This question is only slightly less trivial than the last one.
At FQ 4.8.47-62, the squire Amyas describes his captivity in the gardens of
Corflambo's daughter, Poeana, and his eventual escape, which somehow
requires that he make off with a dwarf:
Finding no meanes how I might vs enlarge,
But if that Dwarfe I could with me conuay,
I lightly snatcht him vp, and with me bore away. (61)
The dwarf, as you will recall, is commissioned by Poeana to keep an eye on
Amyas, and when he escapes, the dwarf blows the whistle (62; see also
54-55). This, I suppose, is plausible enough, but it doesn't really explain
the squire's decision to take the dwarf with him. If I were trying to
escape from an unwanted girlfriend, I think I would look for ways to be
inconspicuous. Carrying a dwarf under my arm would not be one of them. Does
he hold up the dwarf at the gate, like an ID badge?
The whole business seems absurd and, as Michael Murrin pointed out many
years ago, absurdity often functions as a trigger for allegorical
interpretation. Having said this, I have racked my brains for a little more
than an hour and my allegorator is gazing back at me with a blank stare. A
rapid survey of some books on my shelf (Hamilton, SE, Nohrnberg, Nelson,
Roche, Alpers) turns up some fascinating material on the relationship
between Lust and Poeana, but not much on the dwarf. (There is an entry on
dwarves in the Spenser Encyclopedia, but it devotes the bulk of its
attention to Una's dwarf.) Any suggestions?
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David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
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