Yes, as Ken indicates, the Bible thinks that the giants are created in the
manner of polytheistic theogonies, with their mixtures and hybrids, and that
the heroic races of those theogonies are an instance of the evil motives of
a hubristic titanism like that of trying to know good and evil like the
gods, or build an imperial skyscraper to achieve world-wide renown, as with
the Tower of Babel; and the Bible might well take the giants' remains as
evidence of a Shelleyan canceled cycle -- or genealogy ("these are the
generations of..." is the refrain of Genesis as a whole, but the genesis of
the gods or demigods sexually is anathema; "these are the generations of the
heavens and the earth: when they were created"--and NOT procreated, or
procreating). Thus the giants in Genesis 6:1-6 are mixed in with violence
in the earth, apparently equally titanic or hubristic, and God is driven to
drown them in the Flood, when the waters above the heavens fall and the
waters below the earth rise to meet each other. Spenser seems to populate
pre-Brute Gaullifridian Britain with a similar race of doomed antedeluvians.
Yes: "Orgoglio is reduced by Arthur to a 'trunked stocke,' and this
description may echo the humiliation of the idol of the Philistine god Dagon
in the presence of the ark: it was reduced to a "stump" (I Sam. 5:4)." (So
AnFQ, 207)
See John Jewel, Exposition upon...Thessalonians: "So we see the breath of
the mouth of Christ is a sword. This sword shall overthrow Antichrist.
Remember how Dagon fell on his face upon the ground before the ark. ... So
shall antichrist fall at the presence of Chirst," where, Jewel is
explaining, "the apostle speaketh of the preaching of the gospel."
This is perhaps to be read with Sir Walter Raleigh on Dagon:
And if this idol [Dagon] could not endure the representation of the true God
[the ark], it is not to be marvelled, that at such time as it pleased him to
covver his only begotten with flesh, and sent him into the world, that ll
the oracles wherein the devil derided and betrayed mortal men, lost power,
speech, and operation at the instant. For, when that true light, which
never had beginning of brightness, brake through the clouds of a virgin's
body, shining upon the earth, which had long been obscured by idolatry, all
these foul and stinking vapours vanished." (History of the World, II.xv.2).
This revelation of the true God is analogous to the unveiling of Arthur's
ark-like shield and its blinding effect upon Orgoglio.
Again, supporting Ken, the giants in Dante are also somewhat childlike, or
primitive, or selfish in a childish way (and perhaps also in Rabelais and
Swift's Brobdingnagians). Dante explains the giant's bulk in the Inferno as
exemplifying the dangers of power allied with intelligence--"too little
intelligance, we must assume, like children playing with matches or
unthinkable nuclear devices." But as looming parental imagos, giants are
also whatever makes us small and helpless: "O what a Giant is Man, when he
fights against himselfe, and what a Dwarfe when hee needs, or exercises his
owne assistance for himselfe!" (John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent
Occasions, 21).
-- Jim N.
On Thu, 31 May 2007 01:14:26 -0400
Kenneth Gross <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Re Spenser's giants: Jim alludes to the British giants slain by Brute in
> II.x. The description of these giants as having been produced by the
> coupling of "Dioclesians fiftie daughters" with "feends and filthy
> Sprights"-- bringing forth "Giants and such dreadfull wights, / As farre
> exceeded men in their immeasurd mights" (II.x.8) -- always recalls for me
> the strange story in Genesis 6.4, of the "Nephilim", "heroes of old, men
> of great renown," produced by the coupling of the "sons of God" with the
> "daughters of men." The allusion suggests not only Spenser's syncretism,
> but his acute ear for certain biblical moments that feel oddly on the
> verge of paganism or fairy tale.
>
> And re threshold giant statues: the collapsed Orgoglio also recalls the
> doubly thrown down statue of Dagon in 1 Samuel 5, first collapsed on his
> face before the stolen ark in the Philistine temple, and then with his
> hands and heads cut off, the latter set on the threshold of the temple to
> render it taboo. Perhaps its shared the element of comedy that makes the
> link between these two images of defeated gigantism and idolatry feel more
> than must tenuous.
>
> Strange that giants should be often like children, at least if you think
> that giants in part represent children's earliest image of adults (well,
> and their own even more gigantic egos and ids as well).
>
> Ken Gross
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
|