All --
I'm still pondering many points in the lively discussion (I guess wet dreams
really get us where we live), wondering if I have anything to contribute. I do
have an immediate response to the idea that demons, as they appear in FQ,
are 'supernatural': for Spenser, I think not, given the traditions of thought
and definitions of 'nature' on which he drew. 'Preternatural,' I suppose, and
mind-boggling, but one of Spenser's aims as a poet, in my view, was to expand
and enliven his readers' the epiphenomenal within the phenomenal world. His
poem features demons (or daimons) from above and from below, all to be
understood as manifestations of the 'spirit' side of Nature. Think of Nature
in the Cantos: a boundary figure, representing the nature of Nature and
associating it with divinity. Think of the Graces on Mt. Acidale: suspected by
clueless Calidore of being demons, and so they are in a sense: not
ontologically separate from the sprites that Archimago calls up, in his
misappropriation of Venerean energies.
> Certainly, anyone postulating the existence of demons could also
> postulate their influence upon the human mind. A scientific explanation for
> how, exactly, a demon might affect changes in a human's psyche seems
> extraneous...especially for a 16th century writer. Demonic influence, by
> definition, is supernatural...preternatural.
>
> MRS
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