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Li, Jerry (Kit) 2018 English Thesis Title Li, Jerry (Kit) 2018 English Thesis Title: Moral Didacticism and Transcendence: Elizabeth and Her Bodies in The Faerie Queene : Advisor: Emily Vasiliauskas Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Released Beyond Williams: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No Moral Didacticism and Transcendence: Elizabeth and Her Bodies in The Faerie Queene By Jerry Li (Kit) Dr. Emily Vasiliauskas, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors In English WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts April 16, 2018 1,Li Table of Contents Contents Page No. Title Page…………………………………………………………………………1 Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………2 Dedication………………………………………………………………………...3 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….4 Chapter 1: Beyond the Daemonic: Allegorizing the Divine……………………...5 Chapter 2: Unraveling Chastity’s System of Maintenance……………………….17 Chapter 3: The Instrumentalization of Erotic Love……………………………….28 Chapter 4: The Gestured Gesture…………………………………………………40 2,Li Dedication “The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.” -Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, 1811) I dedicate this work to my inspiring and caring husband that I have yet to meet. 3,Li Acknowledgements This work resembles a milestone for an individual who was precarious about pursuing English beyond its use as a mode of communication. What was once limited to daily expressions and colloquial conversations became a defining quality of my academic passions and pursuits. To that end, I am extremely grateful for the English Department at Williams College. To those who have facilitated my continued growth, particularly in the academic sphere, to a point where I am able to note its merge with the personal and live a better life from it--despite the many daunting fears that couple such-- I hope the ambiguous flux that accompanies this sentence can gesture towards my absolute gratitude. To that end, I am ever so thankful for having you in my life Prof. Emily Vasiliauskas. To ensure this work was not a tragedy, or purposely so and thus better overall, I have those who offered to help and those who lent a probing mind to thank. To that end, I am greatly appreciative of Prof. Gage McWeeny, Prof. Chris Pye, Prof. Katie Kent, Mary Kate Guma and the Students of the Honors Colloquium. To my family, my dear mother and sister, I acknowledge you for not communicating with me often enough in hopes of not distracting me, as I rightly assume. To my dear friends Malina Simard-Halm and Sarah Marks, I thank you for your emotional support despite your absence. And to the Merciful Lord, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet with these influential people and have these experiences, rendering this work as possible and myself as me. 4,Li Beyond the Daemonic: Allegorizing the Divine It initially seemed to me that it was a blessing that Edmund Spenser, in his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, provided a how-to-read guide for the The Faerie Queene.1 Spenser, insofar as he ​ ​ seeks through his poem to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline,” commits himself to a project of change. The poem demonstrates this commitment in two ways: character development in the narrative, with the three knights of Book I, II and III becoming, over the course of their adventures, the virtues they stand for, and the presentation of these characters as sites of learning that facilitate a reader’s reconcilement of Christian selfhood. While Spenser proposes that learning happens via the observation of a character’s development, the letter to Raleigh highlights the tension between allegory and ideas of developmental progress. Spenser writes in his letter that a “palmer bearing an infant with bloody hands” seeks the help of Gloriana to overcome an enchantress called Acrasia.2 She subsequently appoints Sir Guyon, the knight of Temperance, to perform this task. However, in the narrative of Book II, Sir Guyon is already on his set mission before he and the palmer meet the bloody-handed baby, apparently for the first time. To read Spenser’s incompatible timelines as meaningful, it is as if Temperance warrants no event to begin its struggle with disinhibition, Acrasia. Thus, how do you make something happen--let alone make someone change--in an allegory? Jeff Dolven echoes this question, arguing that it is possible that allegorical agents 1 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Raleigh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. Spenser’s letter to Sir Walter Raleigh expounds his didactic intention for The Faerie Queene. He explicitly ​ ​ states that it is a “continued allegory, or dark conceit” with a explicit purpose to champion virtues necessary to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” The letter provides a crucial foundation for my analysis, it notes Spenser’s reliance on the allegory, the ideas of change that accompany his allegorical reflection of virtues via Knights and his intention to also flatter Queen Elizabeth. 2 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Raleigh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. 5,Li “cannot learn, or even cannot change”.3 For Dolven, allegorical agents may be “artifacts and prisoners” of what they represent, an allegorical character’s progression and deviation being part and parcel of what the allegory has always already determined, rather than a sign of transformation.4 Spenser’s anxious commitment to change highlights the assumed stagnancy and questionable immunity of the characters of “grace”. In Book I, Una and Gloriana seem to be “complete” from the beginning; while Redcrosse undertakes a journey to become Holiness, Una begins as a representation of the English Church and as Truth, and Gloriana is a representation of “the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene,” Queen Elizabeth I.5 Tensions, however, arise as we note how Una allegorically represents Truth and the English Church in a female body. Una’s representation of Truth and the English Church is defined by oneness--there is one English Church and One Truth, both merged via Una’s allegorical task. She, however, like many allegorical characters tasked with representing abstract ideals, is gendered female, forcing her to carry the burden of female sexuality in a post-edenic time and thus, nature’s influence on “grace”.6 The weight associated with a fictional character, Una, and the gravity of her gender and sexuality, casts a shadow across Elizabeth’s supposed distance 3 Dolven, Jeff Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 138. ​ ​ ​ 4 Dolven, 138. ​ 5 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Ralegh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. 6 McManus, Caroline. “The ‘Carefull Nourse’: Female Piety in Spenser's Legend of Holiness.” Huntington Library ​ ​ Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, 1997, JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3817786. 382-405. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ A post-edenic reality refers to God’s curse on Women, to be child-bearers and have an innately illicit sexuality, and its effect on a woman's life via various societal conventions. The term “edenic” refers to a time before man’s expulsion from Eden, where sexuality was not something to be avoided, controlled and/or purified. Sexuality was unquestionable and automatically innocent and good. Adam and Eve became ashamed of their nakedness and sexual natures after they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen. 3:7). The Hebrew verb “to know” is a euphemism for sexual activity. I also use the term Edenic in an extended sense to refer to the locale of Divinity that is untouched by the order of nature, that which distinguishes the Edenic from the post-edenic. 6,Li from her own gender and sexuality, her self-fashioning as divinely sanctioned chastity, particularly as she is non-fictional and non-allegorical. Thus, while Elizabeth is publicly viewed as not fully entering the order of nature, in part due to her devotion to being virginal and chaste, how is she different to Una and how is her invulnerability, such as to the influences that Una is vulnerable to, reflected in a literary world?7 How does the prosopopoeia of Una and Queen Elizabeth’s divinity, via a direct and embodied representation in an allegory, differ and affect their respective capacities to change and to incarnate their corresponding virtues. The relationship between Una and Gloriana seems worthy of consideration on the level of plot at a precise moment of narrative achievement- Redcrosse defeats the dragon and becomes Holiness and Una and Gloriana end up in a strange kind of competition, in which Redcrosse’s marriage to Una is simultaneously accomplished and replaced with a commitment to his queen. He nought forgot, how he whilome had sworne, In case he could that monstrous beast destroy, Vnto his Faerie Queene backe to returne: The which he shortly did, and Una left to mourne. (I. XII. 41.6-41.9) Virginal chastity, part and parcel of Queen Elizabeth’s representation of grace, functions as a key distinction between Queen Elizabeth’s fate and that of Una, which is defined heavily by post-edenic realities--Una is destined to be married. Queen Elizabeth’s control of the knights and thus her control over Una’s fate, suggests that she is a distanced yet “head” of the church and/or ruler with divine capabilities and prerogatives. Thus, Spenser’s supposed presentation of a reconciled Christian selfhood at the end of Book I becomes complicated as we ponder the other 7 Elizabeth I.
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