Hi Dot,
I would agree with you that Spenser must have intended the parallel
syntax:
For not as other wemens brood they were enwombed...
nor with commune food they sucked...
The 'not/nor' construction is a strong reason for reading it this way, as
is the shared subject ('they'); and then of course you have the pairing of
'begot, and bred' in the first line of the next stanza. (This actually
makes me hesitate to agree with you about the prolepsis of nursing before
the birth narrative is delivered (so to speak); it seems to me that
Spenser is setting up the strangeness of their conception *and* subsequent
nourishment -- i.e. by Venus and Diana -- from the first.)
The question then becomes, what to make of 'with commune food...they
sucked vitall blood'? This may not be a popular reading, but I'm tempted
to go with OED on this, under 'food, 5.' -- 'food' sometimes shades into
'feeding', or the 'act of eating'. If it makes you feel better, you might
similarly read 'with' here as 'by', and take 'food' in the regular
substantive sense -- not 'by means of' common food did they derive their
vital blood. In other words, they didn't get conceived in the normal way,
and they didn't get nursed in the normal way. The vital blood that they
developed came not from 'commune food', but from the heavenlier delicacies
on offer with Phoebe's nymph and Venus's henchmate Psyche.
I would support a distinction, too, between 'brood' and 'babes' -- 'brood'
for me attracts the foetal because of its associations with 'brooding' or
'nesting' (see the very instructive collocation of 'brood' and 'feeding'
in the OED's citation from Polydore Vergil 1534 in OED, 'brood', sb., 2!)
-- cherishing that egg or foetus before its delivery. Babes, by contrast,
are very much post-partem. Mine is even showing signs of crawling, lately.
Speaking of which, better finish before someone gets choked by too much
eager food.
az
Andrew Zurcher
Tutor and Director of Studies in English
Queens' College
Cambridge CB3 9ET
United Kingdom
+44 1223 335 572
hast hast post hast for lyfe
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Dorothy Stephens wrote:
> Hi, folks,
>
> In the process of editing FQ III for the Hackett series, I'm trying
> to figure out how to gloss these lines about Chrysogone's pregnancy with
> Belphoebe and Amoret: "For not as other wemens commune brood, / They were
> enwombed in the sacred throne / Of her chaste bodie, nor with commune food, /
> As other wemens babes, they sucked vitall blood" (vi.5.6-9).
>
> The lines almost have to refer to Belphoebe and Amoret as fetuses
> rather than as babies. I find it difficult to believe that Spenser is saying
> they're already born and sucking pure blood from Chrysogone's breasts rather
> than the normal blood-concocted-into-milk, given that the next stanza begins,
> "But wondrously they were begot. . . ." This line would be out of
> chronological order and awkward to boot if the previous stanza had been
> discussing their nursing at the breasts of a mother who was still out cold
> (though this scenario would, I admit, be cause for Diana's and Venus's
> wonderment).
>
> So I'm puzzling over which of these two paraphrases is more accurate:
> 1) Belphoebe and Amoret, unlike other women's babes (= fetuses), suck vital
> blood instead of common food, or 2) Belphoebe and Amoret, unlike other
> women's babes (= fetuses), do not suck vital blood, which is a common food.
> The first paraphrase would seem formally more likely, making the phrase about
> vital blood provide contrast to the "commune food" in the same way that the
> phrase "They were enwombed in the sacred throne / Of her chaste bodie"
> provides contrast to "commune brood." Yet it would seem physiologically
> unremarkable for the two babes to suck vital blood from their mother while in
> the womb, given that this was the Renaissance theory of how ordinary fetuses
> were fed (at least according to all of the gynecological and obstetrical
> tracts that I've read).
>
> Surely Spenser wouldn't resort to the bathos of declaring that they
> suck common food in an uncommon way? Say it ain't so.
>
> The Variorum and other editions pass over this line without glossing
> it. Does anyone have information that would help resolve the conundrum? If
> not, I'll simply put the conundrum into my footnote.
>
> (I started to put "Blood-sucking babes" into the subject line of this
> e-mail but decided that anti-spam software might delete the message as porn.)
>
> Dot Stephens
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