What does the Faerie Queene, Books 1 and 2 owe to the traditions of the classical epic and medieval romance? How does Spenser transform this inheritance?

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Katie Pollard

What does the Faerie Queene, Books 1 and 2 owe to the traditions of the classical epic and medieval romance? How does Spenser transform this inheritance?

In the latter stages of the sixteenth century when Spenser was composing The Faerie Queene, he had a rich heritage of literary tradition to draw from: not only the classical epic poets and ancient philosophers but also more recent Italian epic and the Arthurian legends, told in their fullest form by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Latin chronicles Historia Regum Brittaniae. Educated at Merchant Taylors’ School by leading educationalist Richard Mulcaster, Spenser had a fantastic command of the classical languages and their literature and mythology. In order ‘to pourtraict in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight,’ he

‘followed all the antique Poets historicall, first Homere, who in the Persons of Agememnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man…then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person of Aeneas: after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando: and lately Tasso.’ (Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh).

It is obvious to readers of The Faerie Queene that Spenser took more than simply the character of his hero from these sources (and others), and equally obvious that he developed them further and more intricately than before.

The structure and atmosphere of The Faerie Queene is more in keeping with medieval romance than with the epic tradition. As K. W. Gransden points out,

‘the romantic “machinery” of his poem – knights errant, ladies in distress, enchanted castles and gardens, dragons, giants, battles – represents the common inheritance of medieval chivalric legend and romance, as taken over in the Renaissance by Spenser’s two great Italian predecessors, Ariosto and Tasso. Their poems were really a new kind of epic, partly based on classical models and partly on medieval ones.’ (Gransden p. 31) 

Each book concentrates on the ‘quest’ of a particular hero and involves the conventions of courtly love and the chivalric code, despite the higher moral theme of the fight between good and evil which is the link running between all six books. There are characters taken from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata – in particular the enchantresses Duessa and Acrasia. However, as Gransden notes, these take their sources from earlier works, and there are parallel characters to be found in classical literature. There is a wealth of reference to myths used by Ovid: stories of transformation which appear in The Faerie Queene include Fraudubio and Fraelissa in Book 1, Canto ii, victims of Duessa, who became trees. (This is also reminiscent of Polydorus’ fate in Virgil’s Aeneid Book 3.) Guyon rescues Amavia’s baby in the first canto of Book 2 and attempts to clean the blood of his parents off the child with water from a fountain. It proves an impossible task, but instead of using the obvious Christian allegory of original sin, Spenser reverts to the pagan, spinning an Ovidian tale of a nymph, chased by an unwanted lover: to retain her chastity, she was turned into a crying statue by the goddess Diana, and this is the form in which Guyon finds her. The water will not take the blood because it must remain pure. Thus Spenser creates a memorable symbol of chastity, another important element of his ‘project’.

Critics feel that Spenser took much of his moral philosophy from the classical poets. He was well-versed in the work of both Natalis Comes and Boccaccio. Both spent much of their time studying ancient myth and classical literature. They saw it not as it might appear on the surface, ‘pagan and frivolous’, (Lotspeich p. 52) but as a key to unveiling the secrets of man. The ancient poets were, they felt, ‘profound speculative and moral philosophers, often inspired by the one God’ (ibid.). Boccaccio describes myth as ‘polyseme’- of many meanings. Underneath the ‘veil of the fables [is] the accumulated wisdom of the ancients, their speculation on natural philosophy’ (Lotspeich p. 52) And Comes opined that the ancient writers gave us ‘the most useful precepts concerning the life of man’. This too seems to be how Spenser saw it: instead of condemning ancient myth and the epic tradition, as Milton does, he seems to actively pay homage to it. ‘Mythology, as [Spenser] found it interpreted’, says Lotspeich ‘was allegorical’. (p. 52) Although The Faerie Queene cannot by any stretch of the imagination said to based entirely on any one source, it is clear that Spenser felt the important moral message to have its origins in ancient myth. Despite its form and often tone of medieval romance, the opening to The Faerie Queene sets a Virgilian tone in wanting to ‘sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds’.  

As well as similarities in style and language to the classical and medieval poetry, there are more obvious, surface parallels to be drawn. Book 2 is Guyon’s journey to the Bower of Bliss, and the influence of the Odyssey is not disguised: it is mainly a journey on water, and ships and guidance are an important part of the moral message of temperance and good governance. The final stretch of the journey is the most explicit, with Spenser’s own version of Scylla and Charybdis, the Gulf of Greediness and the Rock of Vile Reproach. With two reliable and well-informed guides, Guyon is steered between these, his course representing the middle way of temperance, like the character of Medina who symbolizes moderation between the two extremes of her sisters. We are reminded that temperance is not simply a passive solution between passions but a constant struggle: Guyon is sorely tempted by the ‘many Mermayds…making false melodies’ (2, xii, 17). The Bower of Bliss teaches this lesson: it is described as temperate in its climate, yet we are not to be fooled into thinking that this is the kind of temperance Spenser wants us to achieve. By the rejection of such excesses presented to Guyon, again very tempting, he may then find the real, self-disciplined temperance. The Bower of Bliss is not only a parody of Eden, being almost comparable in its apparent beauty, but is also the kingdom of a Circe-like figure. Both Homer and Virgil present certain women characters as enchantresses who stand in the way of the hero’s quest: Circe, Kalypso and Dido. Spenser makes the connection of an evil enchantress before we meet Acrasia in her bower by the portrayal of Jason and Medea on the ivory gates. He subverts the epic technique of ekphrasis by making ‘Art’ a negative presence: the story on the ivory gates (reminiscent of Virgil’s Gate of False Dreams) is a warning and Art is pitted against nature:

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                        ‘One would have thought, (so cunningly, the rude,

                        And scorned parts were mingled with the fine,)

                        That nature had for wantonness ensued

                        Art, and that Art at nature did repine;

                        So striving each th’other to undermine…’

                                                        (2, xii, 59) 

The character of Acrasia could also be based on enchantresses in Tasso and Ariosto, but the stronger connection is with Circe when Spenser tells us that she has been turning her lovers into pigs. The moral significance of Grill, who chooses to remain in this form, is that the fight is never over: he has succumbed to ...

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