Apologies if this is a repeat posting, but I was having
trouble with my email yesterday and I don't think this one
worked.
--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 10:08:48 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Butler, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: palmers
Sender: "Butler, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
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Cc: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: "Butler, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
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This is going back a bit, but the question of the
Protestant use of Catholic imagery was interestingly
addressed by C.S. Lewis in The Allegory of Love. His take,
if you remember, was that "all allegories whatever are
likely to appear Catholic to the general reader", not
because the allegory is Catholic, but because "Catholicism
is allegorical". That is to say, in Catholicism we tend to
find literalised those things (Holy Hospitals, penitential
whips, and perhaps Palmers too) that Protestantism prefers
to leave purely symbolic. He continues:
"Now allegory exists, so to speak, in that region of the
mind where the bifurcation has not yet occurred; for it
occurs only when we reach the material world. In the world
of matter, Catholics and Protestants disagree as to the
kind and degree of incarnation or embodiment which we can
safely try to give to the spiritual; but in the world of
imagincation, where allegory exists, unlimited embodiment
is equally approved by both."
Not that this is the whole story, of course, because FQ is
a mixed allegory, and we are certainly expected to read
(for example) Archimago's strewing of Ave-Mary's (I.i.35)
as a sign of his Catholicism.
Now I too am going to print out Harry Berger's detailed
comments!
Charlie Butler
----------------------------------------
Butler, Charles
Email: [log in to unmask]
"University of the West of England"
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