[FORWARDED FROM JAMES NOHRNBERG]


Glosses on dead as living, & the dying god:

	Out of the opening episodes of Book I emerges a figure who would
willingly serve truth, yet cannot be trusted to distinguish it from
imitations.  If Redcrosse is to be a second Adam, the emphasis seems to
fall on Adam.  He will not cast "that old Dragon" (I.xi, rubric) cout of
heaven; he can only engage him on the earth to which he fell.  He adores
his "dying Lord," but he adores him "dead as liuing," a phrase that weakens
Revelation 1:18 ("I am alive and was dead:  and behold, I am alive for
evermore"). 154

[footnote]154
Cf. I.vi.36, "These eyes did see that knight both liuing and eke ded," and
I.vi.39, "how might I see / The thing, that might not be, and yet was
donne?" where Archimago is "building the sepulchres of the prophets," as
the hypocritical Pharisee is wont to do (Luke 11:47); we are to contrast
[the as it were self-raised] Una, at I.vii.28, who "vp arose, resoluing him
to find / Aliue or dead."  Cf. also I.xii.28 ["mine he is {...}/Or false or
trew, or liuing or else dead"].

There is a sense in which Adam is still in Limbo; even though Christ is
risen, the Christian is still on the road to Emmaus.  When Redcrosse sets
out from the house of Archimago he is alone, a little like Abraham, who
left the land of his fathers to become a stranger in the land of promise.
And yet, like the church of Ephesus in Revelation 1:3, he has abandoned the
love he had at first."  He shores up his confidence with the defeat of
Sansfoy; at the same time he takes on the pagan's consort Duessa.  The last
error seems to be worse than the first.
	In taking on Duessa, Redcrosse makes a bad mistake, and to explain
how this happens Spenser introduces the parallel story of Fradubio ("among
doubt" or Brother Doubt) and Fraelissa (that human infirmity, "the fraylty
of man, wych seyng the best folowyth the worst"; [...]
	[...] The Hippolytus-Virbius story [in relation to Sansjoy] [...]
reminds one of the resurrection, and this must be the key to explaining its
attachment to Redcrosse's evil counterpart at the House of Pride, where
Spenser reproduces a detail from Ovid's version, the mistress' secreting of
the body by means of cloud (Metam. XV.434-441).  Duessa's intervention for
Sansjoy corresponds to Diana's for Hippolytus.  To expand the comparison we
will need to study Duessa's own relation to the resurrection.
	In her first profession, Duessa gives Redcrosse an account of the
mysterious theft of her lord's body ["His blessed body [...]/Was afterward
[...] conuaid/And fro me hid" at I.ii.24]; thus she puts aborad a story
like the one circulated among the Jews in Matthew 28:13-15:  the story that
the disciples had come in the night and stolen the body of Christ from  the
tomb.  Duessa describes her lord as a kind of fallen and disgraced
courtier, rather than as the Christ who humbeld himself to death and is now
highly exalted (Philippians 2:8).  Duessa, in a way, commits the error,
mentioned in II Timothy 2:18, of believeing that the resurrection is over.
For her, Redcrosse's dying god is a dead one.  What is doubt in the mind of
the knight is more like apostasy in the lady.  Her supposed search for her
lord's remains is a pretentious parallel for Una's sincere search for
Redcrosse.  Una may be compared to Mary Magdalene seeking Jesus at the
tomb; Duessa, to pilgrims seeking the true cross, or better, to the
crusaders attempting to recover the holy sepulchre.  Later we will note
Una's resemblance to Isis searching for Osiris; Duessa acts the parallel
part of Diana, preserving the "relicks" of her Hippolytus-Virgius, whose
body she conveys and hides.  "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not
where they have laid him," laments Mary Magdalene (John 20:13 [cf. Arthur
at I.viii32, "Again he askt, where that same knight was layd," with a
reference to Jesus seeking out the dead Lazarus]).  Where have you left
your Lord?" begs Una of Redcrosse's "reliques," his sword and spear
(II.vii.48; cf. v.39 [--on Hipplytus:  "the relicks of his smart"]).  Thus
Duessa's conveyance of Snasjoy not only recalls but also seems to repeat
her earlier story about her lord; ceremonial religon, Spenser implies,
recreates that story whenever it substitutes corpus Christi for the Christ
who is in heaven.  Her descent into hell, for the reanimation of Sansjoy by
Aesculapius, brings Duessa close the the kind of ghoulish strix who
traffics in corpses, in contrast to the women ministering to
Redcrosse--they rather recall the women preparing Christ's body for the
tomb.
	[...]
	The interment of Sansjoy [...] might be described as an ironic
deposition of the body of Christ.  Duessa's disposal of Recrosse in the
Orgoglio episode invites a similar interpretation, since Arthur's lifting
of Redcrosse's "pined corser" (I.viii.40) decidedly suggests a pictorial
"quotation" from the deposition subject.  But why does Duessa preserve
Redcrosse at all?  And what is meant by the conditions in which the knight
survives [i.e., "dead as liuing"]?  A passage from Calvin [...] might
answer here:  Calvin says that the Bishop of Rome has placed his seat in
the temple of God, like Antichrist, and that his kingdom maintains the name
of Christ:

.... we do not deny but that euen vnder his tyrannie remain Churches:  but
such as he hath prophaned with vngodlinesse full of sacrilege, such as he
hath afflicted with outragious dominion, such as he hath corrupted and in
maner killed with euill & damnable doctrines, as with poisoned drinkes:
such wherein Christe lieth halfe buried, the Gospell ouerwhelemed,
godliness banished, the worshipping of God in a maner abolished; such
finally wherin all things are so troubled, that therin rather appereth the
face of Babylon then of the holy citie of God.  In a summe, I say that they
be Churches, in respect that the Lorde there marulesly preserues the
remnauntes of his people howesoeuer they were dispersed and scattered
abroad, in respecte that there remain some tokens of the Church, specially
these tokens, the effectualness whereof neither the craft of the Deuill,
nor the maliciousnesse of man can destroy.

To repeat:  in such churches Christ lies half-buried, the church itself
being half-dead from poisoned drinks and under the domination of its
Babylonian aspect; meanwhile the true church, a saving remnant, is obscured
and dispsered, though not completely destroyed.

--From AnFQ 159f, 172f sub The Tree of Life, 270f sub The Man Who Would Not
Live.  [Some of this got developed in "Corpus delicti, relicti, et Christi:
Scandalous Scripture, Gospel Fiction, and Counterfeit Truth in Spenser's
Legend of Holinesse," Spenser Session, Modern Language Assoc. mtng.
(Chicago, Dec. 27, 1999).]





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