This has been a wonderful discussion.
It seems to me that much of what we're circling around comes down to, "what does Redcrosse know and how could he know it?" Does he know he's an allegorical character? Does he know that his armor isn't just armor? As Andrew asks, does he grok the grok? I would add, then, that when we ask those questions, we must ask the same questions of every character/entity from which/whom Redcrosse receives advice or accouterments. For example, does Una really know what she's doing, and can her knowledge always be relied upon as good? We really shouldn't assume so, which is Richard Halpern's brilliant point in "Una's Evil," his Hugh Maclean lecture for the Spenser Society luncheon some years ago (http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/static/pdfs/2010_Volume_40_Number_3.pdf).
Another example would be Contemplation, who in his conversation with Redcrosse tells him pretty much that -- to quote the title of what used to be Slate.com's cooking column -- "you're doing it wrong." It's one of those conversations where the reply assigned belatedly to Contemplation by a "said he" almost comes across as Redcrosse's own answer to his question:
But deeds of armes must I at last be faine [asks RCK],
And Ladies loue to leaue so dearely bought?
What need of armes, where peace doth ay remaine,
(Said he) and battailes none are to be fought?
As for loose loues they are vaine, and vanish into nought.
Right: here's true knowledge offered him. This whole fighting and loving thing -- even if it's fighting while wearing the armor of God, and even if it's loving the true faith -- has been a detour all along. Lesson learned: Redcrosse promptly resolves to kill the dragon as promised and then proceed on his true quest, his journey to the new Jerusalem. Or not learned. Arguably, Redcrosse's defeat of the dragon is just as misguided as his defeat of Error, in that he subsequently seems to have forgotten all about the new Jerusalem, and goes on once again to pursue "deeds of armes" and "Ladies Loue" -- first marriage to Una, and then, once he's abandoned her and left her to mourn, fealty to "his Faerie Queene."
Perhaps, though, Contemplation has it all wrong. Or perhaps the voice of Contemplation, seeming to come as it does out of Redcrosse's own mouth, is another instance of Redcrosse's self-serving error. "What need of armes . . . loose loues they are vaine": these sound like lines lifted from the rhetoric of Despaire. Is Redcrosse right to forget this advice, if it's bad to begin with?
Katherine
Katherine Eggert
Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Assessment
Professor of English
University of Colorado Boulder
40 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0040
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From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of David Miller <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 3:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: :“Add faith vnto your force” (FQ 1.i.19.3)
Ne'er so well expressed.
On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 4:44 PM, andrew zurcher <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Tom, and Judith,
Apologies for the slow reply. Much goes down in Cambridge.
As they might say in Vaes Dothrak, it is known that Spenser begins the first canto of the book with a careful distinction between what appears to be the case, and what may in fact be otherwise. The inscrutability of Redcrosse, younkering inside his dinty armour, presents a hermeneutical problem, and also by dint of its primary position in the first book creates a hermeneutic condition for reading the poem as a whole. I know this is not news, and that I am repeating well-worn saws, couth and kissed. All I am saying about the second stanza is that it seems to me to perpetuate this instability, this hermeneutic condition.
I do many things, as I guess we all do, for the sake of some principle or belief or accepted ideology, without querying the nature of that principle, belief, or ideology altogether closely. American kids don't know too much about patriotism, though they repeat the pledge of allegiance every morning. Redcrosse wears the right badge, and he scores the sign of the cross on his shield, but he may not know fully what that means. His cheer is too serious -- he's just not blithe enough, remarks the narrator, for someone who is sure of his hope. Maybe he talks the talk, maybe he walks the walk, but does he grok the grok? As for the phrase 'dead as liuing euer him ador'd': there is some perplexity here. Does he adore Christ in the knowledge that, having died, he now lives for ever? Or does he adore him ever because he knows that, dead, he lives again? Or does he adore him dead just as he had adored him living? Does he adore him living just as he had adored him dead? A lot depends on this, because the phrase can be construed to mean both (i) Redcrosse doesn't distinguish between Christ's death and his life, and treats these dead signs of his dead lord with just as much respect as he might have living signs of a living lord; and (ii) Redcrosse understands that Christ's death is a sign of his transcendence of death and his everlasting life. This distinction is of course another formulation of the distinction I was drawing earlier between the material and the psychological understanding of 'remembrance', which I think persists here. It turns out that the economies of grammar, the dynamics of the verse line, the ambiguity of condensed poetic expression, the hermeneutical perplexities of allegorical representation, all occasion the yawning open of a gap between dead things and live meanings, between actions/words and understandings, between lexis and intellexis, that occurs repeatedly in this first book -- e.g. when Una is worshipped by the satyrs, who make her 'th'Image of Idolatryes', and afterwards worship her ass.
Have a nice evening,
Andrew
On 19/07/2018 12:26, Herron, Thomas wrote:
Hello... such is my list silence... my reading has been questioned so I feel I ought to take up the challenge and can at least be relatively brief: I support Judith's comment to Andrew: the term "The remembrance" is used (i.2.2), as Andrew rightly points out, but it is closely followed by the lines that clearly indicate that RCK is wearing the armor "For" the "sweet sake" of Christ: "For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore." To me this indicates clear agency and credulity, ergo faith, in Christ on the part of RCK ("he" who is doing the wearing is doing it knowingly for the sake of the savior). This is confirmed by the following line, "And dead as living ever him adored" (4): RCK has belief in the fundamental doctrine that Christ ("him") is living despite his death, and this specifically evokes his religious "adore"-ation.
Also, Bill writes that "Redcrosse doesn’t really recognize what he’s facing--hence the business of his not fearing the right thing."
What's the evidence that RCK doesn't understand that Error is Error, since Una tells him blatantly, "This is the wandering Wood, this Errours Den" (13.6)? You can say that RCK takes the wrong approach in fighting Error (until he uses his sWord), but he presumably is not deaf; if not deaf, then his slow brain is at least processing what he has been told by his lady-love. He is foolhardy, but he's given the right directions (i.e., tools, like his armor) to start with. [To add to the interest here, Una is arguably teaching both him and us that he is fighting an allegorical concept, if his brain can spin fast enough to grasp that too.]
Regards, --Tom
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