 |
 |
Of course once a system of symbols, e.g. Christ-figures, has been set up, it's hard to know when it turns off. Arthur is sometimes a Christ-figure, but he can't be a Christ=figure when he is obsessing over Gloriana and especially wishing Florimell were Gloriana as in III.iv. I think that Timias may not have any abstract allegorical label but may be defined within the poem itself as a low-grade doppelganger of Arthur, an Arthur in the making, e.g., just as Arthur falls in love with a personification of glory and honor in a forest, so does Timias, but he suffers and conceivably errs more in pursuit of her. It was Don Stump who first suggested this to me back in the 70s when he was a student in my Spenser class. The critic can always shift his/her viewpoint to a different level of the four (as Tuve does in the quotation below) and even to sexual symbolism. It could be argued that any historical or pseudo historical event, however minor, carries with it the typology that was once set up in the early books because our forefathers believed the entire universe is providentially ordered as much as are the events of Christ's life, so that back when typology was fashionable (I know no better word, Harry, and I don't mean it was merely fashionable), one scholar I know said that every event both in history and in the Faerie Queene is typological. I don't agree but cannot always find a definite proof or disproof, as I said. James Broaddus wrote: > Rosemond Tuve’s thoughts about allegorical reading could be of help to > Stuart Hart’s theological reading of books other than /The Legend . . . > of Holinesse./ > > > > It all depends upon how one wishes to read /The Faerie Queene/: as it > “makes us read about how we should act” or as it “brings us to the view > of what we ought to believe,” i.e. what Tuve calls “allegory more > strictly so-called” (/Allegorical Imagery/, 15). > > > > Take a look, if you haven’t done so already, at Tuve’s response to a > phrase in Paridell’s seduction of Hellenore: “A sacrament prophane in > the mistery of wine” (III.ix.30). > > > > The middle books can be read as theological allegory, and Book I, as is > evident in the currently fashionable oppositional readings, can be read > as up to date moral allegory. > > > > As A. C. Hamilton observed, all interpretations of /The Faerie Queene/ > are “Procrustean: a matter of finding several points common to the poem > and some other discourse, and then aligning them, using whatever force > is needed to spin one’s own tale” (2001 edition, 17). > > > > Jim Broaddus > > > > -- > Retired, Ind. State.Univ. > 2487 KY 3245 > Brodhead, KY 40409