Just to attempt to be syncretic: the eschatology that gave us Renaissance
demons also gave us a narrative in which those demons, actually fallen
angels, masquerade as pagan gods until Christ is born and the oracles go
silent. Milton, for example, touches on this in *Paradise Lost* Bk. 2, and
the idea that pagan gods were in fact devils in disguise might be taken as
informing his representation of Satan's epic heroism -- or, more broadly,
as contributing to the tension in his work between pagan modes of writing
about gods and heroes and Christian modes of reading those gods and
heroes. So to suggest that Spenser is drawing upon Christian demonology in
the RC episode is emphatically not to suggest that he's foreclosing other
modes of allusion. On the contrary -- if the interpretive project of the
episode is (at least in part) to get the reader thinking about the poetic
images in his imagination that spark his own desire, then to allude to
Virgil, or to imitate Virgil, in an episode that reproduces
contemporaneous understandings about the way that demons affect the
imagination is to increase the epistemological and indeed theological
stakes of the question of epic.
GG
On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Harry Berger, Jr. wrote:
> The images might also be thought of as "coming from the memories of"
> Virgil, Ovid, and others. For this poet there could be other targets,
> other categories of allusion, than (or, at least, in addition to)
> contemporary lore about demons or humors or faculties. The question
> might then be, which categories seem more attuned to the interpretive
> project of the episode? Are they represented as subjects of
> allusion? Is the representation straight or in scare quotes? What's
> the gender of the Una-spright?
>
>
> >It might be important to note that 16th-C demonology and faculty
> >psychology both take it for granted that demons can simply implant images
> >into the phantasy -- right into the mind's eye, as it were -- producing
> >both false dreams ("demonological dreams," in Robert Burton's phrase) and
> >things that we would take more as hallucinations. These writers were very,
> >very silent on how demons could so implant images in the imagination
> >(whereas following Aquinas they had a rather elaborate theory of how
> >demons could affect someones *mood*, by mechanistically pushing various
> >humors around, and so forth), but none as far as I know ever said that
> >demons would have to use ideational material that was already stored in
> >the memory to deceive human beings.
> >
> >It seems to me that the demon gets a generic sort of wet dream from
> >Morpheus ("the fit false dream" in 43.9), but that he also asks Morpheus
> >to
> >send the dream for Archimago's "intent" ("He bids thee to him send for his
> >intent / A fit false dream, that can delude the sleepers sent") -- as if
> >Archimago still needs to mediate the dream that's going to come back from
> >the depths. And, indeed, it turns out in stanza 45 that just as Archimago
> >has to teach the spright who impersonates Una to "imitate that lady true,"
> >so does he have to teach the spright who comes back with the dream to
> >abuse RCs fantasy with false shows "privily," that is, using the image of
> >Una that makes the dream personally relevant to Redcrosse. That's not
> >much,
> >but in any case it doesn't *demand* that we read the images as coming from
> >RCs memory, as lustful or otherwise.
> >
> >
> >Best,
> >Genevieve Guenther
> >
> >
> >On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, James W. Broaddus wrote:
> >
> >> Does Redcrosse's dream of "loues and lustfull play" (I.i.47.4) come from
> >> Morpheus supplied with those images or does Morpheus provide only a generic
> >> "fit false dreame" (i.43.9), i.e., not a true, prophetic dream? Does
> >> Archimago supply the images in toto or by schooling either the dream or the
> >> spright (46.5)--I can't tell which--how to change innocent images already in
> >> Redcrosse's memory into the lustful? Do those images, as lustful, come from
> >> Redcrosse's memory?
> >>
> >> Jim Broaddus
> >>
>
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