Dear list: I have a friend, Manny Schonhorn, an 18th c. scholar, who
asked me what I thought of Spenser's Arthur's birth/parentage, about
which he has been thinking. Right after being removed from his
biological father, writes Manny to me in an e-mail, he is delivered
to Old Timon in the Wales valley, and then receives his moral
education from Merlin. That's an intriguing melange of Briton and
faerie right there, which of course turns up elsewhere. "My hunch is
in the triple paternal inheritance. It's unusual. Oedipus and Moses,
easily coming to mind, have single mentors after their abandoment.
The only figure that I am reminded of is Theseus--see Dryden-Duke's
*Plutarch's Lives*, my 1703 text, I, 3-6. The triplet is strangely
significant, for it structures the plot and design of much of the
English narratives that follow. I find it in Crusoe's Friday,
Fielding's Andrews and JHones, Sterne's Tristam. And, not too
surprisingly, but perhaps not for many convincingly, I can argue for
it in Clarissa and Burney's heroines too. (Dorothy's three fellow
travelers on their way to Oz are NOT part of my problem!!) Spenser's
Arthur's triple inheritance is not in folk literature as far as I can
tell. It does not appear in Thompson's *Motif-index of Folk
Literature*. Heroes of folk and myth are usually bastards or
abandoned, and of course have foster-fathers, adopted fathers. But
three? Odd. Spenser's creation? Does anyone know?
Any thoughts for me to pass along? Anne P.
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