I have to agree with Harry! I might never have had to write my book!
Seriously though, RC is faithless to Una-- he abandons her in the house of archimago and fleeing from (and with) his gealous fears, he "chaunces" to encounter Sans Foy. Surely this is post hoc ergo propter hoc logic-- he encounters SF because he himself has already been and demonstrated faithlessness and is still enacting faithlessness. It is hard for me to see him as representing militant Protestantism at this point.
Meanwhile, he "conquers" SF by fighting with him as an equal (as the simile suggests they are essentially indistinguishable in their faithlessness and arousal and sexual pride), and then taking up the loser's armor and girl he heads off with great pride, presumably he is proud because he won the woman they were fighting over. It is not accidental that he immediately comes upon the house of pride. Has he beaten SF or become him? What is a victory if having the battle in the first place is the mark if a terrible fall? I think harry, jim, and mark rose said a lot of this many decades ago.
My question Is how to fit the psychological and religious allegories together? While I follow the logic of the allegorical readings suggested by several of you in this great exchange, I am not comfortable leaving behind what seems to me the grounding action of this part of the poem, RC's own faithlessness and sexual arousal-- his failure as a moral being. I think it is also this element of the action that is so wonderfully underlined by the simile.
Susanne
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 3, 2012, at 12:04 PM, Harry Berger Jr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Epic simile as sociobiology. What a great idea! If Jim had told me that when I was working on Sp's epic similes (in the early 1950s?) it might have changed my life.
>
> On Mar 3, 2012, at 8:56 AM, James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
>
>> Yes, epic simile as sociobiology.
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> James Nohrnberg
>> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>> Univ. of Virginia
>> P.O Box 400121
>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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