David, I pondered your question and the best conclusion I could reach is
given in the note to 4.8.62, where III vii 43 is an error: it should be III
vii 44. Cheers, Bert
At 01:19 PM 2002-07-06 -0500, you wrote:
>This question is only slightly less trivial than the last one.
>
>At FQ 4.8.47-62, the squire Amyas describes his captivity in the gardens of
>Corflambo's daughter, Poeana, and his eventual escape, which somehow
>requires that he make off with a dwarf:
>
> Finding no meanes how I might vs enlarge,
> But if that Dwarfe I could with me conuay,
> I lightly snatcht him vp, and with me bore away. (61)
>
>The dwarf, as you will recall, is commissioned by Poeana to keep an eye on
>Amyas, and when he escapes, the dwarf blows the whistle (62; see also
>54-55). This, I suppose, is plausible enough, but it doesn't really explain
>the squire's decision to take the dwarf with him. If I were trying to
>escape from an unwanted girlfriend, I think I would look for ways to be
>inconspicuous. Carrying a dwarf under my arm would not be one of them. Does
>he hold up the dwarf at the gate, like an ID badge?
>
>The whole business seems absurd and, as Michael Murrin pointed out many
>years ago, absurdity often functions as a trigger for allegorical
>interpretation. Having said this, I have racked my brains for a little more
>than an hour and my allegorator is gazing back at me with a blank stare. A
>rapid survey of some books on my shelf (Hamilton, SE, Nohrnberg, Nelson,
>Roche, Alpers) turns up some fascinating material on the relationship
>between Lust and Poeana, but not much on the dwarf. (There is an entry on
>dwarves in the Spenser Encyclopedia, but it devotes the bulk of its
>attention to Una's dwarf.) Any suggestions?
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
>East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
A.C.Hamilton
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Cappon Professor Emeritus
Queen's University, Canada
Phone & Fax: 613- 544-6759
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