, like Guyon and Cymochles in this respect, Arthur is imper-
ceptive. He learns to his cost. In this archetype of the human heart,
both knights encounter themselves as other personages. It is plain
that their understanding of themselves increases in the Castle parlor;
it is therefore plain that, up to now, their understanding of them-
selves has been incomplete.

In the rest Of the Castle, which expresses the human body as an
artifact, and for most of the personages, there is evident a combina-
tion of inner equanimity and of control by Alma, who personates the
soul as mistress of the body. Only in the parlor or heart (convention-
ally, the seat of the passions) does discord appear-—yet Alma's presence
produces from the malcontents the outward signs of respect.

Nevertheless, Alma's heart, and therefore her self, is incomplete,
or imperfect: "triangular." Love could not record his triumphs on
Belphoebe's tablet-like forehead, even though it seemed designed for

such a purpose (111.23-24); Alma has "not yet felt Cupides wanton

127
rage" (ix.l8) even though she seems of age for marriage. And for good
reason: in the heart, Cupid has laid aside "His cruel bow" (ix.34).
Moreover, there is no mention of sexual organs in the tour of the
Castle. Such omission is not out of squeamishness, for stanza 32 is
explicit concerning the place and manner of excretion. In the area
of Love, except for rather platonic by-play between "faire Ladies"
and their "iolly paramoure[s]" (ix.34), the Castle seems imperfect or
incomplete. Alma's heart then is in the main peaceful, as the rest
of the Castle is orderly and dignified, because as yet no disruptive
force has entered. Nor has she sallied forth to meet her adversary.
Guyon, if his "castle" is a copy of Alma's--if it is his "source"
physically--is then, as his encounter with Shamefastness indicates,
also incomplete. We recall that, like Alma, Guyon has as yet not felt
"Cupides wanton rage." The attempt on Alma's serenity, to occur in
Canto Eleven, is intended to place sensual cravings within the Castle.
Guyon will not be there, but on his way to the Bower. If he is to
endure an assault like that on Alma's Castle, it must occur (as we
know it does) enroute to and/or at the Bower. Indeed, if Maleger
personates evil desires, including Lust, he would be invisible to
Guyon. Therefore it is fitting that Arthur, who longs for Gloriana,
Oppose Maleger. Perhaps it is heresy, or at least an act of lese-
majesté, to suggest Arthur as harboring evil desires. But this "flinch"
stems partly from viewing Arthur as the personation of grace; to over-
come such desires, if he possesses them, is surely to his credit, even
though he is intended as mate to Gloriana, just as Belphoebe, who can
be taken as an analog to Queen Elizabeth, is to be admired more should
she gain a victory over passion as yet latent in her. The common

Renaissance attitude toward the necessity to overcome temptation is

128
expressed in Rogers' Anatomy of'the.Mind:

"And therefore except there be passions and per-
turbations in man, ther is no place for vertue...
There is no victoree, where there is no adversary.
... And therefore as that water which is alwayes
standing and never runneth, must needes be noysome
and infectious: so that man, which is never
moved in mind, can never be eyther good to him-
selfe, or profitable to others."7

Yet one more physical aspect of the Castle prOper (below the tower
of the mind) is apropos to the establishment of Guyon's character.
That is the process which "The maister cooke ... cald Concoction"
(ix.31) supervises and directs. Basic to concoction is heat; in the
kitchen

placed was a caudron wide and tall,

Vpon a mightie furnace, burning whot,

More whot, then Aetn', or flaming Mongiball:

For day and night it brent, ne ceased not,

So long as any thing it in the caudron got. (ix.29)

But to delay the heat, least by mischaunce

It might breake out, and set the whole on fire,

There added was by goodly ordinaunce

An huge great paire of bellowes, which did styre

Continually, and cooling breath inspyre.

About the Caudron many Cookes accoyld,

With hookes and ladles, as need did require:

The whiles the viandes in the vessell boyld,

They did about their businesse sweat, and sorely toyld. (30)
Here the "huge great paire of bellowes" (the lungs) operate without being
manned, in contrast to those in the Cave (vii.36). Time is apparently
normal. The fire burns day and-night.

Not so in the comparable concoction in Mammon's Cave, where,
instead of a product nutritive of life, the product is "the roote of

all disquietnesse" (vii.lZ), and causes death. Nor is Time normal.

Moreover, though here in the Cave the workers sweat, their sweat is not

 

7Lib.I,2-3r.

129

to achieve Honour, such as Belphoebe praised (111.41). They sweat to
produce gold. In the Cave not one, but a hundred ranges exist. To
heat them are a "hundred fornaces all burning bright." Around each
not cooks but "many feends did bide":

Deformed creatures, horrible in sight,

And euery feend his busie paines applide,

To melt the golden metall, ready to be tride.

One with great bellowes gathered filling aire,

And with forst wind the fewell did inflame;

Another did the dying bronds repaire

With yron toungs, and Sprinckled oft the same

With liquid waues, fiers Vulcans rage to tame,

Who, maistring them, renewd his former heat;

Some scumd the drosse, that from the metall came,

Some stird the molten owre with ladles great;

And euery one did swincke, and euery one did sweat. (vii.35-36)
The bellows increase the fire, whereas Alma's bellows cool. They are
artificial; the air is "forst"; the fire is alternately fed and damped;
the sweating workers skim the molten gold while others stir it. The
dominant trait is of the nature of cruel force, of agitation tyrannical
and sadistic. The fire is a continual buffeting of the contraries of
feeding and of damping, of Vulcan tamed by, then mastering water. The
process mirrors the disruption the product causes in men's affairs and
in themselves (vii.passim). Coction in the Cave is designed not for
nutrition, as is Alma's, but for destruction. In the Castle, the
process is natural; in the Cave, it is unnatural. Mammon's statement
that this is "the fountaine Of the worldes good" (vii.38) is a parody
of the usual concept of a fountain as life-giving. As Acrasia is a
parody of the sun's beneficence, so Mammon's coction parodies the
sustenance of coction in the Castle.

Guyon himself expresses the end results of Mammon's coction in his

fait. Until he learns what proper coction is in the Castle he is pre-

sumably ignorant of what his body needs, and how his body is nourished.

130
Thus unaware, he denies his "castle" that coction observed in Alma's
Castle for the duration of his stay in the Cave. And as in Alma's parlor
or heart he and Arthur learn to their cost their true nature, so Guyon,
when he faints, pays for his ignorance, or perhaps even foolish and
sinful pride.
The air Guyon breathes upon his return from Mammon's Cave is the

ostensible cause of his faint:

But all so soone as his enfeebled spright

Gan sucke this vitall aire into his brest,

As ouercome with too exceeding might,

The life did flit away out of her nest,

And all his senses were with deadly fit Opprest. (vii.66)
This rather surprising effect of "vitall aire" on Guyon seems illogical.
On the face of it, the effect would normally be the opposite: Guyon,
having breathed the presumably foul air in the Cave, would emerge
reeling, to inhale great lungfuls of "vitall aire" which would clear
them of waste and restore him to normal. Something has changed during
his stay underground.

This is the same air which Guyon, with no ill effects, was breath-

ing before he descended into the Cave. Therefore, it must be Guyon
who has changed. No other personage is thus affected by the air. At
the same time, the air underground is not the same as the living or
vital air above ground. The Cave is gloomy: "Enwrapped in fowle smoke

' are there

and clouds more blacke then iet" (vii.28); "vile carcases'
"left vnburied" (30); the air is used to fill great bellows that "with
forst wind the fewel did enflame" (36). Nor can Guyon eat or drink
except to his peril (27). The poet offers as the ostensible reason

for Guyon's enfeeblement the lack of food and sleep:

131
which two Vpbeare,

Like mightie pillours, this fraile life of man,

That none without the same enduren can. (vii.65)
Going without food and drink, Guyon has been using up such reserves of
physical vitality as were in his body upon entry into Mammon's Cave.
A different kind of energy, perhaps better called psychic or moral
energy, has come from a figurative feeding on himself. After his sepa-
ration from Phaedria (v1.38), Guyon proceeds on his way, without the

Palmer,

And euermore himselfe with comfort feedes
Of his owne vertues and praysedworthy deedes. (vii.2)

We have seen that Guyon's "vertues and prayse-worthy deedes" at the
moment are rather minuscule. The feeding is of course figurative; but
then it is an abstraction (Guyon's self-esteem—-i.e., his Pride) which
grows fat from such feeding. Guyon is in Canto Seven consuming his
moral energy without replenishment to produce a glistering self-image

as shiny as the gold which surrounds him. Once inside the Cave, he

only "with wonder all the way / Did feed his eyes, and fild his inner
thought" (vii.24). It seems plain that the coction which consumes his
physical energy, fired by his Pride, parallels the coction Mammon's crew
executes. Both are unnatural.

Not that his fast inside the Cave results merely from pride in his
powers of resistance. It is clear that, had he eaten of the fruits
with which Proserpina's garden is "goodly garnished" (51) or had he
rested on the "siluer seat" (53), the "vgly feend" who "dew watch vpon
him kept" (26) would have killed him:

If ever couetous hand, or lustfull eye

Or lips he layd on.thing, that 11kt him best,
Or euer sleepe his eye-strings did vntye. (vii.27)

132

To remain safe then Guyon must "abstain." Concerning "see, and know",
from Milton's famous statement of the conditions under which a "blank
virtue", heretofore "fugitive and cloistered," is to become a "pure
virtue,"8 however, the situation is not so clear. He already "knows"
riches: they are the "roote of all disquietnesse" (v11.12). Whether
he can "know" more about riches than this is doubtful. To "see" more
riches is voluntary; he has already seen a goodly amount of Mammon's
wealth:' "And round about [Mammon] lay on every side / Great heapes
of gold ..." (5). Guyon, if he satisfies no other need in the Cave,
satisfies his curiosity.‘ Occasion, it would seem, loosed by Guyon
himself earlier, is here present. What kind of occasion it is can be
demonstrated in an examination of the initial encounter of Guyon and
Mammon.

When Guyon surprised Mammon counting his gold coins, ingots, and
plate, Mammon rose "in great affright and haste"

And downe them poured through an hole full wide
Into the hollow earth, them there to hide. (vii.6)

To Mammon the ground is a place of security. By now, however, to the
reader recalling those intemperate personages meeting defeat, shame,
and death there (Phedon, Pyrochles, Amavia), and to Guyon as well,
ground and gold seem loathly. To Mammon gold is lovely.

The several attitudes taken toward gold by Mammon and Guyon require
untangling. Mammon begins by attempting "to remoue aside / Those pretious
hils [of gold] from straungers enuious sight" (vii.6). His attitude
towards "pretious" gold is protective. Guyon thinks of gold as "rich

heapes of wealth" (vii.7). Both are of one accord then in considering

 

8Areopagitica, in John1Milton: Complete Poems and.Major Prose,
ed. M. Y. Hughes (New York, 1957), pp. 728-729.

133
gold to be valuable. But Guyon's attitude differs from that of Mammon,
who wants to hide the gold. Guyon questions the hiding of the gold‘
"apart / From the worldes eye, and from her right vsaunce." Guyon
indicates thereby that the gold should not be hidden from the sight of
man, and that gold should be used, not hoarded. Mammon is miserly,
Guyon a proponent of spending.

In the next breath, however, both reverse their positions. Mammon,
whom we have just observed as miserly, now declares "That [I] of my
plenty poure out vnto all / And vnto none my graces do enuye" (8).

And he offers all the visible gold to Guyon, and "Ten times so much ...
francke and free" (9) if Guyon wants it--and will serve Mammon. Guyon,
who before reproached Mammon for keeping the gold out of circulation,
now scorns to accept the gold: "To them, that couet such eye-glutting
gaine / Proffer thy giftes, and fitter seruaunts entertaine" (9).
He calls the gold "worldly mucke" which "doth fowly blend / And low
abase the high heroicke spright" (10). Of such "high heroicke spright"
Guyon believes himself possessed. Further, Guyon believes riches are
the "root of all disquietnesse /// Infinite mischiefes of them doe arize"
(12). Before man's fall, men had no desire or need for such. But

Then gan a cursed hand the quiet wombe

Of his great Grandmother with steele to wound,

And the hid treasures in her sacred tombe,

With Sacriledge to dig. (vii.l7)
Thus Guyon, who began by chiding Mammon for hiding the gold, scorns to
take any, and speaks of the praiseworthy "antique world" when gold was
hidden, deep in the earth.

No less than Guyon, Mammon is of two minds about the gold. He

acts to keep it hidden in the earth (where it was in the "antique world"),

but speaks of his largesse in giving away "all this worldes good” (8).

134

Why do both—-at least in their uttered words--change their atti-
tudes? Each expresses his first attitude in an involuntary or instinct-
ive action. Upon consideration, each then denies it by professing the
opposite. Mammon's initial attitude-—to hide the gold--is quite under-
standable if we consider him merely as personage: he is miserly. His
reason for changing, and offering his wealth to Guyon, is that he has
perceived and understood Guyon's exhibition Of a desire for possession.
It is akin to his own avarice. To capitalize on this suspected weak-
ness, he offers Guyon.the gold. And Guyon, realizing perhaps that he
has shown such desire, denies it by calling gold the root of evil in
man. He professes himself untempted. That denial of a human desire
in himself has already been suggested in the episode of Shamefastness
and the iynx.

The subsequent descent into the Cave is necessary to both Mammon
and Guyon. For Mammon, to support his second position that he does
offer wealth to all. This is the standard concept of Mammon in
literature before, during, and after the Renaissance. For Guyon, it
is necessary so that he may prove by his action that he "list not ...
receaue / Thing offred, till I know it well be got" (19). Neither
is deceived by the other's following remark: Mammon's, that the gold
has never been seen, since he has hidden it always (a manifest lie);
Guyon's, that he knows of no place where such a mass of wealth can be
hidden. His question

What secret place, (quoth he) can safely hold

So huge a masse, and hide from heauens eye?

Or where hast thou thy wonne, that so much gold

Thou canst perserue from wrong and robbery? (vii.20)

is but a request for an invitation to go there, which Mammon eXpects and

is ready to extend: "Come thou, (quoth he) and see."

135

Both have tacitly admitted that gold effects evil. Mammon's
furtiveness in enjoying it, his haste to hide it underground, joins
with Guyon's explicit condemnation of gold. In this sense, and 1n.the
remaining three days, his self-denial of sustenance is of a piece with
his feeding on his own "comfort." It is voluntary, and intemperate.

Out of the experience of extreme of want Guyon then is led to
the surface of the earth, where he experiences an extreme of "vitall
aire" of "too exceeding might" (66). Though his departure is in part
because of some law--"For, lenger time ... no liuing wight / Below
the earth might suffred be to stay"--it is also due to Guyon's choice.
Because he is growing "weake and wan", "For thy great Mammon ... he~
besought / Into the worlde to guide him backe" (65). Guyon's body
becomes weak because his pride in his resistance to Mammon's entice-
ments has led him into bodily intemperance. Excess of Pride causes
deficiency of stamina through denial of food and sleep. Should he rest
in the Cave, he, like Theseus, would have to remain there. He returns
to earth in time to escape that fate, only to fall senseless. Because
the air on earth is not tempered for Guyon in his present state, "all
his senses are with deadly fit opprest" (66).

A rather simple explanation is ready to hand in the Renaissance
doctrine of nutrition. In Galenic terms, the three spirits (Natural,
Vital, and Animal) bring about the vital and rational functions of the
body.9 They arise from processes called "coctions" of the food taken
into the stomach. Chyle, resulting from the first coction in the
stomach and intestines, goes into the liver where in the second coction

it turns into venous blood, and joins with the natural spirit of

 

9A. C. Crombie, Medieval and Early Mbdern Science, 2d ed.
2 Vols. (New York, 1959), I, 163-167, which these paragraphs summarize.

136
nutrition and growth. Having gone without eating, Guyon has depleted
his store of natural spirit.

Air, or some quality derived from air, is carried into the heart
from the lungs through the venous artery, where it is mixed with the
venous blood previously formed in the liver. The heart concocts out
of these the vital spirit, or innate heat. Air returning from the
heart to the lungs along the same venous artery carries with it the
wastes generated by the heat of concoction and is exhaled from the
lungs. The passage of air in and out of the heart also cools the
heart. The vital spirit, or innate heat, is carried by the arteries
to all parts of the body, including the brain, at the base of which,
"being once more attenuated and refined", it "become[s] the 'animal'
spirit(s)."10 The brain stores and distributes this spirit along the
nerves to the sense organs.

Thus as long as Guyon ate nothing and inhaled the poor air of the
Cave, the balance nutritive, vital, and animal was maintained in the
various coctions. Guyon's heart is presumably at normal temperature
since, although it is generating less heat, the hot air of the Cave
("every one did sweat" around the hundred furnaces), which is passing
to and from Guyon's heart, carries away with it less of the innate
heat.

When Guyon breathes the "vitall aire" of the earth's surface his
heart receives a sudden excess of normal air, and the balance between
it and the venous blood which concocts the vital spirit is upset. The

heart is excessively cooled. The brain receives too little of the

 

10
p. 318.

Edward Dowden, Essays Mbdern and Elizabethan (New York, 1910),

137
innate heat to enable the coction of animal spirit. It is Guyon's
senses, which the animal spirit vitalizes, which are "Opprest."

We witness the depletion of the body's strength when sustenance--
food--is denied. So interrelated are the coctions and spirits however
that, the first coction denied, the heart and the senses are in due
course affected. The original cause of denial is Guyon's pride--his
state of mind on entering the Cave, increasing as he remains there
until it is personified in Disdayne, a "gyant." The vital air Guyon
breathes on returning to earth upsets the balance temporarily suitable
in the Cave. The efficient cause of his faint is the cool, vital
air on earth. But he would not have fainted had not food—~and
resultant coction--been denied.

That first stage of coction viewed in the kitchen of Alma's
Castle is the obverse of the denial in the Cave. Moreover, in the
Cave's smeltery we witness a coction--like that in Alma's Castle, of
an elementary stage--of actual matter. But another process, or coction,
not of substance but of an abstraction, was also observable in the
Cave; that is, Guyon's Pride, his image "Of his owne vertues and
praysdworthy deedes", fired by a desire to display his ability to
abstain, grows huge. It is personated by Disdayne (vii.50-52). The
abstract, or "real", receives sustenance.

In the tower of Alma's Castle is a similar process or coction
dealing with images, words, and the like. Here Memory, Reason, and
Imagination Operate to govern the body or castle. Because there is
coction in the kitchen, there is coction in the tower: the body's and
mind's coction is reciprocal. In the kitchen there is "scum", but it
is removed in orderly fashion; in the Imagination (Phantastes' chamber),

there are monstrosities and falsities, but they are under control.

138
Guyon's faint teaches him about misgovernment of the body. His visit
to Alma's kitchen teaches him about proper government of the body. His
visit to the tower teaches him about the prOper government Of the mind.
We shall see that the lesson was not well—learned, and that Guyon's
mind is badly governed enroute to the Bower, and even at the Bower, in
episodes that parallel his faint. He must learn by error to govern his
mind, just as he learns to govern his body first through error.

To read these parallels of concoction so keeps Guyon from being a
mere counter in a theological game. There is a spiritual import, but
it is that man's higher functions, Such as reason, depend upon bodily
functions. To deny the body its nutriment is to deny, ultimately, the
operation of the reason, dependent as it is upon the senses. Guyon
sought an occasion to give an emotion--exhilaration or pride in his
sense of his own worth--full play. Like Phedon, who gave an emotion--
jealous revenge--full play, he lies on the ground as a result. Measure
is treasure, as Guyon has yet to understand and to practice. To
explain Guyon's awakening by saying that "from this moment he acts no
longer by his natural power alone, but is guided by reason and aided
bygrace"11 is to cast it into an excluSive mold of dogmatical murkiness.
Such a reading assumes that the Palmer is Reason and Arthur is Grace.
But the Palmer is sometimes merely Memory (the history of the stone
nymph) and Arthur seems all too human at times. If we view Guyon as a
fictive mortal struggling towards Temperance, we see that he is paying
the penalty for intemperance, either through ignorance or through wil-
fulness. It is appropriate that, his eyes being gorged, they now can

see no more a

 

11A. C. Hamilton, "A Theological Reading of The Faerie Queene,
Book II," ELH, 25(1958), 160.

139

Guyon's recovery of his senses is promised by the angel: "For
life ere long shall to her home retire / And he, that breathlesse
seemes, shal corage bold respire" (viii.7). The Palmer need not do
anything to assist in Guyon's recovery. The angel's charge to him is
simple: "Watch thou" (8). The angel will do all else: care-for,
succor, and defend Guyon.. Thus directed to Guyon's physical needs, the
angel hardly seems a personation of grace, which is concerned with man's
soul. The Palmer is confident that Guyon's coma is temporary: "cloudes
of deadly night / A while his heauie eylids cover'd have" (24; emphasis
mine). A matter only then of time before Guyon's senses, his body
having restored the balance of inner heat12 (aided by the "brooding"
Palmer), return. To note the slaying of the last of the "Sarazins"
as the cause of Guyon's recovery is to ignore the angel's promise,
the Palmer's care, the natural recuperation in due time, and to read
"By this" (viii.53), which means "by this time", as if the death of
the two Sarazins is the means of Guyon's recovery. But his recovery
is in no way resultant from their deaths. For Guyon to recover midway
through Arthur's battle with these two paynims would make the narrative
disjointed, interrupt Arthur's glorious effort, and distract from the
total effect. If "grace" is to effect Guyon's renewal of force, then
Arthur should take some direct action to illustrate the working of
grace. But he does not. He even seems a bit brusque toward Guyon's

thanks.

 

12"The vital spirit is ... nourished by respiration." Galen,
Opera Omnia, ed. D. C. G. Kuehn (Leipzig, 1821-33), X, 839. Quoted by
R. E. Siegel, Galen's System of'Physiology andWMedicine (New York,
1968), p. 155. Guyon merely "seems" breathless (viii.7).

140

If these several indications of Guyon's character are valid, they
should be consonant with what is evident of his character throughout
the narrative. Complementary to the "set pieces" of Guyon's faint,
his confrontation with Shamefastness, and with the naked damsels of
Acrasia's fountain pool should be evident a narrative structure which,
by episodes in which Guyon is repeatedly faced with himself in part or
in sum, demonstrate that self-knowledge is the theme of Book II. It
is evident that images from Nature, natural and unnatural, express
personages physically, emotionally, and mentally. The narrative
action should then parallel that poetic action. Already placed "above"
the personages by means of poetic action, we should by a grasp of
the narrative structure see the nature of Temperance. Alpers denies
that The Faerie Queene has "structure",13 but since Nature imagery is
one of the "several specifiable phenomena within it", to quote Alpers,
which order and evluate "the realities the poem presents", structure
seems suitable. To consider the whole narrative structure, we shall
visit again some scenes already discussed, each time following comple-
mentary but not identical paths. Though Guyon seems at times to be
without purposeful direction, we should know that it is he who is
lost. We should not be lost with him.

From the very first, the narrative demonstrates that Guyon's
actions arise from his desire to seem what he believes himself to be.
In this he is very much like the Red Cross Knight at the beginning of
Book I. At the same time "sundrie signes" indicate that Guyon is not
what he would seem. His response to Archimago's tale of the maiden

raped by the Red Cross Knight accords with this concept of Guyon's

character as Book II opens.

 

13Paul J. Alpers, The Poetry of’The Faerie Queene (Princeton,

1967). p. 113.

141

We know that the tale, and Duessa's anguish, are false. The
poet has carefully made the deception clear. Immediately we are "above"
the action, watching Guyon act in error. Archimago is ostensibly a
personage--here, disguised as a "humble miser" (i.8-9)--but just as
others personate aspects of Guyon, so does Archimago. He is the arche-
type of the uncontrolled imagination or deceitful fantasy just as
Alma's Castle is the archetype of the controlled human body. In terms
of medieval personification he is the equivalent of the Bad Angel as
in The castle of'Perseverance. In terms of the imagery eXpressing
human nature the whole episode is a projection of Guyon's imagination
intended to express Guyon's character. Guyon's imagination presents
him with the Opportunity to act out his image of himself as a knight-
errant avenging a maiden's rape upon the offender. Yet if we consider
the three elements of the alleged rape-—the offender, the offense, and
the offended--it appears that the apparently-raped maiden is the least
motivation of the three for Guyon's action. His wrath seems motivated
as much by the alleged rapist's treachery to the ideals of knighthood
(1.12) as by the heinousness of the offense itself. His haste to
accost and "try" the Red Cross Knight reflects his desire to rid the-
group of which he considers himself one-—knights--of a member whose
deed, if unpunished, would tarnish the image of knighthood, and thus
Guyon's own self-image. His meeting with the maiden is an accident Of
his journey to accost the Red Cross Knight; his first question is not
of the maiden's condition, but where the alleged rapist, if still
alive, is to be found (1.12). Both Guyon and Archimago are rather
matter-of-fact in their advice to her (i.l4,l6,18).

At the point of actual encounter with the Red Cross Knight actuality

dissipates the imagined event. Guyon veers off at the last moment

142
because the presence of the actual knight shatters the fantasy by which
Guyon has been deluded. He himself indicates the illusory quality of
the rape tale and his response:
I shame to tell

The fond encheason, that me hither led.

A false infamous faitour ... to this place me led. (1.30)
Nor is it coincidence that "By this his aged guide [the Palmer] in
presence came" (1.31). Fantasy, created by "A ... faitour", and shat-
tered by the objective actuality of the Red Cross Knight, subsides in
the presence of the rational power. The whole episode arises out of
Guyon's mental state or character. To fantasy is normal in man. Its
product is unnatural--it is not of the Creator, even though the mind-
which so imagines or fantasizes is of the Creator.

Guyon experiences difficulty in the presence of the unnatural
again when Ruddymane's hands retain their bloody covering in spite of
his attempts to wash them in the water of the stone nymph's fountain.
In'a natural setting Guyon is capable of perception and temperate
action. He demonstrates this on Phaedria's island. The unnatural or
insubstantial reveals his inability to COpe.‘ The water looks natural
to him, so he undertakes a natural action. When it is ineffective the
Palmer is amused at his bewilderment and at the causes Guyon ascribes
to the water's recalcitrance. In effect the Palmer informs Guyon that
there is more in this world and its ways than Guyon has dreamed of in
his philoSOphy.

The episode Opens with a history of a rude attempt at one kind of
natural creation--through sexual love--and the result of that creation,
or Love, is quite unpleasant. Paradoxically, the Palmer's tale of the
nymph's metamorphosis, though a living being is changed to stone,

reinforces that aspect of Nature described in Perdita's words as

143
"creating." Her reversion from an object of the highest form of
earthly life--man—-to the lowest form--stone--is the obverse of crea-
tion. But the negative serves to emphasize the positive. Just as the
spectacle Of death affirms the value of life, so the nymph's fate
enhances the idea of her vitality when alive. By becoming stone the
nymph avoided what she feared: sexual congress with Don Faunus--or,
rape. The stone nymph, an artifact unnatural, is thus not only a
reaffirmation of procreation, but repeats an allied aspect of human
Nature introduced by Archimago's tale of rape: erotic desire, which
precedes procreation. Rape is precisely what motivates Guyon's first
action: his near-assault on the Red Cross Knight. It links him to
the stone nymph. This aspect of procreation, of creating Nature in
man, is the aspect of Nature which Guyon denies in himself until he
views Acrasia's damsels in the pool. An inspection of following epi-
sodes shows that Guyon recurrently faces Love in its various guises,
most of them unpeasant in themselves or in their aftermaths. The image
of Nature as procreative,~("naturans"), expressed through personages,
reveals Guyon's character as does no other single image.

From the brute root of Love signified in the alleged rape incident
with which Book 11 opens grows a trunk with several branches encountered
in the first fountain episode. The trio Guyon meets at that fountain
are all in some way a personation of Love, or express the aftermath of
different kinds of Love. Amavia, whose cue-name means either "She who
loves to live", "She who is the way of love", or "I have loved",
expresses an initial happiness in conjugal love. Then follows a grief
occasioned by an excessive dependence upon and need for that love. She
is cheated of Mordant, the object of her love, by Acrasia, who has

deluded MOrdant into the kind of love practiced in her Bower, seen first

144
in Cymochles (v.28ff) and then in Verdant (xii.72ff). Guyon is left
with the pitiable Ruddymane, the product of Mordant-Amavia in the sexual
congress of conjugal love. Small wonder, whatever Guyon's original
attitude toward Love may have been, that he begins to erect around his
heart a wall against Love sanctioned, as was that of Amavia and Mordant,
or unsanctioned as was the alleged rape, in any human form--sexua1, in
particular. He has made a fool of himself over a maiden before the:
very knight whom he wishes to emulate. He has felt some of the bereaved
Amavia's anguish: "for griefe his hart did grate" (1.56). He has
witnessed Mordant (a knight once much like himself) tragically dead:
which "inward paine" caused "his mighty ghost ... deepe to grone" (1.42).
He has buried the erstwhile lovers.

From this traumatic episode Guyon travels to Medina's castle.
Medina's two sisters disrupt the calm in perhaps many ways, but the
source of their opposition to Medina upon which the narrative dwells
is again Love. Medina halts, as Guyon has attempted without success
to halt, the strife of Huddibras and Sansloy. Their strife is caused
by Love's passion:

They were two knights Of pereless puissaunce

* i: * * at k * * it *

Which to these Ladies loue did countenaunce,
And to his mistresse each him selfe stroue to aduaunce.

Sir Huddibras is "He that made loue vnto the eldest Dame" (11.17);
Sansloy is "he that lou'd the youngest" (11.18), and

These two gay knights, vowd to so diuerse loues,

Each other does enuie with deadly hate,‘

And daily warre against his foeman moues,

In hOpe to win more fauour with his mate,

And th'others pleasing seruice to abate,

To magnifie his own ... (ii-19)

145

Guyon, in an attempt "their strife to vnderstond", approaches them,
intending "them / With goodly meanes to pacifie" (11.21). He is not
welcomed. They "him beset" (22), but Guyon "suffred not their blowes
to byte him nere" (23). He saves himself in the manner expressed by
the "troublous seas" image noted earlier. Of the theme of Love the
poet is now as explicit as he was concerning Archimago's delusions
earlier:

Straunge sort of fight, three valiaunt knights to see

Three combates ioine in one, and to darraine

A triple warre with triple enmitee,

All for their Ladies froward loue to gaine,

Which gotten was but hate. So loue does raine

In stoutest minds, and maketh monstrous warre;

He maketh warre, he maketh peace againe,

And yet his peace is but continuall iarre:

O miserable men, that to him subiect arre. (11.26)

Leaving Ruddymane with Medina--thereby dissociating himself, not

unwillingly, from that branch of Love--Guyon departs Medina's castle.
Here the narrative drops Guyon as personage to present Braggadocio, who
is quite the Opposite of Guyon's self-image and ideal. Braggadocio,
with Guyon's horse and spear, is outwardly very much the knight. In
fact, he could be mistaken for Guyon, since he is mounted on Guyon's
horse and carrying Guyon's spear. Archimago is drawn near by that very
likeness (111.11). The horse knows that Braggadocio is not a knight
(111.46). We know he is not: where Guyon charged into a thicket to
reach Amavia (1.39), Braggadocio hides in "A forrest greene" (111.20)
and creeps into a bush at Belphoebe's approach (21). Yet Guyon and
Braggadocio are identical in motivation--each wants to be thought a
noble knight.‘ And the fantasy of each is shattered by a confrontation
with actuality. Braggadocio's ballooning self-image is pricked by the
point of Belphoebe's javelin. Paradoxically, his fantasy leads him to

attempt precisely what Guyon sought to punish: rape. Belphoebe, averse

146
to all Love (111.23), repels Braggadocio's embrace. She therefore
personates Guyon's attitude toward Love, just as Braggadocio's attempt
to repeat the alleged act of the Red Cross Knight, and the attempted
act of Don Faunus, personates precisely the kind of Love which Guyon
has walled out. The episode of the lusty Braggadocio and the dainty
Belphoebe acts out Guyon's state of mind about Love. It is true that
Braggadocio represents the wrong way to glory--but Guyon does not
encounter him until Book V. So the example of the wrong way to glory
is lost on Guyon. Guyon is absent during the episode because in both
chosen path to glory and in prOpensity to lustful Love Braggadocio is
what Guyon abhors. More significantly, Guyon is absent because this
aspect of himself he has yet to encounter.

In the Phedon episode Guyon meets one who illustrates the results
of Love. This time it is a love not base; rather, it is honorable,
and its pursuit is as sanctioned by Phedon's society (iv.21). Guyon's
wariness of sanctioned Love, originating from the Amavia episode and
reinforced in the Huddibras-Sansloy episode, is now firmed by his Obser-
vation of Phedon's pitiful plight. Love for Claribell, sparked into
jealousy by Philemon, has made Phedon a murderer twice over: both
Claribell and Philemon are dead. The Palmer's judgment of Phedon--
"Wrath, gelosie, griefe, loue this Squire haue layd thus low" (iv.34)-—
expands to an exhortation to abjure them all. Love is named as the
source of all the others:

Wrath, gealosie, griefe, loue do thus expell:

Wrath is a fire, and gealosie a weede,

Griefe is a flood, and loue a monster fell;

The fire of sparkes, the weede of little seede,

The flood of drops, the Monster filth did breede:
But sparks, seed, drops and filth do thus delay;

The sparks soone quench, the springing seed outweed,

The drops dry Vp, and filth wipe cleane away:
So shall wrath, gealosie, griefe, loue dye and decay. (iv.35)

147
The Palmer's attitude is plain: Love is a monster. We have seen
a Nature who abhorred monsters. SO, by now, must the "natural" man,
Guyon. How reliable a guide to Temperance the Palmer is, whose advice
is to destroy rather than control passions, seems doubtful. Quench the
sparks, weed out the seed, dry up the drops, wipe filth "cleane away"
is the Palmer's dictum. Yet we have seen that monsters do issue from
Nature; or rather, that things natural become monstrous by perversion
of Nature as procreative. The fault is not in the force, but in its
misdirection.
Guyon's attitude is plain in his words to Phedon: "all your
hurts may soone through temperance be easd" (iv.33), if Phedon will
Henceforth take heede of that thou now hath past,
And guyde thy wayes with warie governaunce,
Least worse betide thee by some later chaunce. (iv.36)
His advice to Phedon might well be to himself, for in Canto Six Guyon
heeds it admirably in his encounter with Phaedria. His previous exper-
ience has inoculated him against Love, and in this natural setting he
is "wise, and wary of her will / And euer held his hand Vpon his hart"
(v1.26). He is not entirely untempted--but he "fond desire subdewd"
(26). Though he did not encounter Braggadocio earlier because he was
not aggressive in Love, he does encounter Cymochles, who represents
those (or the aspect of Guyon) that can be or are seduced by Love.
They fight, but as is common, Guyon does not destroy him. Cymochles,
like Occasion and Braggadocio, is alive to reappear later in Guyon, if
not as a personage in the narrative.
Flushed with his apparent success, Guyon proceeds to the Cave.
We have examined his motivation for going underground, and the physical
effect of his proud denial of the body's needs. A comparison with

Pyrochles is implicit in their near-encounter ending Canto Six. His

148

pride in his restraint, like Pyrochles' wrath, becomes deep—seated with-
out Guyon being conscious of it. Heat, we have seen in Cave and Castle,
is the agent of coction. Pyrochles, besides personating Wrath, sug-
gests heat by his very name. The continued beating by Furor has driven
the fire of Wrath deep inside him to burn in his liver. Immersion of
the body in water cannot quench his wrath. The same figurative kind
of coction is occurring in Guyon, although, feeding himself with com—
fort, it is Pride, not Wrath, which that coction produces. He might
have taken warning from Pyrochles' futile attempts to cool his inner
fire. But just as the example of Braggadocio is lost upon Guyon, so
he fails to see that water will not quench Pyrochles' "inner fire."
Of course, Wrath and Lust are both "hot" passions. We recall that
Braggadocio "Gan burns in filthy lust" (111.42) prior to his assault
on Belphoebe. Guyon in the Cave then attempts victory over that body
(or perhaps demonstration of his mastery of it) whose susceptibility
to Love he believes he has already conquered. But while he is congratu-
lating himself on that "victory" Pride, like Maleger, springs up to
fight anew just when the "victory" seems assured. The result we know.
Just as Guyon, exerting maximum effort to overthrow Furor, overthrows
himself (iv.8), so his excess of denial turns upon him, and, senses
oppressed, he lies in a faint.

The episodes within the Cave demonstrate Spenser's technique in
structuring the narrative to present Guyon with aspects of himself.
To observe this technique we enter the Cave once more, and continue on
to its last scene. Apparent in the Cave episodes is a narrative direc-
tion of inwardness paralleling the direction of the imagery, the poetic
action, and the expression of mental states already discussed. The
fictional narrative's action directs the movement from terrestrial to

subterranean--external to internal--in the literal sense.

149

Guyon and Mammon reach, beginning from earth's periphery, a more
central perimeter by "A darkesome way ... / That deep descended through
the hollow ground" (vii.20). Details are ignored for a moment in a
general statement: The passageway to Mammon's realm is "with dread
and horrour compassed around" (vii.20). But the details are immediately
resumed.‘ The "larger space" to which they come "stretcht it selfe
into an ample plaine"--like the Idle Lake, a vast space, and suggestive
of the limitless scene often present in dreams. Though through this
plain "a beaten broad highway did trace" (vii.21), Guyon, as he is so
often, is yet alone except for his guide. A beaten broad highway is
made by continuous passage of many travelers, yet none are now to be
seen. Present only are those personations of mental and emotional
states of Horror and his crew.

Guyon and his guide enter successively doors which open to ever
deeper recesses of Mammon's Cave. The artifacts seen at first are the
completed products--the stamped coins—-such as Mammon held in his lap
above-ground. Then we see containers--"great yron chests and coffers
strong" (30) holding that gold. Then appears the store of gold
uncased (31). Finally we reach the smeltery from which it all comes
(35-36). We have moved backward from artifact to source.

Interaction of gold and mortals is evident in the temple with
"golden pillours" which "did Vpbeare"

The massy roofs, and riches huge sustayne
And euery pillour decked was full deare
With crownes, and Diademes, and titles vaine
Which mortall Princes wore, while they on earth did rayne.
(v1.43)
That is, to the narrative action, whose theme is inward probing, is

added a strand of mortal involvement. The gold is now functional and/or

decorative. Gold in the form of crowns "makes" a king--who is first a

150
mortal man. Philotime sits in glory which, like gold, is "glistring."
She holds the golden chain, reaching to heaven, which all the now-
present crowd struggle to climb. Mortals, or personages at least,
literally embrace the gold. The narrative action is paralleled by the
poetic action. Both point inward; the former to Nature's heart (the
womb of earth), the latter to the heart of man.

The narrative direction continues to the physical/actual core
of Nature; the poetic direction to the real core or soul of man. The
Garden of Proserpina presents the explicit goal of the narrative and
the poetic action in the confrontation of Guyon with Tantalus and
Pilate.

Again, the way to the Garden, as are all passageways to and in
Mammon's realm, is "Through griesly shadowes", and though it is a
"beaten path" (51), again Guyon and Mammon meet no one. As in a dream,
normal conditions seem suspended. Vegetation is

direfull deadly blacke both leafe and bloome,
Fit to adorne the dead and deck the drery toombe.

There mournfull Cypresse grew in greatest store,

And trees of bitter Gall, and Heben sad,

Dead sleeping Poppy, and black Hellebore,

Cold Coloquintida, and Tetra mad,

Mortall Samnitis, and Cicuta bad. (vii.51-52)
The "golden apples glistring bright" (54) are depicted in terms of
terrestrial Nature. But they are representative of the innermost goal
toward which the narrative action moves. The apples take the source—
to-product movement a step further. Mammon's smeltery took the mineral
from Nature. Its product was the golden artifacts. The apples are

also artifact-Abut they in turn are a source of human.passions, states

of mind, and acts. They are a challenge and a task to Hercules:

151

they from hence were sold;

For those, which Hercules with conquest bold

Got from great Atlas daughters, hence began,

And planted there, did bring forth fruit of gold. (vii.54)
The apples which Hercules got began here in the Cave. Like the gold
which became interrelated with mortal functions in the "Gyeld or solemne
Temple" (43), the golden fruit, which no "living wight / Like euer saw"
(54), becomes functional when those apples which were "sold"--i.e.,
planted in Atlas' realm-—1nteract with personages. These apples, the
"seed" of those which caused mortal acts on the earth, are a parallel
to the theme of "source" already noted in natural Nature imagery. The
theme of source is reinforced in terms of Time: the apples have
influenced worldly events since Atlas, one of the Titans who fought
with Zeus himself. And these apples, unlike the fruit of Phaedria's
island and of Acrasia's Bower, (for there we see only buds, not ripe
fruit) have been planted, and in Atlas' garden grew as actual fruit,
though not edible. In terms of personages, they are fruitful--but
the fruit is equated to deceit and unhappiness in Love, ending in that
frightful disruption not only of individuals but of whole societies:

Here eke that famous golden Apple grew,

The which emongst the gods false Ate threw;

For which th'Idaean Ladies disagreed,

Till partiall Paris dempt it Venus dew,

And had of her, faire Helen for his meed,

That many noble Greekes and Troians made to bleed. (vii.55)
With the mention of Trojans perhaps even the chronicles of Britain are
foreshadowed. The apples echo such swatches of pagan history as that
which the Palmer related to Guyon concerning the nymph and Don Faunus-
The minichronicle of the apples however is more distant in Time. It

concerns Time from far back in the recess of things, as it were the

beginning, or source.

152
Of Proserpina's great tree, the "broad braunches, laden with
rich fee ... themselues did steepe / In a blacke flood" (56). By this
detail we are led with Guyon to Tantalus and Pilate. Obviously there
are parallels between the two, since both are in the same "river of
Cocytus deepe." Superficially, Tantalus represents the denial of
Taste, although not directly of his own volition. Standing in water,
he cannot drink; surrounded by fruit overhead, he cannot eat. Both
water and fruit, seemingly of their own volition, retreat from him.
Like Guyon then, Tantalus partakes of none of the sustenance here.
He thus mirrors Guyon. Tantalus does voice a desire for sustenance
to Guyon:
But if that thou be such, as I thee see,
Of grace I pray thee, giue to eate and drinke to mee.
(vii.59)
But Guyon is not such as Tantalus sees, if, as it seems, Tantalus sees
him as sympathetic; Guyon is literally ungracious. He denies Tantalus
his request, aligning himself with Jove's decree:
vnto all that line in high degree
Ensample be of mind intemperate,
To teach them how to vse their present state
--at which Tantalus, as did Amavia earlier,
gan ... aloud to cry,
Accusing highest Ioue and gods ingrate,
And eke blaspheming heauen bitterly,
As authour of vniustice, there to let him dye. (vii.60)
The denial of food and drink to a sufferer is perhaps unChristian of
Guyon; we note that Tantalus is to be the example of mind intemperate.
Guyon, whose eyes now continue the penetration inward while he remains
on the bank, "lookt a litle further, and espyde / Another wretch" (61).

Pilate, like Tantalus, is "deepe ... drent / Within the riuer"; as does

Tantalus, Pilate extends "both his handes / Aboue the water ... on

153
high" (61). His goal however is not to gather food, but to rid himself
of something gathered earlier on earth: his guilt. Curiously, his
hands "faynd to wash themselues incessantly" above, not in, the water.
And, like Tantalus' effort to eat and drink, Pilate's to wash his hands
fails in direct relation to the effort expended: his hands

Yet-nothing cleaner were for such intent,
But rather fowler seemed to the eye.

Pilate's hands, figuratively bloody as were Ruddymane's actually, are
so because he
to Iewes despiteous

Deliuered Vp the Lord of life to dye,

And did acquite a murdrer felonous. (vii.62)
But the blood is not visible. Nor is guilt visible on his hands except
in their being "most filthy feculent" (61). What Pilate expresses is
the realization of an abstraction--a state of mind--as a personage in

the narrative action. At the same time

The whiles [his] handes [he] washt in puritie,
The whiles [his] soule was soyld with foule iniquitie.

His soiled soul is the ultimate goal of the narrative action's penetra—
tion, the same goal as that of the poetic action: the rational soul
or mind of guilty man. On earth, Pilate's hands were "washt in purity"
but his "soule was soyld"; here, even surrounded by apprOpriate black—
ness and in light which scarcely permits sight, the soil is visible,
and the act which on earth cleaned his hands makes them "nothing
cleaner / But rather fowler." The knowledge of his guilt, when self-
deception is impossible, is plainly the torment of Pilate. His, like
Pyrochles', is the inner fire which the water will not quench.

Both Tantalus and Pilate echo then personages and episodes prior
to Canto Seven. Tantalus, like Pyrochles with fire, burns with thirst;

the former is denied surcease by the Idle Lake, the latter by the

154
river Cocytus. Pyrochles cries out that he is
most wretched man aliue,
Burning in flames, yet no flames can I see,
And dying daily, daily yet reuiue. (v1.45)

and Tantalus

The whiles he steru'd with hunger and with drouth
He daily dyde, yet neuer throughly dyen couth. (vii.58)

Pilate cannot cannot cleanse his hands of the stain of Christ's blood;
Guyon could not cleanse Ruddymane's hands of his mother's. Tantalus,
in attempting to assume, by derogation and disloyalty to his superiors,
an authority equalling that of the gods, is the obverse of Pilate, who
abdicated his authority: Pilate was the "falsest judge / And most
vniust" (62). In that abdication he was instrumental in the death of
the man who, as God's agent, created Order out of Chaos, at the same
time personating Love and Natura naturans. Pilate is one with those
who, in one way or another-~the fountain nymph, Belphoebe, and others--
either deny, flee from, or are indifferent to procreation or fruitful-
ness. Pilate fostered barrenness when he "Deliuered Vp the Lord of
life to die" (62); the Lord of Genesis, who pOpulated the earth.
Pilate's Eternal Life is here in the black river; the Lord's Eternal
Life is in Heaven. Pilate recognizes that his fault is in himself;
Tantalus blames his heaven. Guyon sees himself as faultless, and
blames both.

The goals of the inward direction of the narrative and the poetic
action then are Tantalus and Pilate. They personate aspects of Guyon.
Guyon states that Tantalus is to remain an example in order that the
nobility, or rulers, can learn "how to use their present state" (vii.60).
Their "present state" equals Tantalus' former state, when he was

welcome at Jove's table. He was ejected by the gods for presumption:

155

he profaned their secrets and insulted their dignity.l4 In a word:
Pride. Ironically, Guyon, who is weakening his castle walls to prop
up his self-image, is misusing his present state. His words, directed
at Tantalus, apply to himself. Guyon is then looking at himself in
Tantalus. As intemperate, he is disordered, since his Reason is not
in charge. It is fitting then that he sees Pilate next, for Pilate,
the head of the civil government in Jerusalem, was ruled by the mob in
sentencing Christ to the cross. In terms of Tillyard's correspondences,
Guyon and Pilate are similar in that the body or members have usurped
rule from the head or king. Having in effect deposed Reason, the next
step for the body, consonant with usurpers throughout history, is to
execute the former ruler; and Guyon, his body choking off his mind,
faints. As Amavia says of Mordant's condition when she found him at
Acrasia's Bower, Guyon in the Cave "knew not ... his owne 111" (1.45).

It is appropriate that Guyon, having shown his disdain for his
body's needs in the Cave, thereby misusing it, should be instructed
in the nature of the human body. In Alma's Castle, his next stop, he
Observes a body not misused but well governed.15 Guyon does observe
how the well-governed body functions. The contrast of the kitchen
activity in Alma's Castle to that of the Cave is apparent: all here
contribute to the nourishment, and the use of concoction is for susten-
ance, rather than for material wealth. The vegetative spirit receives

its necessary impetus. When Guyon enters the parlor or heart, however,

 

14Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Penguin, 1955; rev. 1960),
II, 108. Frank Kermode, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne (London, 1971),
p. 73, says: "... being a guest of Jove, Tantalus grew arrogant."

15Though Alma personates the soul, the Latin means "nourishing."

156
the heart seems very much like Guyon as a denier of Love except in the
sense of innocent dalliance. In the heart Guyon meets, as we have seen,
the source of his modesty personated in Shamefastness. Having been
educated in the well-governed body, Guyon next after the heart observes
the mind. Here the full potentials of evil and good are evident, as
they were not in the lower regions of the body. That is, in Phantastes'
chamber, for example, we see undesirable images and thoughts, but they
are more or less under control. Paradoxically, the mind is thus more
temperate than the rest of the Castle. In Milton's terms, this is not
a mind whose virtue is "blank." Troublesome and disruptive elements
are not excluded. They are present, but controlled.

The chronicles provide histories of two lands paralleling the
order within the castle and the hurly-burly without. Arthur's chronicle
records the turbulence of Britain caused by the passions and sensual
powers personated by the besiegers briefly before his entry and more
fully in Canto Eleven. Guyon's chronicle records the orderly succession
Of Elfin rulers. For the first time Guyon observes that wedded Love
does not cause anguish: Elf

Did in the gardins of Adonis find

A goodly creature, whom he deemd in mind

To be no earthly wight, but either Spright,

Or Angell, th'authour of all woman kind. (x.71)
In Elf's bride are combined the concept of worthy Love and of source.
That from this "authour of all woman kind" have issued ladies worthy
of a knight's love is quite likely. The rather one-sided representa-
tion of Love as abhorrent, or if pleasant, so for a time only, which
Guyon has heretofore witnessed, begins to swing toward a balance.

Guyon departs for the Bower by way of the Idle Lake. On the third

day the monsters, delusions, and disruptions, latent or controlled in

157
Phantastes' chamber, escape control in Guyon's mind to begin their
work.16 Water symbolizes the mind, as we.have seen, on occasion; when
the Idle Lake--"this great inland sea"--begins

To swell aboue the measure of his guize
As threatning to deuoure all, that his powre despise,
(xii.21)

Guyon's mind is disrupted. And out of it stream monsters "knowen by
their names / Such as in idle fantasies doe flit" (ix.50), but they
seem actual:"Hydraes ..., Whales, ... whirlpooles, ...Scolopendraes,
... Monoceros, ... the dreadfull Fish ... of Death, ... the griesly
Wassermann, ... the horrible Sea-satyre, ... the huge Ziffius, ... the
greedy Rosmarines, ... and thousand thousands many more" (xii.23-25).
Some of these seem indeed "such as in the world were neuer yit"
(ix.50).
But they are not only of Guyon's fantasy, but given form and
movement by Acrasia. The Palmer says of them:
these same Monsters are not these indeed,
But are into these fearefull shapes disguiz'd
By that same wicked witch, to worke vs dreed,
And draw from on this iourney to proceede. (xii.26)
A connection then exists between Acrasia and the mind. She can bid-
insubstantial monsters to rise up in the Fancy and seem actual. We have
seen that between Guyon's mind and the gold of the Cave an affinity
existed, deny it as Guyon may. Mammon worked on that affinity to
tempt Guyon. Acrasia works on the latent monsters which Guyon's mind

harbors. Rather than tempt, however, they seem designed to deter, or

to make such temptation as does occur on the Idle Lake journey more

 

16B. Nellish, "The Allegory of Guyon's Voyage: An Interpreta-
tion," ELH, 30(1963), 89-106, states that after xii.58 "temptation may
seem to arise from.without but the threat really proceeds from within
the mind itself." The statement applies to temptations and threats
before xii.58 as well.

158
attractive. Even so, the total design seems to be to prevent Guyon's
arrival at the Bower. The monsters of the lake are akin to the monsters
Nature harbors. Indeed, these monsters from Guyon's mind are
Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see,
Or shame that euer should so fowle defects
From her most cunning hand escaped bee. (xii.23)

In succession then the trio encounter temptations and obstacles.
His attraction toward the doleful "seemely Maiden" (27) suggests that
Guyon may wish to revert to simple and relatively easy deeds such as
he first assayed in Canto One. As such the maiden personates a desire
to desist from the arduous quest to seek out and destroy the Bower.
Similar in nature and in purpose are the mermaids, who voice the
theme of rest:

0 turne thy rudder hitherward a while:

Here may thy storme-bet vessell safely ride;

This is the Port of rest from troublous toyle,

The worldes sweet In, from paine and wearisome turmoyle. (32)
Water, rock, and wind "them fitly answered" (33). But from distressed
maid and mermaids (half-fish, they are monsters too), the Palmer
dissuades Guyon from abandoning his quest.

Guyon's confused and weary mental state is expressed by the sudden
fog thick with birds of ill omen. In sight of land, the trio encounter
the last and most gruesome obstacle:

suddeinly a grosse fog ouer spred
With his dull vapour all that desert has,
And heauens chearefull face enueloped,
That all things one, and one as nothing was,
And this great Vniuerse seemd one confused mas.
Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist
How to direct their way in darkenesse wide,
But feard to wander in that wastfull mist,
For tombling into mischiefe vnespide:

Worse is the daunger hidden, then descride.

Suddeinly an innumerable flight'

Of harmefull fowles about them fluttering, cride,
And with their wicked wings them ofte did smight,
And sore annoyed, grOping in that griesly night.

159

Even all the nation of vnfortunate

And fatall birds about them flocked were,

Such as by nature men abhorre and hate;

The ill-faste Owle, deaths dreadfull messengers,

The boats Night—rauen, trump of dolefull drere,

The lether-winged Bat, dayes enimy,

The ruefull Strich, still waiting on the bere,

The Whistler shrill, that who so heares, doth dy,

The hellish Harpies, prophets of sad destiny. (xii.34-36)
The darkness expresses Guyon's state of mind, as do the birds. The owl
and the bat, as the night-raven is explicitly, are birds of darkness.
The owl is conventionally, from medieval times especially, an abhorrent
bird (e.g., so claims the nightingale in The Owl and the Nightingale).
The rest are linked with death and/or dire prophecies. With the harpies,
we are back in the genus of monsters, for their bodies were like a
bird's, but their heads were as women's.

As soon as the trio set foot on the Bower island, they are inter-
cepted by beasts; when the Palmer subdues them by holding over them
his staff (40), it would seem that the terrifying incidents of the
Idle Lake are to be repeated. But from now on, to the Bower itself,
all of the diversions are artfully pleasant. Acrasia has apparently
given over the tactic of terror for that of blandishment.

First is the "worke of admirable wit" (44), the ivory gate-
carving. Underlying its brittle glitter Of beauty is the anguish of
the events it depicts. As such it parallels Jason and Mordant; while
Amavia and Medea are parallel in the initial anguish of a lost love,
the two are Opposite in their ensuing action: Amavia kills herself,
Medea killed her children. The ivory carving, with its personages for-
ever still, recalls the frozen motion of the stone nymph. As in the
stone fountain, the pain of Jason.and Medea is endlessly immobile in

an unchanging substance. The scene paradoxically is an attempt to

represent in a static object the glory of an action, the primary glory

160
and wonder of which was its very movement into seas unknown in search
of a fabled Golden Fleece. At the same time, Guyon is looking at a
representation of himself crossing the Idle Lake. His journey into
danger is over, so the action is arrested in the carving.

The danger, however, is not yet past. Part of it lies in the
"seeming" with which the Bower is rife. The gate-carving is not the
only "seeming" which, ostensibly representing something--a glorious
action--is actually its direct opposite-—a grisly immobile. Inside
the gate the juncture of Love--false and genuine-'-with the imagination
is explicit. It is expressed by the person Of the porter and by the
poet's definition of him as the false Agdistes, the opposite of the
true Genius.

The false Genius, like the Idle Lake, is apparently innately
slothfull:

His looser garment to the ground did fall,

And flew about his heeles in wanton wize,

Not fit for speedy pace or manly exercize. (xii.46)
Like the Idle Lake as symbol for the mind, the false Agdistes-is the
source of phantasies. He is

The foe of life, that good enuyes to all,

That secretly doth vs procure to fall,

Through guilefull semblaunts, which he makes vs see.

‘ (xii.48)
That is, he presents images as desirable when in truth they lead to
sin, or "fall." The true Genius, not present as a personage, is
described as the Opposite:
that celestiall powre, to whom the care

Of life, and generation of all

That liues, pertaines in charge particulate,

Who wondrous things concerning our welfare,

And straunge phantomes, doth let vs ofte foresee,
And ofte of secret ill bids vs beware. (xii.47)

161

Though opposite, both nevertheless deal in fantasies: the false,
in "guilefull semblaunts"; the true, in "straunge phantomes." Both
come under the aegis of Nature as "creating", or naturans: the false,
as the "foe of life"; the true, as he who is "in charge particulate"
of "the care / Of life, and generation." In keeping with the "seeming"
or duplicity of the Bower, they are two who though Opposites, yet
seem identical superficially. The true Genius seems the personation
of that Nature which Perdita calls "great creating", or Natura naturans.
In terms of the Renaissance concept of the mind and its functions, the
true Genius is the Imagination; the false, the Fantasy. A brief summary
of the Renaissance theory of the mind's structure and functions appears
in the Appendix.

The false Agdistes' ability to produce "guilefull semblaunts" is
obviously Phantasy at work deluding Reason. The word "guilefull" is
important. Besides recalling the activities of Archimago (1.8), it
reveals that the purpose Of the delusion is to trick the viewer, to
"make us fall." Bundy, discussing Bonaventura's theory, notes that
this

"false coinage, sometimes called phantasia pro-
terva [shameless, impudent] is plainly synonymous
with 'apparition.' It is partially corporeal;
but, as specifically the product of the Imagina-
tion [read as Phantasy], it had an incorporeal
character so that it might be implanted by a
demon."17

As a servant of the witch Acrasia, the false Agdistes is likely to be

a demon.18 The false Agdistes then intends, in this Bower area

 

17Murry W. Bundy, The Theory of'Imagination in Classical and

Medieval Thought (Urbana, 1928), p. 267.

18C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 117-
118, notes the differences between demons and daemons. The latter were
beneficial.

162

where all is the epitome of harmony, to disorder that most admirable
work of the Creator, man; and to do so by working through the mind,
"That God hath built for his owne blessed bowre" (ix.47). And should
all else fail to dissuade and degrade Guyon, he will employ the tempta—
tion to carnal lust--the origin of the witchcraft Acrasiaworks.19

As far as the false Agdistes is concerned, then, the illusion
of the naked damsels bathing in the pool is his sure means to make
Guyon fall, should the previous temptations fail. Guyon is tempted.
For the first time in Book II, he feels the stirrings of lust. For-
gotten is the lesson taught from Canto One onward: shun Love. In
other areas of evil or intemperance, Guyon has been tested, and has
emerged with varying degrees of success. In this area as in the others,
one must feel the passion, else there can be no victory. Guyon has
been tested in the presence of ladies, but never felt desire for their
person. As with Shamefastness, he has "turnd his face away" (ix.44)
from images which suggest that he too is akin to Don Faunus, to
Mordant, to Huddibras and Sansloy, to Phedon. Braggadocio and Guyon
are so antithetical that they do not meet at all in Book II. In Alma's
Castle there is no visible potential for procreation. Cupid is in.
the heart, but without his bow. The senses resolutely exclude delight
along with horrors. Control, or Temperance, is no victory there
because no passions exist to be governed. The test is yet to come.
Alma has as yet not sallied forth to do battle. And the test will not

come until Guyon is gone.

 

19Henricus Institoris [Heinrich Kramer] and Jakob Sprenger,
Melleus Maleficarum, ed. P. Hughes (London, 1968), p. 29.

163
In the mirror-like pool surrounding Acrasia's fountain Guyon's
lust is reflected. The damsels personate his mental and emotional
states: desire and carnal lust. That which was latent in Guyon's
character, but which he would not admit, is suddenly realized. From
this vision of himself he does not "turn his face away." He was not
tempted by the laughing Phaedria; he misunderstood the blush on
Shamefastness' cheeks. Now he is drawn toward one of the maidens who
laughed, and she blusht withall,
That blushing to her laughter gaue more grace,
And laughter to her blushing, as did fall. (xii.68)
But Guyon does not fall. The Palmer, again functioning as

Memory, reminds Guyon of their goal, and "him forward thence did draw"
(xii.69). The work of the true Agdistes seems plain. He it is

Who wondrous things concerning our welfare,

And straunge phantomes, doth let vs ofte forsee,

And ofte of secret ill bids vs beware. (xii.47)
The semblance of the inviting damsels, provided by the false Agdistes,
has been turned to the purpose of the true Agdistes. They are a "secret
111" which Guyon must see and know. Aware, Guyon can beware. The
true Genius, Natura naturans, at its origin indistinguishable from
the impulse to carnal lust, easily turns the Object of lust to,a
"wondrous thing concerning [Guyon's] welfare." The Genius does so
because it is also a power of the mind, able to "let vs ofte forsee

straunge phantomes."

Now Guyon sees and knows himself to possess that

which, misdirected (Acrasia means incontinence), would make him fall.
As Guyon penetrated ever inward in the Cave until he faced himself

in Tantalus and Pilate, so here he has persevered in a journey into

the self until he sees, as he saw the source of Elfinkind in his

chronicle, the source of generation. On»a quest to avenge Amavia,

he finds his kinship to Mordant; ever turning away from Love, he now

164
comes face to face with its most base aspect in himself. We have
posited the poet as echoing Guyon's "Behold the image of Nature." Here
we posit the poet saying to Guyon "Behold the image of thy selfe."
Quoting Dante's comment on the ability of man to see the justice which
enters into the world, Bundy excerpts

"... the view which your world receives enters

within as eyesight through the sea, which, albeit

it sees the bottom from the shore, on the high sea

sees it not; and nevertheless it exists; but its

being deep conceals it."20
SO it is with Guyon's carnal desire: deep within his mind--as muddied
and sluggish as the Idle Lake--lust was not apparent to him. In the
shallow water of the fountain pool at the Bower it becomes visible.
Its being deep had concealed it. But it was there. Guyon finally
knows--himse1f.

The precept is familiar to Medieval and Renaissance literature.

The philosophical basis for it in Medieval literature is found in
Chaucer's translation of Boethius:

"For certes swich is the condicioun of alle

mankynde, that oonly whan it hath knowynge of

itself, thanne passeth it in noblesse alle

othere thynges; and when it forletith the

knowinge of itself thanne it is brought by-

nethen alle beestes. Forwhi alle othere

lyvynge beestes ban of kynde to knowe nat

hemself; but whan that men leeten the knowynge

of hemself, it cometh hem of vice."21
Also from Boethius, R. Peck in his edition of Cenfessio Amantis relates

Amans' problem to lack of self-knowledge: "'You have forgotten what

you are,’ Philosophy tells Boethius: Amans' problem is precisely the

 

20Theory of Imagination, p. 248, from Paradiso, 19.52-63.

21Boethius, The Consolation of’Philosophy, tr. Geoffrey Chaucer,
in works, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2d ed (Boston, 1957), p. 336.

165
same. He is guilty of faulty self-definition."22 Peck goes on to
discuss the structure of Confessio Amantis in terms which could be
applied to Book II.23 Guyon and Amans are of course Opposite--Amans
is lovesick--but Amans, in contrast to the other creatures who, like
the birds, for example, exemplify Natura naturans by mating, is a
denier of Natura naturans; he is unnatural:

I was further from my love
Than Erthe is fro the heavene above. (1.105-106)

The natural attitude toward such denial, toward delay of mating, is
succinctly stated by the birds in Chaucer's The Parliament of’Fbwls
who are forced to listen to the debate between the "noble" birds over

which shall wed the "formel egle": "'Have don, and lat us wende!'"

(492).

The similarity of Confessio Amantis and Book II is apparent in
sequence of events and overall structure. Before Amans meets the
Genius Of that narrative, he meets Venus (1.154ff); Guyon encounters
Venus personated in the two damsels of the pool; then the true Genius
redirects the intent Of the damsel-encounter. Amans' Genius tells him
that though Love be the sickness Amans suffers, he will first tell
Amans of the other vices, ending with Love:

Bot of conclusion final

Conclude I wol in special

For love, whos servant I an,

And why the cause is that I cam. (1.249-252)

Book II of The Faerie Queene parallels this sequence: Love as a theme

is presented early (the alleged rape of Duessa, Canto One), but the

 

22New York, 1968, p. xiv.

166
narrative then shifts focus to other vices, with Love as the final
focus in Canto Twelve.
Albert W. Fields, in a recent study, surveys the history of the

moral precept of "Know Thyself" in philosophy. Plato's Socrates

"in.Alcibiades and The Republic [says that] a

person may escape false opinions of self by appre-

hending the world as a system of universals which

ultimately become phases of self. Xenophon's

Socrates ... says that ... self-examination

entailed a purging of false Opinions ... Erasmus,

in his Enchiridion, says that the chief point

of wisdom is 'simply to know yourself.'"
Discussing Milton's concept of self-knowledge, Fields contends that
Milton's handling of "the realms of God and Satan" in Paradise Lost
makes those "two realms represent those aspects of self that man must

necessarily discover within himself."24

Milton, though Paradise Lost
(1674) postdates The Faerie Queene (1590) by nearly a century, knew
and admired Spenser's work--especially his depiction of Temperance.25
Field's remarks on Milton in Paradise Lost seem to apply equally well
to Spenser in Book II. Self-knowledge and temperance are quite come
fortably, in philosophy and in literature, within the tradition. And
the Natura naturans of philosophy, the Temperance of morality, and the
human passion of Love seem closely and fundamentally intertwined.

For what Guyon learns in other episodes, such as the Cave, is
preparatory to his lesson at the Bower. To know Mammon is necessary,
but to know oneself is also necessary. Guyon is so pleased at his

perception of Mammon that he is blind to himself. Such victories as

he does achieve prior to encountering the Bower he achieves because he

 

24"Milton and Self—Knowledge." PMLA. 33(1963). 392'399°

25Hughes, Milton, pp. 728-729.

167

feces vices such as Wrath. Until he learns the identify of Furor, for
example, and of Occasion, he cannot cope with them.26

Though Guyon does progress toward his goal through experience of
other vices, his true victory is at the pool. Acrasia is rather rou-
tinely gathered up. The "tempest of [Guyon's] wrathfulnesse" (xii.83)
as he destroys the Bower seems due_in part to his realization, after
seeing the fountain damsels and the spectacle of Verdant, of the truly
grave danger the Bower poses to a knight. In part also it seems due
to his fury at having found himself to be concupiscent. He is capable
of the lust which ostensibly occasioned the alleged rape of Duessa--
and which he condemned as traitorous to knighthood. Having satisfied
himself that the Red Cross Knight is not guilty, Guyon accepts him as
his model. The Palmer says (of himself and Guyon) to the Red Cross

Knight:

But wretched we, where ye haue left your marke,
Must now anew begin, like race to ronne. (1.32)

Guyon's ideal self-image is a mirror of the Red Cross Knight. He razes
the Bower in a rage against the place which is the means by which his
self-image is destroyed. He does not realize that he has indeed run

a "like race." The Red Cross Knight begins Book I with an inflated
sense of his own worth; he learns that it is ill-founded; he establishes
his worth through self-knowledge and, though aided, ultimately through
his own effort. Guyon does the same. For the Knight of Holiness, the
ultimate sin is Despair. From that depth the Red Cross Knight begins

his true progress. The ultimate sin against Nature is denial of Love.27

 

26Judith H. Anderson, "The Knight and the Palmer in The Faerie
Queene, Book II," MLQ, 31(1970), 166.

27A. C. Hamilton, "Spenser's Treatment of Myth," ELH, 26(1959),
345, finds the meaning of the Bower razing to be the same, although on
a larger scale: "By destroying the Bower, Guyon ... releases the
regenerative powers of nature, nature naturans..."

168
From that depth Guyon would, were The Faerie Queene complete, progress
to the achievement of Temperance, not only over other vices, but also
over Lust. His knowledge of self is inescapable. It is toward that
knowledge that he has been moving, through an apparently aimless series
of episodes.

Often, when confronted with himself, he remains unaware that he is
so confronted. An example is his encounter with Tantalus, during which
his words indicate that he believes Tantalus to be other than himself;
or his confrontation with the giant who personates Guyon's attitude
toward gold, expressed to Mammon: Disdayne. But such mirrors of
himself occur much earlier in Book II. Mordant is more than super-
ficially like Guyon as a proud young knight. He also foreshadows.
Guyon-as—failure-in—his—quest. Mordant has drunk Acrasia's wine; when
he drinks the pure water of the fountain-dwhen "Bacchus with the
Nymphe does lincke" (i.55)——the two extremes war within Mordant. Death
is the result. No one can harbor both.. His name--death giving—-
speaks to all who would attempt it. The combination of extremes is
not Temperance; nor is either one by itself. The nymph, personating
abstention, is dead; Grylle and company, personating Bacchanalia, are
dead to the world of men. Guyon's attitude toward Love is that of the
nymph. She is forever stone, and cannot change; Guyon can, if he will.
Should he remain so, he will not exemplify Temperance. Should he veer
to the other extreme, serve Acrasia, he will be as is Verdant in
Acrasia's lap:‘ spiritually, not physically dead. Mordant in death
appears curiously alive; Verdant in love appears curiously dead. The
two lovers are startlingly similar in appearance. Mordant, as a
tangible, actual dead body, corresponds to the emphasis on natural

Nature in the early cantos; Verdant's spiritual dessication--the

169
near-death of the rational soul-—corresponds to the emphasis on mind
in the last cantos. In terms of the inward direction of the narrative
and Of poetic action, Verdant is Mordant's source: as Verdant is at
the end of the narrative on Acrasia's lap, so was MOrdant; as Mordant
at the beginning of the narrative is dead, so will Verdant be should
Guyon's quest fail. The structure can be described thus in terms of
rhetoric as chiasmus, or antimetabole. Mordant's is the actual or
physical death of which Verdant's is the spiritual counterpart. But
Guyon does not see Mordant as mirroring himself, or Verdant as mirror-
ing his spiritual death should he fail in his quest. As with Tantalus,
he thinks Mordant dissociated from himself.

Or Guyon, aware that he is confronting himself, turns away, as from
Shamefastness and her iynx. Except for her, Alma's Castle expresses
not only Guyon's "blank" virtue but also a work of the Creator yet
incomplete (like Adam before Eve), or restrained-—perhaps even per-
verted——from its natural function of procreation. Therefore the Castle
is a combination Of the natural and--as its emphasis on decorum and man-
made artifact suggests-~unnatural. Like Guyon, Alma has not yet felt
the sting of Cupid's arrow. She has hidden inside her Castle walls.
Sensations are kept out. The Castle, though its defense is stout,
requires Arthur's effort to secure its safety. Arthur posited as the
personation of Grace seems to founder here, for Grace is usually though
not exclusively conceived of as the salvation of sinners. But in
Alma's Castle no sin is apparent. Disregarding theology, we see Arthur
as appropriate opponent to Maleger because, of all those in the Castle,
he is the only one who has felt Love: as he confesses to Una, he loves
"a royall mayd" who "Me seemed, by my side / Her daintie limbes full

softly down did lay" (1.1x.13). Arthur's victory over Maleger, then,

17O

foreshadows that of Guyon over the false Agdistes--shou1d Guyon succeed.
Arthur's victory is a facing of evil desires, not a turning away. But
as Arthur, having acknowledged Love, is the only one who can defeat
Maleger (as the evil desire of Lust), so Guyon cannot succeed until
he admits himself capable of evil desires, or Lust. Once Arthur con-
quers, Alma is presumably stronger, as her presence at the Castle gate
where Arthur is assisted from his horse suggests (xi.49). In the
words of the following stanza, which opens Canto Twelve, "Now ginnes
this goodly frame of Temperaunce / Fairely to rise" (emphasis mine).
Her new strength, Maleger dead, parallels Guyon's new strength after
he has met, acknowledged, and gained ascendancy over the base lust
which, animal though it be, is yet also Nature as personified in the
true Agdistes, and the foundation of honOrable Love. Though invisible,
Braggadocio stood for a moment beside Guyon at the pool, and moved with
him toward the damsels. The relationship of Guyon to Love, once the
damsels are passed, is no longer expressed by Alma in Canto Nine, but
by Belphoebe in Canto Three. Guyon has repelled Lust and Braggadocio.
Until now a denier of Love, and therefore unsuspectingly weak before
it, his knowledge that in himself it is latent, and inimical to
Temperance, makes him able to overcome it. "Worse is the daunger
hidden then descride" (xii.35). Maleger is in Guyon's castle tower,
but helpless in the standing lake of Guyon's mind, that "great inland
sea." Guyon has at last set foot on the path to Temperance. In a
completed Eaerie Queene he would complete the journey.

On the narrative level of the personages, then, Book II is the
story of Guyon's achievement of self-knowledge. From the stone nymph
exemplifying Natura naturata he moves toward the true Genius exemplifying

Natura naturans. And of course this force is to be found within

171

28

himself. It is true that some personages have Elizabethan counterparts.
British history has a role in Book II, as Canto Ten makes plain. But
to see only the historical analogies, by themselves, is to make Book

II and The Faerie Queene a topical roman a cleft And the further the
historical events recede into the past, the less Book 11 seems relevant
to the modern reader. Yet even the historical analogy takes on a new
dimension if we see Gloriana, for example, as Queen Elizabeth, from
the perspective this study has developed. She is intended as a bride
for Arthur--i.e., to be procreative. Belphoebe is conventionally

taken as a compliment to the Queen's virtue, or virginity. Yet
Belphoebe is, in Book II, as sterile as is Acrasia: of neither will
any progeny issue. But one of the important responsibilities of a
ruler is to have an heir. The chronicle that Arthur reads in Canto
Ten records the strife which ruins a kingdom when a successor is not
born, or named, who can rule. Guyon's records just the opposite:

the Faery lineage is unbroken. Belphoebe and Acrasia are the two
extremes of sexual morality, but neither exemplifies procreation.

Alma is most like a flattering picture of Elizabeth as revered mistress
of her castle, and for Elizabeth as ruler of her island kingdom. Read
as historical analogy, then, we can see a veiled reproach to the

Queen as childless. Later books, Book III especially, develop the
theme of chaste or wedded Love, as encouragement to the Queen. Book
II, by dealing with the foundation of Love, prepares for its develop-
ment in Book III. Malecasta and Malbecco, among others, exemplify

evil love; Busiraneis Cave is the counterpart of Alma's Castle; Britomart

 

28Cf. E. Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory
(Baltimore, 1932); Jewel Wurtsbaugh, Two Centuries of’Spenserian
Scholarship (Baltimore, 1936), pp. 83-88.

172
and Artegall exemplify, not without digression into error, the course
of honorable Love.

Or it is perhaps legitimate to accept Book II on the "quid credas"
level of patristic exegesis. But to see the personages as figures of
Christian doctrine only robs the story of its deepest human appeal
and earthly significance, and makes away with the story to replace it
with a sermon. Spenser's avowed purpose was to "fashion a gentleman
or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline", or a Christian
gentleman, rather than a gentle Christian.

Viewed from Nature, the setting, the personages, and the action
seem actual. The appeal is timeless, not rooted in a certain span of
history. Nor is it a story for a Sunday in church. Yet Spenser's
intent is not to achieve verisimilitude to Nature in the setting for
its own sake, nor to make the events seem actual thereby. In that
sense Arthos, who denied any importance to the scene, is right. But
the natural setting does accustom the reader to the use of Nature
images to express personages in terms of their physical appearances
and states, to express their basic traits, and to express their emo-
tional and mental states. Some who are evil, or who are intemperate,
are eventually covered with dirt, though, like Pyrochles, they may
glitter at their approach like the sun on waves. Images from.Nature
natural tie the personages to this world--even Acrasia, a witch, is
expressed as a rose, or as the sun. Alma's home is of earth. As in
the rest of The Faerie Queene, natural images express an abstract when
Guyon speaks of the "antique world, in his first flowring youth"
(v11.16); they express action, as when Arthur's return to battle with
the Sarazins is likened to a shower of rain, and when his rising to

fight Maleger is compared to a volcano. Nature images express emotional

173

and mental states, as when Guyon likens Shamefastness' troubled spirit
rising from her heart to her face "as a cloud from sea" (ix.42). Bird
images express personages like Braggadocio and Arthur in action, traits,
and states. Nature images comment, by poetic action, on the personages:
the grove of trees beside the slothful Cymochles in Canto Five, or the
figure of water as mind when Cymochles has "pourd out his idle mind /
In daintie delices and lauish ioyes" (v.28). Nature is personated
when Archimago calls Earth the "mother of us all", and when Arthur
recalls that the Earth was Maleger's mother. Nature and personages
seem to mirror each other, from the "naturata" of the stone nymph and
the ivory gate to the "naturans" of Braggadocio and the true Genius.

Water as symbol for mind introduces the unnatural. That of the
stone nymph's fountain objectifies the purity of the nymph in refusing
Amavia's blood. It expresses Guyon's denial, unconscious perhaps, of
Love. As the river Cocytus, water expresses the filth of Pilate's
sinful soul, making his hands dirtier the more he washes. The branches
of Proserpina's apple tree dip into it as do the ivy vines into Acrasia's
fountain. The Idle Lake expresses some of the functions of the mind,
the Phantasy in particular. Like the Bower of Bliss, it appears twice
in the narrative: first with Cymochles, then with Guyon. The lake's
unnaturalness is indicated by its resistance to wind and tide; its
function as symbol for the mind, or part of the mind, by Phaedria's
boat "obaying to her mind" (v1.20) in her travels, without any other
rudder or propulsion. Pyrochles' wrath is not cooled in the Idle Lake;
rather, he "perturbs" the Idle Lake--a conventional effect of Wrath on

the mind.29 Pyrochles' animal passion of wrath appears consonant to

 

29Rogers, Anatomic, Ch. 13.

174
the Idle Lake as now symbolic of the sensible soul, unable to reason
as does the rational soul. To assert that the Idle Lake symbolizes
the whole mind would be to commit the same error attributed to those
who read The Faerie Queene as homily, or as historical analog. Still,
water in Book 11 does symbolize some aspects of the human mind, mostly
in its untrustworthy products, or sinful states. We see the mind as
it is affected by the senses, and as its images are projected into
sensibilia. The Idle Lake operates as do personages in reflecting
Guyon's character and his quest. It mirrors Guyon's mental state:
slothfull when he is subject to Phaedria; violent when the monsters
threaten the trio enroute to the Bower; confused and dark as they
near the Bower. The pool in Acrasia's garden is a mirror of Guyon's
susceptibility to lust.

To answer the questions posed at the end of Chapter One:

1. Book 11 contains all aspects of external Nature, some per-
verted by evil forces into artifact, in the categories of Ground,
Water, Vegetation, Atmospherics, and Animates.

2. These aspects, natural and unnatural, function as environment
for the narrative action and as imagery for the poetic action. The
natural setting accustoms us to the use of Nature imagery to express
personages--humaninature.

3. Nature images express personages' physical appearance, their
acts, and their emotional and mental states. Archimago quite appro-
priately (as the arch-imaginer) begins them, when in Canto One he
assures Guyon that he will find the alleged rapist "as sure, as hound /
The stricken Deare doth chalenge by the bleeding wound" (1.12). The
stone nymph exists as such because of her fear of rape and her desire

to remain inviolate. The cloud of dust which accompanies Atin describes

175

his outward appearance, his speed and bustle, and his frenzy. The preen-
ing bird image for Braggadocio manifests his care for appearances and
at the same time his shamelessness. Such external to inward direction
prepares us for other objects and images which owe their aspect to
the thoughts or the emotions of personages, most notably the Idle Lake
and the Bower of Bliss. But others can be cited: Guyon, having in
the main behaved creditably in warding off Phaedria's seduction, could
reasonably be expected to feel himself due recognition or reward. And
so he encounters Mammon, the dispenser of such recognition (at Philotime's
golden chain) and such reward (the gold in form of coin, crown, and
apples). Phenomena become expressions Of man's Phantasy. In Phantastes'
chamber thoughts are visualized; many of the same objects therein
depicted reappear as actual during the voyage over the Idle Lake. The
inward direction of these images corresponds to the inward direction
of the narrative; in turn this inner direction of the narrative action
to the core of "place", as in the Cave, parallels the inward direction
of the poetic action to Avarice in the core of man--his mind or soul.
Such images, along with personages, express themes of procreation, of
Temperance, and of mind.30

4. The poetic action at the same time presents to us and to
Guyon aspects of Guyon's own self. The unsoPhisticated ones are persons-
tions such as Furor and Disdayne. More subtly, the natural setting,
Nature, and the personages become intervisible: that is, each partakes
of the other. The water in the Bower is synonymous with Cymochles and

his liquid mind: he personates Guyon's vulnerability to vacillation.

 

3oBerger, Vision and.Reality, p. 154: "The Cave may suggest
metaphorically the real inwardness of Guyon's quest..."

176
Phaedria becomes the lily of the field. Arthur is at times a volcano,
a bull, the sun, or a violent rainshower. The Northern wind supports
Archimago; Mammon lives for and by his gold; Acrasia is simultaneously
the sun, a spider, and a rose. The stone nymph and the water of her
fountain find their obverse in Acrasia's nymphs and fountain pool:
both personate Guyon's attitudes toward Love at the time of encounter.
The same phenomenon is two different things to different personages:
Braggadocio fears a forest which to him seems deliberately inimical;
Belphoebe feels that the same forest is consciously protective:
flowers gather in her hair. From a commonplace setting for knightly
derring-do, however differently sensed by different personages, Nature
becomes the genetrix of all personages, including Maleger. Guyon
meets personages who not only represent his state of mind: some try
by force (Furor, Pyrochles) or by guile (Mammon, Acrasia) to distort
him into themselves. The latter distort Nature to further their designs
on Guyon.

The patently actual world, the apparent, becomes transparent. We
see through it the personages, Guyon in particular. To be truly temper-
ate man must be great and creating, as is unperverted Nature. Book II
is the story of Guyon's achievement of self-knowledge; the setting
becomes progressively unnatural, or inward, as it reflects his repres-
sion of Natura naturans on the level of man, or the microcosmos. The
evidence of the perversion of the creative force is the distortions of
the Idle Lake and the "luxuria" (combining senses of lust and luxuriance)
in the Bower. This world, the equivalent of Natura naturata, or a
world shaped by a force other than that within it, is so over-controlled
that it is also perverted. It reflects Guyon's over-control of his

human desire. Denial of the natural, temperate response to Love leads

177
to voyeurism, as practiced by Cymochles in Canto Five; or sexual exer—
cise such as practiced by Acrasia and Verdant and which ends in spiritual
death.
In the pool Guyon sees that he too is subject to that Lust to
which until now he thought himself superior, and not as other men.
Only after such knowledge of self can true Temperance begin. "Nothing
is nurtured except it partake of life", wrote Aristotle in De Anima.31
Guyon has denied in himself the sexual aspect of Love. In so doing
he has denied life.
"Temperance is the prOper ordering of our chaos
of contraries, not their denial, and what may
be admirable in Diana and her nymphs can only be
inhuman and inhumane in us."32
The emphasis on the natural setting in the early cantos serves to
keep that natural setting from being taken as Fairy land. If the
natural setting is not Fairy land, that land must be in the mind.
Guyon's journey must be in his mind. And we see this most clearly
when Guyon is on the Idle Lake. It can be no coincidence that during
his stay in the prototype of the human mind--in Alma's Castle tower--
the chronicle he reads celebrates progeny issuing from the union of man
and woman. That is the proper exercise-~the temperance--of sexual
love; the mean between lust and abstention.
Not only the places but the personages reflect Guyon's mind as the
location of his quest, of Faery land. Shamefastness grows until, a

visible personage, she confronts him in Alma's Castle. His pugnacity

is Pyrochles; his vacillation is Cymochles; his desire to forget his

 

31E. Hershey Sneath, Philosophy in Poetry (New York, 1903;
reprinted Greenwood Press, New York, 1969), p. 99.

32Williams, Glass, p. 43.

178
quest is first Phaedria, then the doleful maiden and the mermaids on
the Idle Lake, then the Porter and Excess 1n the Bower. As Evans
noted, various personages appear almost as if summoned--Pyrochles,
Cymochles, Atin, and Archimago--as in Canto Eight, by Guyon's state
of mind, or in response to it. Phaedria appears when Guyon's sense
of achievement at having overcome Pyrochles makes the thought of
deserved rest appealing to him. The birds in the fog, and the fog
itself which envelops the travelers, figure forth Guyon's confusion.
Guyon's travels serve to acquaint him with all the impediments to
Temperance. His quest is to avenge Mordant and Amavia, but by so
doing he, the hunter, becomes the hunted. The damsels in Acrasia's
pool try to snare him. The Bower, which initiates Mordant's ultimate
death, is the land of auto-eroticism made actual to serve the narrat-
ive purpose, which in turn is made fictively actual to serve the
poetic purpose: the display of Guyon's mind as Faery land, peopled
by personations of his desires and fears. The real Faery land, as
the "certaine signes, here set in sundry place" by nature imagery
indicate, is the mind.
Janet Spens wrote over 35 years ago that

"'The generall end of the booke is to fashion a

gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle

discipline', writes Spenser in his Prefatory

Letter; and in the Prologue to Book VI he tells

us 'Vertues seat is deep within the mind' and

calls on the Muse of Poetry to reveal to him

'the sacred noursery of vertue' 'Where it in

silver bowre does hidden ly' and to guide him

'In these strange waies,' the ways of 'this

delightfull land of Faery.' Faery Land then

is the mind, the inner experience of each of us,

and the subject of The Faerie Queene was ...

the apprehension, description, and organization
of the inner world."33

 

33Spenser’s Faerie Queene: An Interpretation (London, 1934),

p. 52.

179
His mission executed, his quest complete, Guyon stands with the
Palmer on the edge of the Floating Island. "Wether ... and wind" in
a now—normal world are again about to serve them; they are leaving the
inner world to return to a world once more natural. Guyon, now aware
of his nature in common with mankind, points at Grille and says:
See the mind of beastly man,
That hath so soone forgot the excellence
Of his creation, when he life began,
That now he chooseth, with vile indifference,
To be a beast, and lacke intelligence. (xii.87)
Earlier we imagined the poet as modifying Guyon's words directly
or by poetic action. First, the "image Of mortalitie" (1.57) was
modified to "image of Nature"; then, we conceived the poet as saying,
each time Guyon meets an aspect of himself in Nature or in a personage,

”Behold thy self." But now Guyon stands for us. It seems clear that

through Nature and Guyon the poet's final assertion is: "Behold the

mind of man."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editions:
Dodge, R. E. N. The Cbmplete Poetical works of'Spenser. Boston, 1936.

Greenlaw, Edwin, C. G. Osgood, F. M. Padelford. Wbrks of'EdMund
Spenser: A Variorum Edition. 11 vols. Baltimore, 1932—57.

Todd, Henry J. works, With the Principal Illustrations of various
Commentators. 8 vols. London, 1805.

Books:

Alpers, Paul. The Poetry of'The Faerie Queene. Princeton, 1967.

Arthos, John. 0n the Poetry of'Spenser and the Form of'Romances.
London, 1956.

Babb, Lawrence. The Elizabethan Malady: A Study of’Melancholia in
English Literature from 1580 to 1642. East Lansing, 1951.

Baldwin, James M. Dictionary of'Philosophy and Psychology. New York,
1925.

Bamborough, J. B. The Little world of’Men. London, 1952.

Berger, Harry, Jr. The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality in~
Book II of'The Faerie Queene. New Haven, 1967.

Blitch, Alice. Etymon and Image in The Faerie Queene. Unpublished
dissertation, Michigan State University, 1965.

Bovie, Smith P., ed. The Satires and Epistles of’Horace. Chicago,
1959.

Brumble, Herbert D. Genius and Other Related.Allegorical Figures in
De Planctu Naturae, the Roman de la Rose, the Confessio
Amantis, and The Faerie Queene. Unpublished dissertation,
University of Nebraska, 1970.

Bundy, Murray W. The Theory of’Imagination in Classical and Medieval
Thought. Urbana, 1927.

180

181

Chaucer, Geoffrey. works, ed. F. N. Robinson. 2d ed., Boston, 1957.

Cheney, David. Spenser's IMage of'Nature: Wild Man and Shepherd in
The Faerie Queene. New Haven, 1966.

Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of'Nature. New York, 1945; reprinted
Galaxy Books, 1967.

Cooper, Thomas. Thesaurus linguae romanae et britannicae. London,
1565.

Crombie, A. C. Medieval and.Early Medern Science. 2 Vols. New York, 1959.
Dowden, Edward. Essays Modern and Elizabethan. New York, 1910.

Dundas, Judith. The Imagery of'Spenser's The Faerie Queene. Unpub-
lished dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1957.

Evans, Maurice. Spenser's Anatomy of'Heroism. Cambridge, 1970.

Frye, Northrop. A Natural Perspective. New York, 1965.

Gower, John. Confessio Amantis, ed. Russell A. Peck. New York, 1968.
Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. Penguin, 1955; revised 1960.

Greenlaw, Edwin. Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory. Baltimore,
1932.

Hamilton, A. C. The Structure oj’Allegory in The Faerie Queene.
Oxford, 1961.

Heninger, S. K., Jr. A Handbook of’Renaissance Meteorology With Particular
Reference to Elizabethan and'Jacobean Literature. Durham, 1960.

H00pes, Robert. Right Reason in the English Renaissance. Cambridge,
Mass., 1962.

Horace. Works, tr. Christopher Smart. Everyman, 1911.

Institoris, H., and J. Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum (1487-89): tr. P-
Hughes. London, 1968.

Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne. London, 1971.

La Guardia, Eric. Nature Redeemed: Imitation of’Order in Three
Renaissance Poems. The Hague, 1966.

Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of’Love. New York, 1958.

. The Discarded IMage. Cambridge, 1964.

 

Lotspeich, Henry G. Classical Mythology in the Poetry of'EdMund
Spenser. Princeton, 1932.

182
Nelson, William. 0n the Poetry of'Edmund Spenser. New York, 1963.

Osgood, Charles G. A Concordance to the Poems of'Edmund Spenser.
washington, D.C., 1915.

Pape, Wilhelm, and G. Benseler. Norterbuch der griechischen Eigennammen.
Graz, 1959.

Preminger, Alex, Frank J. Warnke, and 0. B. Hardison, Jr. The
Princeton Encyclopedfia of’Pbetry and Poetics. Princeton, 1965.

Randall, Alice E. The Sources of’Spenser's Classical Mythology. New
York, 1896; reprinted AMS Press, 1970.

Rogers, Thomas. A Philosophicall Discourse, EntituledL the Anatomie
of’the4Minde. London, 1576.

Rumple, Joannes. Lexicon Theocritum. Hildesheim, 1961.
Seznec, Jean. The Survival of the Pagan GodS. New York, 1961;

Siegel, Rudolph E. Galen's system of'Physiology and Medicine. New
York, 1968.

Sneath, E. Hershey. Philosophy in Poetry. New York, 1903; reprinted
1969.

Spens, Janet. Spenser's Faerie Queene: An Interpretation. London,
1934.

Tayler, E. W. Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature. New York,
1964.

Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan world Picture. New York, 1943.

Williams, Kathleen. Spenser's Nbrld of'Glass: A Reading of'The
Faerie Queene. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1966.

Wurtsbaugh, Jewel. Two Centuries of'Spenserian Scholarship. Baltimore,
1936.
Articles:

Anderson, Judith H., "The Knight and the Palmer in The Faerie Queene,
Book II," MLQ, 3(1970), 160-178.

Berger, Harry, Jr., "The Prospect of Imagination: Spenser and the
Limits of Poetry," SEL, 1(1961), 93-120.

Boughner, David C., "The Psychology of Memory in Spenser's The Faerie
Queene," PMLA, 47(1932), 89-96.

Brooke, N. S., "C. S. Lewis and Spenser: Nature, Art, and the Bower
of Bliss," Cambridge Journal, 2(1949), 420-434.

183

Bundy, Murray W., "Shakespeare and Elizabethan Psychology," JEGP,
23(1924), 516—549.

Feinstein, Blossom C., "Creation and Theories of Creativity in English
Poetry of the Renaissance," DA 28(1967), 1394A.

Fields, Albert W., "Milton and Self—Knowledge," PMLA, 83(1968), 392—
399.

Fowler, Alastair, "The Critical Forum," EIC, 11(1961), 235-238.

, "The River Guyon," MIN, 75(1960), 289-292.

 

Gang, Theodore M., "Nature and Grace in The Faerie Queene: The
Problem Reviewed," ELH, 26(1959), 1-22.

Guth, Hans P., "Allegorical Implications of Artifice in The Faerie
Queene," PMLA, 76(1961), 474-479.

Halio, Jay L., "The Metaphor of Conception and Elizabethan Theories
of the Imagination," Neophilologus, 50(1966), 454-461.

Hamilton, A. C., "Spenser's Treatment of Myth," ELH, 26(1959), 335-
354.

, "A Theological Reading of The Faerie Queene, Book II,"
ELH, 25(1958), 155-162.

 

Hoopes, Robert, "'God Guide Thee, Guyon': Nature and Grace Reconciled
in The Faerie Queene, Book II," RES, n.s. 5(1954), 14-24.

Kahin, Helen A., "Spencer [sic] and the School of Alanus," ELH
8(1941), 257-272.

Knowlton, Edgar C., "The Goddess Nature in Early Periods," JEGP
19(1920), 224-253.

, "Spenser and Nature," JEGP, 34(1935), 366-376.‘

 

Landrum, Grace W., "Imagery of Water in The Faerie Queene," ELH,
8(1941), 198-213.

Lovejoy, A. 0., "Nature as Aesthetic Norm," MLN, 42(1927), 444-450.

MacLure, Millar, "Nature and Art in The Faerie Queene," ELH, 28(1961),
1-20.

Marotti, Arthur F., "Animal Symbolism in The Faerie Queene: Tradition
and the Poetic Context," SEL, 5(1965), 69-86.

Miller, Lewis H., "Arthur, Maleger, and History in the Allegorical
Context," University of’Toronto Quarterly, 35(1966), 176-187.

184

, "Phaedria, Mammon, and Sir Guyon's Education by Error,"
JEGP, 63(1964), 33-44.

 

Miller, Milton, "A Secular Reading of The Faerie Queene, Book II,"
ELH, 33(1966), 154-169.

, "Nature in The Faerie Queene," ELH, 18(1951), 191-200.

 

Mizener, Arthur, "Some Notes on the Nature of English Poetry," Sewanee
Review, 51(1943), 27-51.

Nellish, B., "The Allegory of Guyon's Voyage: An Interpretation,"
ELH, 30(1963), 89-106.

Padelford, F. M., "The Virtue of Temperance in The Faerie Queene,"
SP, 18(1921), 334-346.

Rossky, William, "Imagination in the English Renaissance: Psychology
and Poetic," Studies in the Renaissance, 5(1958), 49-73.

Sonn, Carl R., "Spenser's Imagery," ELH, 26(1959), 156-170.

Williams, Arnold, "Medieval Allegory: An Operational Approach,"
Midwest MLA, 1(1969), 77-84.

Wilson, Harold 3., "Some Meanings of 'Nature' in Renaissance Literary
Theory," JHI, 2(1941), 430-448.

Woodhouse, A. S. P., "Nature and Grace in The Faerie Queene," ELH,
16(1949), 194-228.

, "Nature and Grace in Spenser: A Rejoinder," RES, n.s.
6(1955), 284-288.

 

, "Spenser, Nature, and Grace: Mr. Gang's Mode of Argument
Reviewed," ELH, 27(1960), 1-15.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

THE RENAISSANCE THEORY OF THE IMAGINATION

For its own sake, and for the light it throws upon almost all of
Renaissance literature, the Renaissance concept of the workings of the
mind has been the subject of numerous studies, which either wholly or
in part are concerned with the Imagination. These studies of the
"faculty psychology" are all more or less relevant to Book II of The
Faerie Queene; each, however, being designed to demonstrate some par-
ticular aspect of Renaissance psychology, understandably directs its
discussion to that aspect, and none deal exclusively and at length
with the power of the Imagination to create illusions and, as if the
actual objects existed, so report them to the Reason.1 The same;
subject was popular during the Renaissance itself. The bibliographies
of the works cited below reflect that popularity. Some of these

Medieval and Renaissance works were plainly philosophical; others

 

1A few of these studies are: Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan
Malady: A Study of'Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to
1642 (East Lansing, 1951); J. B. Bamborough, The Little world of'Man
(London, 1952); David C. Boughner, "The Psychology of Memory in
Spenser's The Faerie Queene," PMLA, 47(1932), 89-96; Murray W. Bundy,
The Theory of'Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought (Urbana,
1928); Edward Dowden, "Elizabethan Psychology," in Essays Modern and
Elizabethan (New York, 1910), pp. 308-333; Edwin Greenlaw, ed., The
Wbrks of’Edmund Spenser: A variorum Edition, II (Baltimore, 1933);
Jay L. Halio, "The Metaphor of Conception and Elizabethan Theories of
the Imagination," Neophilologus, 50(1966), 454-461; William Rossky,
"Imagination in the English Renaissance: Psychology and Poetic,"
StRen, 5(1958), 49-73.

185

186

presumed to be taken as literature; in bona fide works of art the indi-
cations are many that the theory of the faculty psychology was a work-
ing theory, and it was commonly understood and accepted by the Renais-
sance audience of readers and playgoers. Intended for the more learned
perhaps were works such as Fulke-Greville's Treatise of'Human Learning
(1633?). Much of what follows is a summary and a combination of what
appears in the works cited and elsewhere.
At the outset it must be understood that there was no received

concept of the operation of the mind with which all writers agreed in
all details. Nor had there been such agreement before the Renaissance.

' writes

"There is no consistent medieval theory of imagination,‘
Bundy (p. 177). Not only the functions but the structure of the mind
differs with different theorists. The Common Sense was variously
called a sense in itself or a result of other senses working in con-
junction. Some tendency to substitute the word "soul" for "mind" is
evident in the use of the terms "sensible soul" and "rational sou1"--
stemming, perhaps, from the word "psyche." Some of the writers divide
the Imagination as well into lower.and higher phantasies. Imagination
was generally the term for the reputable function; Phantasy was the
term often used for the disreputable functions. But earlier or
medieval thinkers used Phantasy for the higher function. From
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic thinking, where the Memory was a mode
of fantasy or imagination, the Middle Ages moved to a point where
Memory was in its own compartment of the mind, and the two functions
were divorced. The Renaissance concept reconnected them.
Nevertheless, the Renaissance doctrine of the mind was in the
main uniform. As Strathmann in Appendix X of the Spenser Variorum

(II, 468) states:

187

"Man has three souls: the vegetative, in common
with plants and animals; the sensible, in common
with animals; the rational, peculiar to man. The
vegetative soul (or vegetative power of the soul

in some accounts) deals with nourishment and growth,
as the name suggests. The sensible soul knows and
desires. The exterior parts of the sensible soul,
the five senses, communicate with the interior
parts in the brain by means of the sinews [nerves].
In the brain are located the common sense, the
imagination, and the memory. ... In its second
function the sensible soul has the power of desir-
ing (the 'concupiscible') and the power of exciting
to wrath and action to overcome obstacles (the
'irascible'). Since it both knows and desires,

the sensible soul has also the moving power, con-
trol over the parts of the body which by motion
carry out the purposes of the soul."

The powers of desiring and exciting were also known as the internal
motions; they Operate in the heart, and are the "precedent causes of
the external" (Babb, p. 4).

The Variorum summary continues:

"The rational soul understands, knows, or judges
in one of its function, and exercises the will
or 'intellectual appetite' in the other. The
reports of the senses on external things are
judged by the Understanding [also called Wit]
whose judgments are acted upon by the Will."

Babb, using "reason" for the judging faculty, states that
"[Reason] ... looks at the world through the
medium of the imagination. [Imagination] is
called the eye of the mind because the rational
powers see the external world through it and
through it alone..." (p. 3).

The division into the three souls is a convenient way to express
the difference between three levels of life--plant, animal, and man--
but when the functions of the mind are considered the rational soul
becomes troublesome to place. The difficulty arises from the-inclusion
of Imagination or Phantasy in the sensible soul and in the rational

soul. In Greenlaw's discussion the duplication is noted but no attempt

is made to resolve it (Variorum, II, App. IX, pp. 462-63). He cites

188

Batman (quoting Ruth L. Anderson, Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's
Plays), Coeffeteau, Sir John Davies, and others as agreeing that Imagina-
tion was a function of the sensible soul. He cites John Huarte's
Examen de Ingenios as an example of those who "call imagination, reason,
and memory powers of the rational 'soul'," and who "do not divide the
faculties of the mind into the sensible and the rational."

Spenser, like most theorists, apparently bypasses the dichotomy;
again like most, he names three functions of the mind, and assigns
each a cell, or portion of the mind, in_the tower. Memory is at the
rear; an unnamed faculty, apparently Reason (the dominant effect is
of "judgementes" by a deliberative body) is in the middle; and Imagina-
tion is in the front, named Phantastes.

Phantastes' position suits his functions: able to foresee the
future (ix.49), he must be able to "see" to the front; an "imager",
he is closest to the eyes. The proximity of Phantastes and the eyes
suggests that sight is the primary source of his images, and is conson-
ant with the Renaissance belief in sight as the primary sense: all
that Guyon, Arthur, and Alma witness in Phantastes' chamber is visual-
ized. It is "dispainted all within" with shapes, and "all that fained
is"--i.e., all false words--appear to their eyes as "flyes" (ix.50).
Moreover, Phantastes' melancholic humour is evident by his aspect:
dark, "crabbed hew"; black brows; "sharp, staring eyes"; he is Saturnine
"by his vew" (ix.52).2 From the entirety of his chamber, the shapes
and feigned things within, and his appearance (and of course his name:

Phantastes), we can be certain that this is the untrustworthy Phantasy

 

2The melancholic imagination is particularly active and creative:
Rossky, "Imagination ... Poetic," 57n.

189
which Spenser depicts, not the reputable Imagination; at least, if
"honest Imago" is herein, Spenser ignores him.

The powers and functions of the Imagination or Phantasy are the
primary concerns of this appendix. The vegetative soul, while it
enables the Imagination eventually, is unimportant for our discussion;
the rational soul, while it judges what is furnished to it by the
Imagination, goes a step beyond our concern; speculation on its rela-
tion to the Imagination, as we have seen, leads only to confusion.
While all three souls are the gift of God.to man, such independent
apprehension as the rational soul is capable of is related to invisible
things, or to some divine essence from God--to Whom, like a radar
antenna of today, it may be constantly attuned. To the sensible soul,
and the relationships of Imagination to Sensation, we therefore
direct our entire attention.

Already noted is the function of the Imagination in creating
images, which it presents to the Reason. These images are representa-
tions of external things sensed by the five senses. But the Imagina-
tion or Phantasy "was not ... merely a reproductive faculty of the
intellect [read "mind"], but was frequently, and even essentially,
creative" (Halio, p. 455). Concerning the function of the Imagina-
tion, Babb describes it as having

"the power of conceiving circumstances and situ-
ations other than those existing at the moment.
... This is the creative power of the imagination.
It is a faculty which never rests; even when the
other sensory and intellectual powers are in

repose, a stream of images flows aimlessly through
the imagination (p. 3)."

Dowden concurs: "

... when sensible things are absent, the soul can
behold the likeness of them by its faculty of imagination" (p. 310).
Bambrorough cites (p. 99) part of Duke Francisco's speech in The White

Devil in the same vein:

190

how strong
Imagination workes! how she can frame
Things which are not! (IV.i.99-101)
He mentions also Banquo's ghost and the dagger of Macbeth.

To this point we have used the terms Imagination and Phantasy
interchangeably. Although Renaissance writers also do so, Phantasy
was often a term for untrustworthy images because it presents images
of things not sensed, but created out of nothing, or compounds of parts
of things sensed. Phantastes fits this function: he combines parts
of existent things to form monsters, and in his chamber are in addi-
tion things--or images of things--which never were (ix.50). Imagina-
tion is trustworthy when the term denotes the presentation of images
of things actually sensed. Hereinafter the distinction between terms
will be observed.

Phantasy furnishes "schematic images of our thoughts ... comparable
to those based directly upon sensation ..." (Bundy, p. 257). In a note
to a discussion of Averroes' theory, Bundy cites a passage from S.
Joannes Climacus, Scala Paradisi (11.669):

"'Phantasy is a state of the mind's being rapt

from the body in its waking state; it is a

vision without foundation in reality. In the

normal waking state the mind proceeds from the

external stimulus through the common sense to

the imagination. In dreams the process is

reversed; the imagination of the sleeper is

able to stimulate the particular sensation as

though the external stimulus were present.'"
For the direction of the images, then--not from senses, but from the
mind--the Phantasy is to the waking man as the Imagination is to the
sleeping man. The double function of the power is apparent; it works
upon sensory perceptions, presenting images to the mind as Imagination;

and it presents images to the mind's eye as Phantasy as if so receiving

sensory stimuli. In terms of the sense of sight, the Phantasy makes

191

appear things that never were, or are not there at present, as if they
actually were there.

Nor does the connection between Phantasy and sight end there.
Phantasy can furnish to the Reason images which are unnatural combina-
tions of things found in nature, and of things not found in nature.

But it can, additionally, create images of the very thoughts themselves.
Those "schematic images of our thoughts" quite likely often take the
form of images of the thing desired. Medieval and Renaissance litera-
ture is replete with lovers feasting their vision on their imagined
mistress in her absence, or on some other person. The Pearl poet

"saw" Margarite; "Alcione" "saw" "Seys" in The Book of’the Duchess;
while Tarquin is stealing toward Lucrece, in Shakespeare's poem,

”Within his thought her heavenly images sits" (288). The sight of a
desired but absent object, proceeding from the thought, occurs in The
Faerie Queene: Arthur, in his speech to Guyon (ix.7) appears to have
had a vision of Gloriana (whom he has never seen) for whom he has sought
for a year, "Yet no where can her find." The Red Cross Knight "sees"
what he believes to be Una in Archimago's hermitage (1.1.49ff);
Britomart's wishful thought of "Whom fortune for her husband would
allot" (III.ii.23) becomes visible: "Eftsoones he was presented to

her eye" (11.24) in the mirror given her father by Merlin. To the
viewer, the object appears actual.

The mind, then, receives its knowledge of the external world
through the images of sensible things; conversely, the mind is por-
trayed in seemingly sensible things--or, at least, thoughts are so
portrayed. One "sees" one's desires. The Renaissance concept of the
Imagination, and of the Phantasy, parallels Spenser's expression of the

mental and emotional states through images of external Nature.

   

”'TITT’INHILHMN[NUFLIFEIMMN‘S