All this has been fascinating (in other words, worth printing out!) and I
can't resist adding my currently favorite demon: the one who afflicted Saul.
The reason he might be relevant is that there was such interesting
disagreement, in the Middle Ages as well as the Renaissance, as to what
exactly he was up to. Sent by God, sure, but does he allegorize something?
What was he doing to Saul. Producing melancholia? If so, that might explain
why David's music was so effective, unless it was David's goodness (opinions
varied). The illustrations of this biblical episode in a recent book on music
and medicine are intriguing in this regard: one shows a very sick Saul in
bed--he has, so to speak, come down with a demon. The other shows a winged
demon fluttering near Saul but not exactly *in* him. The reason I think this
might be relevant to Spenser is that in a curious way Saul's demon and the
many, many arguments over how it operated, and where, and just exactly what
made it go away, has parallels with how we read Redcrosse's adventures chez
Archimago and elsewhere: how much of this is inside George, so to speak (his
*ge* part, the flesh, being so subject to sexual fantasies that can also
represent, it's wise to remember, the temptations of Roman Catholicisim's
visual and auditory beauty), and how much outside. Does Redcrosse come down
with a case of demons, or are the demons external even if still real?
According to the classical and Renaissance authorities I have been reading,
Archimago could also have tried the Lydian mode, to which the antidote is the
Dorian. Since Redcrosse seems to have a touch of melancholia (perhaps from
thinking to much, Ficino would say), medicinal music would have helped
him--but aborted the narrative, of course. Anne Prescott
>===== Original Message From Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
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>The images might also be thought of as "coming from the memories of"
>Virgil, Ovid, and others. For this poet there could be other targets,
>other categories of allusion, than (or, at least, in addition to)
>contemporary lore about demons or humors or faculties. The question
>might then be, which categories seem more attuned to the interpretive
>project of the episode? Are they represented as subjects of
>allusion? Is the representation straight or in scare quotes? What's
>the gender of the Una-spright?
>
>
>>It might be important to note that 16th-C demonology and faculty
>>psychology both take it for granted that demons can simply implant images
>>into the phantasy -- right into the mind's eye, as it were -- producing
>>both false dreams ("demonological dreams," in Robert Burton's phrase) and
>>things that we would take more as hallucinations. These writers were very,
>>very silent on how demons could so implant images in the imagination
>>(whereas following Aquinas they had a rather elaborate theory of how
>>demons could affect someones *mood*, by mechanistically pushing various
>>humors around, and so forth), but none as far as I know ever said that
>>demons would have to use ideational material that was already stored in
>>the memory to deceive human beings.
>>
>>It seems to me that the demon gets a generic sort of wet dream from
>>Morpheus ("the fit false dream" in 43.9), but that he also asks Morpheus
>>to
>>send the dream for Archimago's "intent" ("He bids thee to him send for his
>>intent / A fit false dream, that can delude the sleepers sent") -- as if
>>Archimago still needs to mediate the dream that's going to come back from
>>the depths. And, indeed, it turns out in stanza 45 that just as Archimago
>>has to teach the spright who impersonates Una to "imitate that lady true,"
>>so does he have to teach the spright who comes back with the dream to
>>abuse RCs fantasy with false shows "privily," that is, using the image of
>>Una that makes the dream personally relevant to Redcrosse. That's not
>>much,
>>but in any case it doesn't *demand* that we read the images as coming from
>>RCs memory, as lustful or otherwise.
>>
>>
>>Best,
>>Genevieve Guenther
>>
>>
>>On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, James W. Broaddus wrote:
>>
>>> Does Redcrosse's dream of "loues and lustfull play" (I.i.47.4) come from
>>> Morpheus supplied with those images or does Morpheus provide only a
generic
>>> "fit false dreame" (i.43.9), i.e., not a true, prophetic dream? Does
>>> Archimago supply the images in toto or by schooling either the dream or
the
>>> spright (46.5)--I can't tell which--how to change innocent images already
in
>>> Redcrosse's memory into the lustful? Do those images, as lustful, come
from
>>> Redcrosse's memory?
>>>
>>> Jim Broaddus
>>>
anne prescott
english, barnard college
