The pressed grass is real but not royal, or royal but not real, if we take 
all of this to be a kind of Alice-through-the-looking-glass kind of 
experience.  (Cp. AnFQ, 47f: "In the historidal allegory the 
inaccessibililyt of the queen is part refers to the reluctance of Elizabeth 
to marry, but there is more to it than that.  One may compare the relation 
to that of Alice and the Red King.  The problem in that story was who was 
dreaming whom, or, with respect to mental territory, who was inside whose. 
 Arthur is an English [rather, Briitish] prince inside fairyland; the Tudor 
queen seems to be a fay inside England--at least according to the elegant 
conceit of her courtliest poet.  The fairy queen is not, at any rate, to be 
found in that part of fairlyland actually presented in the poem. ... the 
court is maintained as an English reality on the periphery of the poem.  Its 
queen belongs to the poem's horizon, at the vanishing-point where the 
English and faerie parallels meet.  Alleogry, in its nature, requires just 
such an 'otherness of parallels.'  Alice is told that if she were to awaken 
the Red King she would disappear, for she is what the Red King is dreaming. 
 One suppose that a premature recogniton of Arthur by Gloriana would have 
had a similar annihilating effect on _The Fearie Queene_").  This is the 
point of the comparison made on the last page of the Analogy, of Petrarch's 
Laura (as an idol "carved [sculpted] in living laurel") to Don Quixote's 
beloved Dulcinea (as an object of knowledge, "a partly non-existent lady 
whom he may never have seen").  And likewise the earlier comparisons of the 
quixotic Arthur ("Perhaps there is a touch of the infatuated Orlando about 
this character--as in his chase after Florimell--and even a hint of the 
fatuous Sir Thopas.  There is something fantastic about his love for 
Gloriana, as there is about Don Quixote's for Dulcinea; the Don himself 
acknowledges that Dulcinea as a literary invention.  Quixote especially 
modeled himself on Amadis de Gaula.  Rather than an alienation similar to 
Orlando's, he elects Amadis' penitential rustication (for an imagined 
offense to his mistress) as the program for hs own madness in the wilds. 
 Spenser assigns this motif to Arthur's squire, Timias, who offends the 
private person of the Queen, Belphoebe; nevertheless, Arthur's own 
rustication in fairyland is a larger version of the same romantic [=romance] 
pattern.  The long-lost love of Amadis was the famous British princess 
Oriana, and at least one fellow poet assocaited her directly with Spenser's 
fairy queen."  [Footnote includes "A fairy with the name Gloriande is among 
the personnel of Berner's version of _Huon of Bordeaux_."].)  There are four 
other comparisons to be offered, namely the moon's nocturnal visits to the 
sleeping Endymion, Diana's visit to Brute the founder of Britain, Cynthia's 
influence over the Shepherd of the Ocean Sir Wa'ter R., and the visit of 
Shakespeare's Titania to Bottom the dream weaver.  (These are treated in 
essays only now finding print, in ed. vols. of Julian Lethbridge, and Terry 
Krier & David Galbraith.)  The pressed grass is there, or real, like 
Bottom's itchy face; the problem is what to make of it, or what gets made of 
it.  So likewise Arhtur's pillow, which is no pillow, but only his helmet: 
 like Sir Thopas'.  (Quixote's helmet goes untested, and the remains of 
Mambrino's are only a washbasin.)  Spenser follows in the footprints of 
Chaucer's own Tale, but also, in this case, the fetishized footprint of 
Petrarch's Laura, which she made in the earth precisely at the point where 
she turned towards her idolater (Rime Sparse 108).
-- Jim N.


On Mon, 14 May 2007 10:46:37 -0400
  [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Yes, and a subtle point--but no way to start a dynasty. Maybe Spenser did
> believe Polydore Vergil? Whole Tudor/Arthur dynasty thing is based on
> pressed grass? AP
> 
>> Images leave their impressions on the world too. Maybe that's the point.
>>
>> William Oram wrote:
>>> Do remember the pressed grass that Arthur notices when he awakes,
>>> though.  Pressed by Arthur as he tosses and turns?  Who knows, but
>>> Spenser didn't need to have Arthur mention it.   Bill Oram
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> "David L. Miller" <[log in to unmask]> 5/14/2007 9:38 AM >>>
>>>>>>
>>> Thanks to both Jim Nohrnberg and Stephen Foley for their suggestions.
>>> I'm travelling and won't be able to consult chapter and verse of the
>>> Analogy of the FQ until I get home, but it'll be very useful to have the
>>> references.
>>>
>>> My thought is that Arthur has done what Britomart was afraid she had,
>>> i.e. fallen in love with an image.
>>>
>>> DM
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Marshall Grossman
>> Professor
>> Department of English
>> University of Maryland
>> 3101 SQH
>> College Park, MD 20895
>>
>> 301-405-9651
>> [log in to unmask]
>>

[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121