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