Thanks, Andrew. I need time to think about this. But it's responses
like yours that make my day and make the list a rich and constant
source of new thoughts and new ideas. Harry
>>>Redcrosse knows what his dream means he must do;
>>
>>Andrew, is this the same thing as saying "Redcrosse knows what his
>>dream tells him to do"?
>
>Hello Harry,
>
>All in amaze he suddenly vp start
> With sword in hand, and with the old man went;
> Who soone him brought into a secret part,
> Where that false couple were full closely ment
> In wanton lust and leud embracement:
> Which when he saw, he burnt with gealous fire,
> The eie of reason was with rage yblent,
> And would haue slaine them in his furious ire,
>But hardly was restreined of that aged sire.
>
>Retourning to his bed in torment great,
> And bitter anguish of his guilty sight,
> He could not rest, but did his stout heart eat,
> And wast his inward gall with deepe despight,
> Yrkesome of life, and too long lingring night.
> At last faire Hesperus in highest skie
> Had spent his lampe, and brought forth dawning light,
> Then vp he rose, and clad him hastily;
>The dwarfe him brought his steed: so both away do flie.
>
>There are multiple preparations (primings) for Redcrosse's error here: not
>only Errour, but the dream to which he remained unpersuaded (Milton of
>course picks up on this kind of necessary priming in Eve's dream before
>the temptation). Spenser repeats 'suddenly' twice (stanzas 4 and 5) to
>emphasize the interruption of Redcrosse's 'sound repast', whereupon he
>jolts up so quickly that Spenser doesn't even have time to get a preterite
>ending on the back of 'start' (not to mention the delayed 'ment', of line
>4 of stanza 5, which should have been tacked on to 'amaze' in line 1: the
>jumbling up of syllables and lopping off of verb tenses plays out the
>confusion of Redcrosse's disorientation pretty neatly).
>
>'Ment' is curious in line 5 beyond the way it answers 'amaze', though.
>Who ever heard of couples being 'ment'? ('Who is bold enough to admit that
>he or she has never had such an experience?') I think I would stick to the
>'meaning' of this image to him of what he must do, and the eliding of a
>'telling' and a 'choosing'; because in the following lines we go straight
>from the palpably-meant 'wanton lust and leud embracement' (where, again,
>the metre requires us to give four syllables to 'embracement' and make it
>a pair of iambic feet, giving us 2-for-1 in the ment department: what is
>meant? wanton lust and leud embrace is meant.) to the remarkable
>effacement (oops, sorry) of the subject in lines 7-8:
>
> The eie of reason was with rage yblent,
> And would haue slaine them in his furious ire...
>
>The blinded eye (I) of reason would have slain them? Or Redcrosse?
>Obviously we are 'ment' to recall the 'he' of line 6, but the asyndeton in
>the interposition of line 6, coming as it does on the back of a lot of
>verbal confusion earlier in the stanza, throws the whole question of
>agency into a passionate entangle-ment. The experience of this stanza is
>the closest thing I have ever seen in English poetry to the way I feel
>when my daughters wake me up at 3 in the morning; and I don't see a
>process here of ceding authority, then choosing to actualize a
>possibility--I just see confusion, and 'amaze' giving way to 'ment',
>thence to 'embracement', thence to 'yblent'. The rest of the passage--the
>gall-eating frenesis of the 'too long lingring night'--is not marked by
>choice and election, but impatience to make good his departure. Usually in
>Spenser the dawning light brings 'rose' (the rosy-fingered Eos of Homer:
>see stanza 7 for its appearance, for Una, a couple of lines later); here
>Redcrosse is in such a rush he translates the color to movement, and it is
>his, preventing, movement: 'then vp he rose...hastily'.
>
>andrew
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