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“Like Race to Runne”: The Parallel Structure of the Faerie Queene, Books I and II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

A. C. Hamilton
A. C. Hamilton*
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle 5
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Extract

My Purpose in this paper is to understand the allegory of The Faerie Queene more fully by examining the relation between the first two books. It has been commonly observed that these books are parallel in structure. In each, the Knight who represents a particular virtue (Holiness, Temperance) leaves the court of the Faery Queen with a guide (Una, the Palmer), and later defeats two chief antagonists (Sansfoy and Sans-joy, Pyrochles and Cymochles); upon being separated from his guide, he enters a place of temptation (the house of Pride, the cave of Mammon), and later falls. Then being rescued by Arthur and united with his guide, he enters a place of instruction (the house of Holiness, the castle of Alma) and finally fulfills his adventure (killing the Dragon, destroying the Bower of Bliss). Such paralleling has been considered part of Spenser's design expressed in the Letter to Ralegh, to write twelve books in which twelve knights, as patrons of the twelve virtues, undertake parallel adventures assigned by the Faery Queen. That the later books do not follow this repetitive structure has been variously explained as the need to avoid monotony, to modify the design according to the virtue being treated, or simply—all too simply—as a change of plan. It was left to A. S. P. Woodhouse to explain for the first time the basis of the parallel structure of the first two books. He suggests that the two orders of nature and grace which were universally accepted as a frame of reference in the Renaissance are here carefully differentiated: “what touches the Redcross Knight bears primarily upon revealed religion, or belongs to the order of grace; whatever touches Guyon bears upon natural ethics, or belongs to the order of nature” (p. 204). It follows that the parallel structure is designed to bring into relief differences which depend upon these two orders. He finds that this difference leaves its mark chiefly upon the education received by the two knights: the Redcross knight shows the bankruptcy of natural man who must utterly depend upon heavenly grace whereas Guyon shows how natural man realizes the potentialities of his nature by ruling his passions through reason (pp. 205-206). At times, he insists more strongly than does Spenser upon an absolute separation of the two orders: Guyon's reference to “the sacred badge of my Redeemers death” confuses the separation, as does the Palmer's benediction: “God guide thee, Guyon, well to end thy warke.” Even more confusing is Guyon's invocation to Christ for His Mercy at the moment when, like Longinus, he levels his spear against the Cross: “Mercie Sir knight, and mercie Lord, / For mine offence and heedlesse hardiment, / That had almost committed crime abhord” (ii.i.27). However, thanks to Woodhouse's article, there seems no doubt now that the distinction between the two orders of nature and grace provides a necessary frame of reference for understanding the parallel structure of the first two books.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1958 , pp. 327 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

Note 1 in page 327 See E. A. Strathmann in Variorum, ii, 467; H. S. V. Jones, Spenser Handbook (New York, 1930), pp. 172-174; J. W. Bennett, The Evolution of “The Faerie Queene” (Chicago, 1942), pp. 124-137; and esp. A. S. P. Woodhouse, “Nature and Grace in The Faerie Queene,” ELH, xvi (1949), 204-208. Greenlaw observes that Bk. ? “is exactly parallel, in structure, to the first book, and without question the two books were designed by the author to complement each other and to present his fundamental thought.” This remark is made without further expansion in his Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory (Baltimore, 1932), p. 89. While it is commonly agreed that the two books are similar in general design, there is surprising disagreement upon specific points of parallel. G. W. Kitchin (ed. The Faery Queene, Oxford, 1872, Bk. ii, p. vii) places the parallel between the Cave of Despair and Mammon's Cave; Bennett believes that Orgoglio's castle serves the same purpose as the Cave of Mammon (p. 124); Woodhouse sees Lucifera and Mammon as “analogous temptations” (p. 204); W. B. C. Watkins believes that “the parallel with Arthur's slaying Orgoglio is his laborious victory over Maleger”—see his Shakespeare and Spenser (Princeton, 1950), p. 323. Further, Bennett believes that “Acrasia is the antagonist, in place of Duessa” (p. 124), while Woodhouse finds the parallel between the Dragon and Acrasia. It will be clear from my summary that I agree with Woodhouse's paralleling of the incidents, though, as I argue later, my reading of them differs.

Note 2 in page 327 See Woodhouse, p. 205, n. 17, and the subsequent discussion; Robert Hoopes, “ ‘God guide thee, Guyon’; Nature and Grace Reconciled in The Faerie Queene, Book rr,” RES, N.S. ? (1954), 14-24; and A. S. P. Woodhouse, “Nature and Grace in Spenser: A Rejoinder,” RES, N.S. vi (1955), 284–288.

Note 3 in page 327 All quotations from Spenser in the text are taken from Spenser's Faerie Queene, ed. J. C. Smith (Oxford, 1909).

Note 4 in page 331 Woodhouse selects ii.ix.l as the crucial point at which “the poet pauses to sum up in a single stanza the purport of all that has gone before, and thus to prepare for what is to follow” (p. 208). By my reading, this stanza points only to what is to follow. Woodhouse omits the important final line: “Behold, who list, both one and other in this place,” that is, “mans body … kept in sober gouernment” seen in the castle of Alma (Canto ix), and man's body which “growes a Monster, and incontinent / Doth loose his dignitie and natiue grace,” seen in Maleger (Canto xi).

Note 5 in page 333 Romans vi.6. Woodhouse (p. 221) was the first to make this identification. V. K. Whitaker has noticed that the baptism at the Tree of Life which delivers the Redcross knight from original sin “seems also to be implied when Arthur kills Maleger by drowning him” (“The Religious Basis of Spenser's Thought,” Stanford Stud, in LU., 19S0, p. 50).