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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 76-3558 SMITH, Curtis Johnston, 1947- THE MYTH OF RECURRENCE: STRUCTURE AND VISION IN THE FAERIE QUEENE. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1975 Literature, general Xerox University MicrofilmsAnn , Arbor, Michigan 48106 (S) Copyright by Curtis Johnston Smith 1975 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE MYTH OF RECURRENCE: STRUCTURE AND VISION IN THE FAERIE QUEENE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Curtis Johnston Smith, B.A., M.A. ★ * * * * The Ohio State University 1975 Reading Committee: John B. Gabel Jerome S. Dees David 0. Frantz ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Professor John Gabel for assuming the duties of the adviser, but particularly for his fine sense of rhetoric, his understanding of what a writer owes his reader in the way of directions and reminders; Pro­ fessor Joan Webber for her help with major problems of presentation and focus, and for helping to keep epics alive; and Professor David Frantz for his careful reading of the dissertation in its final stages. I wish especially to thank Professor Jerome Dees, for introducing me to Spenser, for opening to me the joys of The Faerie Queene as narrative, for frequent conversa­ tions about my work, and for his loyalty and encouragement when my task looked hopeless, as it occasionally did. My wife Susan I thank for her quiet confidence and for help in what we foolishly call little ways. ii VITA January 7, 1947 . Born - Honolulu, Hawaii 1965................B.A., California Lutheran College, Thousand Oaks, California 1965-1972 .......... University Fellow, Teaching Assistant, and Research Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1972................M.A., The Ohio State Univer­ sity, Columbus, Ohio 1972-1975 .......... Dissertation Fellow and Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................... ii VITA..................................iii INTRODUCTION....................... 1 Chapter I. The Faerie Queene's Myth. 15 II. Old Arms and a New Man........ 75 III. "Eterne in Mutabilitie" .... 115 A SELECT LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED. 176 INTRODUCTION The study of The Faerie Queene presented here is the result of a lengthy journey into faery land. Although this dissertation is not intended or organized as a record of that journey, it may be helpful to expose the manner in which I came to admire The Faerie Queene, the attitudes that have guided and determined my approach to the poem, and the relation of my conclusions to those of other readers. I first read the poem for a graduate seminar on Spen­ ser, Books III through VI first, I and II later. And like poor Braggadocchio, I was baffled. My first response was a rather vague pleasure from the mere act of reading itself, a dreamy— certainly not an analytical— immersion in the fable. Subsequent readings of the poem have added new dimen- sions to my pleasure in Spenser, but they have not altered the essential joy of simply reading him. From this experience has grown a conviction that any critical study of The Faerie Queene must acknowledge the primacy of the story, elucidating that story, explaining its structure, even adding to what we know of the poem's his­ torical and philosophical context, but always enhancing the pleasure of the story. A critical commonplace, certainly, but one too often lost sight of in the huge, labyrinthian 2 body of critical material which has attached itself to Spenser's poem. From reading erudite and ingenious books and essays on The Faerie Queene my desire grew to understand and compre­ hend the poem as a narrative which causes particular emo­ tional and mental responses. In the simplest terms, I knew that I enjoyed the poem, but nothing that I read about it told me why I did. I think now that what one finally gains from Spenser— it almost sounds too obvious to need formula­ tion— is a unique way of looking at and understanding ex­ perience, a unique mode of perception, and that it is the thoroughness and aptness with which Spenser has embodied his vision in characters and events— in story— that account for the felicity of reading The Faerie Queene. I wish to suggest a method of reading Spenser's poem that will do justice to The Faerie Queene as a work of art, as a narrative poem, giving primary attention to its form and structure and yet allowing for its moral, ethical, historical, psychological, and mythological content. The primary distinction between what I hope to do and what has generally been done in criticism of The Faerie Queene lies, I think, in the assumptions with which one begins: rather than seek the meaning of the poem in whatever moral or historical lessons it may be thought to contain, I want to start with the structure of the work and let that organize and point the significance of the poem's meaning. It is 3 structure, after all, which organizes the fable and our ex­ perience of that fable. Given the narrative mode of Spenser's poem— it renders experience through its fiction, its unique synthesis of commentary, images, characters, actions, and not through the techniques of discourse— the most essential meaning resides in the form or pattern which constitutes both the poet's perception of his subject and his expression of that subject's meaning. I agree with Northrop Frye that "there can be no definitive rendering of the real poetic meaning: it cannot, like the explicit meaning, be grasped in a way that makes it possible for us to say that this is what Shakespeare [or Spenser] really meant, or had in mind, or was trying to say, or whatever such silly phrase we use. Grasping the real meaning of poetry gives us an orbit or circumference of meaning, within which there is still some latitude for varieties of interpretation and emphasis.” And so I intend to examine The Faerie Queene for its "real poetic meaning," to attempt, as Frye says, "not so much to explain the poem in terms of its external relation to history or philosophy, but to preserve its identity as a poem." 1 By virtue of its dominant concern with external relationships, the body of criticism available to the student of Spenser is limited in what it can reveal about 4 the poem. Although extensive and varied and of genuine help for understanding particular episodes, characters, or allusions, much of it noticeably lacks a sense of the poem's wholeness and of its nature as a narrative poem. That is to say, criticism of Spenser has been surprisingly uniform at the most basic level: with but few exceptions it has dealt almost exclusively with the poem's "allegorical” meaning. Such criticism takes its task as one of elu­ cidating the subject matter of a poem said to be an allegory; but I share Arnold Williams' scepticism: "it must be apparent to anyone who reads criticism of the Faerie Queene that 'allegory' covers several modes of writing which have little in common, except that they are not literal— and even that is a meaningless statement since no one can define 'literal.'"^ In practice, however, "allegory" does seem to have a consistent use: Spenser's story becomes the occasion for reductive allegorization, and the poem itself is subordinated to whatever discursive comments it may make on morals or history. The problem comes into clearest focus in those critics who initially reject reductive allegorization, only to employ it themselves when it can be made to serve their thematic approaches, be those historical or moral. Josephine Waters Bennett, because she wants to date specific sections of the poem to show how she supposes it was written 5 and rearranged, denies herself any consistent stance towards the poem's form of presentation.