I share Jim’s interest in continuing the conversation about Redcrosse and Una.  It’s certainly appropriate to be unsure about the nature of Redcrosse’s love, but in my view, love of Una is bound up with the allure of vanquishing the evil dragon from the beginning of Book I.  

At the outset, Redcrosse is devoted to a mysterious woman whom he believes to be what she seems to be: pure, of royal lineage, innocent (i. e., a virgin), and willing to trust him as her defender against the dragon who has despoiled her kingdom.  His love is appropriate to its object (it is all awe and admiration, not desire), but it is untested.  

Archimago and his sprites gradually destroy Redcrosse’s faith in Una.  Being human, he isn’t immune to dreaming “of loues and lustfull play” (i 47.4), and the foreplay in his dream develops into a pagan tableau, with his beloved accompanied by Venus, the Graces, and Flora.  He awakens to find the false Una by his bed, complaining of her love.  This temptation only succeeds in disturbing him, but he is no longer assured of Una’s purity.  “Much grieu’d” (55.2) to find that she isn’t the kind of woman he thought she was, he eventually finds refuge in deep sleep.  When Archimago rudely awakens him to show off the two sprites in a carnal embrace, his grief turns into jealous anger.

That Redcrosse is susceptible to jealousy shows that his faith in Una was not well founded; he is all too ready to believe that she isn’t worthy of him, and he hasn’t yet grasped that she embodies a truth (not a doctrinal truth, but fidelity to an ideal) that is separate from worldly appearances.  So he is also susceptible to Duessa’s ersatz and shabby looks, and her pathetic story of a lost love.

After Arthur brings Redcrosse out of Orgoglio’s dungeon, he is reunited with Una in viii 42-43, but he is still too weak to express much emotion.  How does Arthur’s account of himself and his devotion to Gloriana contribute to Redcrosse’s recovery?  Arthur’s dream is a version “in bono” of the kind of dream that Archimago, with evil intent, planted in Redcrosse’s head.  

Unlike Arthur, Redcrosse has seen the faerie Queen face to face, so he is in a position to validate Arthur’s love.  (It needs validation, since in medieval tradition, being singled out by a beautiful faerie who offers her love is morally ambiguous at best.)  And if Arthur is right to love an elusive beauty who comes on to him and then disappears, then Redcrosse’s devotion to Una is even more appropriate.

It may be hard to appreciate the risks of misinterpretation and condemnation that Spenser took in Book I.  Using a knight’s adventures in and out of chivalric love as a vehicle for representing the eventual triumph of a reformed Christian piety – what’s that about?  And who knew how many Elizabethans would understand Arthur’s dream as a proper starting point for any prince’s life of noble virtue.

Redcrosse’s whole story makes clear that Holiness involves the body, with its appetites and vulnerabilities, as well as the heart and mind of a man who is never entirely assured of salvation.  So the hero’s love involves unruly desire (cupiditas) as well as self-sacrificing devotion (caritas).  The distinction made in Christian tradition resembles that made in the first part of Leone Ebreo’s “Dialoghi d’amore,” where true love (whose object may be unattainable) is distinguished from desire, which needs to possess its object.  A similar distinction is made in Sir Philip Sidney’s scenario for the “Fortress of Perfect Beautie” tournament (1581), where he and Fulke Greville were two of the four “foster children of desire.”

Cheers, Jon Quitslund

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "James W. Broaddus" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> 
> I want to thank both Jon Q. and Carol K. for their responses to my query. 
> 
> I would like to continue the conversation by making a couple of comments. 
> Reading "that Ladies loue" to refer to the Faery Queene's love for Arthur, 
> rather than to her love for Redcrosse, could answer Carol K.s objection to 
> Kellogg and Steele's annotation. And, unlike Jon Q.appears to be in his brief 
> comment, I am unsure about the nature of Redcross's love. Redcrosse is rendered 
> intensely jealous by the sight of the false Una and the lusty squire in bed; and 
> Redcrosse tells the false Una that her love "fell not all to ground," that he 
> treasures her love, and holds himself to her "bound." But jealousy is not 
> necessarily a sign of true love, and Redcrosse may be understood to mean that he 
> is bound to Una in the sense that he is committed to the quest. On the other 
> hand, a knight and lady traveling together are typically in love; and most 
> important, Una is convinced that Redcrosse loves her. But, back to the other 
> hand, if the verses under consideration are not read as Redcrosse's declaration 
> of love for Una, then Redcrosse does not, I believe, make such a declaration, 
> even in the bsetrothal scene. He is described as being moved by pleasure at the 
> sight of Una, now divested of her veil and stole, but not by love.  
> 
> Perhaps Una's conviction that Redcrosse loves her can be explained by reference 
> to the historical allegory, when one might say that even during the papist 
> domination of Christendom, when benighted Christians were unaware of the true 
> faith, they surely, in some sense, yearned for the true beliefs of the early and 
> true church. Maybe Redcrosse, in his heart, yearns for Una. Maybe, in his heart 
> of hearts, he does love her but will not be able to recognize that he does until 
> he has finished his commitment to the Faery Queene and has washed his hands from 
> "guilt of bloody field." 
> 
> 
> Or maybe he just cannot articulate his love.  
> 
>  
> 
> Jim Broaddus
> 
> 
> 
> PS The last two postings came in as I was finishing this one. And I am too lazy 
> to work them in.    
>