And then there's Milton's "yellow-skirted fays," or something like that.
When I was a kid my father read me Kipling's *Rewards and Faeries*--Puck
complains, like Tolkein since (or maybe I mean *Puck of Pook's Hill*) on
what's wrong with the Renaissance shrinking of fairies into little cutsie
flower-inhabiting creatures. The title, of course, comes from the 17th c.
poem "Farewell rewards and fairies" which laments their disappearance
since "of late Elizabeth and later James came in." As I recall, one of the
documents Briggs includes tells of a man who met a fairy ride and asked
the leader why they looked so serious. Because, the fairy leader replied,
they were unsure of their status in the afterworld or at the end of time.
I'm struck by the utter absence from Spenser of what you might call fairy
theory. One can tease out differences between his Britons, English, and
fairies, not least in the House of Alma, but he's never very clear,
including what *sort* of fairies he means. I think of them as the Irish
sort--pre-cutsy, large, and able to mix with people and possibly a bit
scary in their ability to invade your dreams and leave impressions on the
grass without definitively being there. Sorry to be so chatty. I'll stop.
Anne.
> Charles Butler's post reminds me of Stephen Orgel's discussion of the
> early
> 17-century marginalia in a copy of FQ that he owns. The Puritan
> revaluation
> of faerie clearly informs these marginal notes, which include some
> indignation early in Book I: doesn't this writer know that all faeries
> are
> demons?!
>
> I suppose it's a big leap, but one trajectory for this whole problem would
> lead us to Milton, who invokes the spiritual ambiguity of the faerie world
> pretty strikingly at the end of his own first book. It's striking because
> Paradise Lost tends so to polarize good and evil so impressively; but when
> Milton wants to evoke human uncertainty about the supernatural, he turns
> to
> that figure of the moonlit rustic laborer, distracted on his way home by
> something that might be the dance of the faeries. The location of this
> simile just at that point in the narrative when the Satanic powers are
> gathering in supreme council is ominous, to say the least, but the
> indirectness of the connection is also interesting. Although he suspends
> it
> in the hypothetical status of a simile, Milton seems to want the beguiling
> atmosphere of folk imagination, half-magical and half-superstitious, as
> much
> as he wants the Puritan judgment on such matters.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Charles Butler
> Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 5:01 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: forward from Thomas Herron
>
>
> Katharine Briggs' ever-useful *Dictionary of Fairies* is interesting on
> Hobgoblins, though rather tantalizingly so. It points out that the word
> was
> originally applied, somewhat affectionately, to mischievous or
> brownie-type
> spirits, as in *Midsummer Night's Dream* ('Those that Hobgoblin call you,
> and sweet Puck,/ You do their work, and they shall have good luck'), and
> that its application to wicked spirits was a Puritan usage: she gives the
> example of Bunyan's 'Hobgoblin nor foul fiend'.
>
> If we accept that basic distinction it seems probable that Harvey's
> Hobgoblin/Apollo comparison belongs to the first type, garland-stealing
> being the kind of thing that might be expected of a mischievous Puck, and
> Spenser's later drery-accented frayers to the second. We could have fun
> speculating whether this indicates a definitive shift in usage between the
> composition of the two texts, or a distinction between Harvey's and
> Spenser's religious affiliations, but more likely both meanings were
> current, and either could be used depending on context, as was certainly
> the
> case with a word like 'fairy'.
>
> I wonder, incidentally, whether Anne's demons are specifically incubi and
> succubi (certainly an object of fascinaton for Spenser, and a worldwide
> phenomenon as far as I can see, though their activities don't form part of
> the hobgoblin's usual job description), or workers of more general-purpose
> marriage-wrecking illusions?
>
> Charlie
>
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