Dear Editor,

This message contains an additional commentary
on my study *Chances of Mischief: Variations of
Fortune in Spenser* (1990). The reason for
making the commentary is that I quite agree with
a couple of reviewers that the text of *Chances
of Mischief* is rather elliptical in places and
moves extremely fast, not making it easy for a
reader. Hence I thought the following
explanations may possibly  be helpful in
clarifying a few statements in the book.

Basically, I was trying to trace some
implications of Ciceronian-Melanthonian
humanism, as described historically in the
introductory chapter, and less explicitly also
of the doctrine of correspondences between
elements internal and external to the soul—-
which I took for granted--as in the *Dialogue
Between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset* (ca.
1535) by Thomas Starkey, who speaks of civil
order and politic law as being "resembled to"
the soul. These paradigms seem to me to have an
inner connection to early modern civil
philosophy predicated on the ethos of the
imperial self, as analyzed by Gordon Braden in
his 1985 study of tragedy. I took such attitudes
to be relevant to Spenser in the context of the
pre-history of the unified subject and its non-
fragmentary interior, a problematic to which
(among others) Catherine Belsey alerted us in
her 1985 study on tragedy.

Accordingly, I was interested in the underlying
allegorical and/or historical content underlying
those textual occurrences of "chance" or
"fortune" and cognates that are more prominently
foregrounded in FQ, a fraction of the total
number of what are often clichés, from a
conviction that there is no simple opposition
between interiority and historical meanings. It
may at first glance seem like a pursuit of "hap"
clichés, as many as one could get hold of, but
that is not actually so. Thus I thought it
possible to discuss the fallacy of Guyon's
"militant and aristocratic ethos" in connection
with "the function of the fortuity clichés," in
the introductory chapter.

Since these assumptions become fictionally alive
in FQ's reading horizon, not without the
reader's active construction of an underlying
network of logical ligatures across the
boundaries of larger slices of the text, Hans
Robert Jauss emerged as the most immediately
useful theorist. FQ's fictional structure hardly
lends itself to a uniform reading, I found, so
that each Legend in FQ needs to be read
differently, building on its predecessors'
experience, owing to what I called a "mutable
structuring of energeia."

In keeping with the age's common penchant for
correspondences, several fictional personae or
characters in FQ appeared to me to have the
function (not excluding other functions) of
externalizing, activating, or exposing the inner
flaws of others on the plot line, without being
'internal' to their victims. One example is
Radigund, in her way of responding or
corresponding to Artegall. That is, owing to the
processual character of plot and persona
generation, aspects of Radigund pre-exist in and
feed on Artegall's appetitive element before she
becomes dominant as external persona. Another
way of saying this: her response to him, and her
associations with Fortune, function as
externalizations confronting him with
implications of his own questionable use of
Fortune earlier. As product of Artegall's
fallible *opinione*, Radigund enters the poem to
bring to light the threat of a misconceived and
inverted Britomart. As with Duessa, Radigund's
plot reality embodies features of Mary Stuart,
as my text mentioned; this historical identity
can be better understood from the viewpoint of
sexual power, a culpability of masculine
weakness in an aristocratic society and its
factions, effectively fictionalized by making
use of Fortune. I was guided in such places by
the assumption that there is textual and
fictional extension, explaining the self-
generating machinery of a nearly unending
narrative form, rather than psychological
projection.

In that same fifth Legend, accordingly, the real
Britomart is affected by doubts about Artegall's
inherent superiority as male to Amazonian claims
of female prowess; she loses confidence in him
and becomes vulnerable herself. Since her doubt
is not resolved, her story is superseded by
Pastorella's—-which strengthens not marital but
rather parental-patriarchal authority.

Other fictional characters who vary the
externalization function, each with a different
historical horizon, include Duessa, Philotime,
and Ate. One could perhaps discuss these in
connection with an independent-but-to-be-
captured-woman ideologeme in the late
Elizabethan period: Ate, for one, can be curbed
only by Orpheus's remedial music, the poet's
function and hence Spenser's. In the third
Legend, a variation of these figures can be seen
in Proteus's imprisonment of Florimell (who is,
of course, distinctly different from these other
females). Proteus's action is an external
corollary of an inner condition of hers, but (as
my text stated) by no means identical with it.
Then in the final Legend, we have Serena as
victim: owing to textual echoes we may feel
reminded of Amoret's somewhat nightmarish fears
regarding male eroticism as a despotic art form
(theatrical Cupid and Busyrane not, however,
being contained within her inward self, since
the actual referent of Amoret's fears may be
seen in Scudamour's fear). The fears may be
thought to generate or correspond to a fantasy
on the stage of fictional reality. In Book 6,
then, Serena is unable to free herself from
oppressive plight when she fails to grasp the
meaning of Calepine's anti-phallic lightness—-
another fantasy resembling a nightmare; her fear
and despair regarding "deadly" oppression amount
to a waking continuation. The cannibals cannot
be read as part of her inner self, but as
correspondents—-a "mischaunce" that works as
illumination of the causes of her woeful grief.
An outward misfortune becomes all the more
effective when it can feed on an inner condition.

In the Mutabilitie Cantos, my impression was
that the "Sabbaoth God" / "Sabaoths sight"
passage (8.2) encodes more than Queen
Elizabeth's name and Spenser's desire to be
admitted to her court (Hamilton 1972), though
such a reading appears attractively self-
contained. The collocations, it seemed to me,
refer to more than human desires: the queen's
prima natura as object of the romance-epic as
well as the poet's desires as constituted in
that genre together form what I called a finite
text of empire. They point beyond themselves,
and what they point to is a desire for a new
(inter)text of divine rest or repose, a
transcendental imperium of power since the
queen's role is that of Sabbaoth God's deputy—-
an imperium of which Elizabeth's earthly
authority is a mere and all too fallible shadow.
Hence stable rest and consolidated peace within
primary nature, as in colonial Ireland, surpass
Elizabeth's human and mutable grasp, as the
Cantos have been warningly suggesting in their
own coded allegory. This apprehension nourishes
Spenser's anxious skepticism about the future of
'civil' expansion, and civil conversation.

All this, of course, need not be the last or
even semi-final word on the issues. My
interpretive thoughts about Spenser, like those
of probably anyone else, are likely to grow and
develop in further directions as time goes on.
But if these comments can help to provide a
reading context for anyone who happens to
stumble upon the book, they will have served
their purpose.

Michael Steppat (Bayreuth)

Professor Michael Steppat, Dr. phil.
English Literature
University of Bayreuth
D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany
Phone +49(921)55-3559, Fax +49(921)55-3641
E-mail: [log in to unmask]