On Sun, 1 Jun 2008 13:04:58 -0400 Margaret Christian <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> And there's the "fierie" sword of Gen. 3 (Bishops'; in the Geneva it's
>"the blade of a sworde shaken," while Tyndale has "a naked sword moving in
>and out.")
See for this link:
'The verses quoted (III.i.46, in AnFQ 449), describing Britomart's effect
[of awe--attraction an intimidation], also suggest that her chastity casts a
magic circle or _temenos_ about her; the invulnerability that her virtue
confers is otherwise symbolised by her enchanted lance. The preserved area
appears in a number of parietal smbols that modulate the threshold symbol.
The most important of these symbols is the barrior of fire that seals off
Amoret from her lover, Scudamour. Amoret is the sleeping beauty of the
Brunhilde myth, as it were, to whom only a sufficiently pure champion is
able to gain acess. Speser compares Britomart to a rose hedged by thorns
(III.i.46), which reminds us the fairy tale version of the same myth
["Briarose" or "Sleeping Beauty"]. The triple circle with which Glauce
somewhat unintentionally seals of her charge repeats the symbolsim in a more
jocose form. There may also be a fire barrior at the end of the first canto
[of Book III], where Britomart lays about her with "flaming sword": "Here,
there, and euery where about her swayd / Her wrathful steele" (II.i.66). In
Book III, of course, a virgin is a paradisal _hortus conclusus_, and the
original closed garden was also sealed off by a fiery revolving sword. In
Dante this same fire barrier is specifically mediated by an angel of
chastity, and the beloved is met beyond it. ' (AnFQ 448)
Redcrosse in Error's realm is not the only Spenserian knight whose armour
glimmers or shines in the dark; so also that of Guyon in Mammon's
underworld: "those glitterand armes ... with their brightnesse made that
darknesse light" (II.vii.42). [Philotime also lights up Mammon's cave;
similarly Pastorella, in her captivity in the brigands' cave (VI.xi.21) --
but of course no armour is involved.]
> At 03:46 PM 5/30/2008 -0400, you wrote:
>>RC's armor, we are told in FQ 1.1.14, "made / A litle glooming light, much
>>like a shade, / By which he saw" the ladylike features of the monster
>>Error. Where came that light in?
>>
>>I've been working through a new anthology, The Virgilian Tradition: The
>>First Fifteen Hundred Years (Yale, 2008), and I notice there that in two
>>twelfth-century romances, the Old French Roman d'Eneas and the Middle High
>>German Eneit, Aeneas is instructed by the sibyl to use his sword for light
>>in the underworld (pp. 574, 601). This is interesting: in Virgil's Latin,
>>Aeneas is instructed to whip out his sword -- and also told that swords
>>have no effect on ghosts. So what does he need a sword for? The romancers
>>give an explanation.
>>
>>I like source hunting! But I don't believe Spenser had direct access to
>>either of these poems. (I started looking for evidence about ten years ago,
>>but the trail peters out s. XIV.) What's more likely is that all three
>>poems have a common source. Any ideas? Where else in biblical, classical,
>>or romance lit do we find weapons that glow or armor that gives off light?
>>(I know that some gemstones were thought to have this property, but no
>>jewels are mentioned here.)
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
>>English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
>>East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Margaret R. Christian, Ph.D.
> [log in to unmask]
> Associate Professor of English Office: (610)
>285-5106
> Penn State Lehigh Valley Home:
> (610) 562-0163
> 8380 Mohr Lane fax: (610)
>285-5220
>Fogelsville, PA 18051 USA http://www.lv.psu.edu/professional/mrc1/
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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
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