Just as a ps: yes, "wonder" may well be the point (see the work of my
colleague, Peter Platt--and that of Jim Biester). Morally speaking, I'm
not sure if dreams really count. As Bill Clinton might say, it isn't
really sex. Of course RCK does get upset over *his* dream, but that's part
of his problem. Two perhaps frivolous thoughts: the same ambiguity (just
what did happen?) applies to the real Elizabeth and the real Leicester--I
go for heavy petting, myself, whatever the movie says--to the fascination
of my students. And if "all flesh is grass" does pressed grass mean
pressed flesh? Anne.
On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Genevieve Guenther wrote:
> OK, folks, perhaps I should plead a terminal case of over-intertexuality,
> or perhaps I should just admit to an extremely blurry bookshelf in my
> Spenser memory-room, but in any case, what I had in my head was in fact
> Bert Hamilton paraphrasing the Lewis passage that David forwarded on to
> the list. Here's the quotation, which occurs in the note to 1.9.14:
>
> "The double obscurity of the *concubitus* is commented on by Lewis (1966)
> 158-9: either the experience was a dream or it took place; either the
> fairy rose with her virginity intact or she did not."
>
> What this paraphrase captures so brilliantly, I think (and with such pith,
> which is what I was looking for) is the way that Lewis emphasizes the
> *doubt* that this episode inspires in the reader. As far as I'm concerned
> it's a particular kind of doubt, first cultivated by Spenserian aesthetics
> and later codified by Decartes, in which the character, or even the very
> ontological status, of the images that visit our minds is constantly
> questioned or left unresolved, exactly so that we may develop the proper,
> or most effective, psychological attitude to the passions that motivate
> our behavior. That is to say, if Arthurian heroic behavior (or Elizabethan
> imperial politics) is inspired by a cathexis on certain transcendant (or
> cultural) ideals, a cathexis whose phenomonology is certainly erotic, it
> is also maintained by a constancy, a "cast mind," that requires not only
> the deferment of erotic fulfilment but a containment of erotic energies.
> This containment involves the abjection of a feminine other who is yet
> necessary to male self-definition (as Harry Berger reads the relationship
> between Guyon and Acrasia), but it also seems to me that the poem thinks
> it involves (and I"m not sure this is the right formulation) a stance
> towards one's inner life that will at once cultivate the vision of
> "transcendant" images and enable commentary on and control over their
> effects. And perhaps that's why Spenser tries to cultivate doubt here --
> if you have doubt about the things that move you, you can't dismiss the
> power of the imaginative experience, but you can't give yourself over to
> erotic absorbtion either. Now, if this were true, it would be an effect of
> Spenserian aesthetics, of their ability (epitomized, for one, in the fairy
> queen's visit to Arthur) to inspire *wonder*, which Puttenham insists is
> the figure of paradox, next of kin to aporia, made when the author makes
> "doubt of things when by a plaine manner of speech wee might affirme or
> deny him." Indeed, I think the new critics were quite right to seize upon
> the unresolvable suspension of opposites as the goal of many Renaissance
> aesthetic strategies, but it also seems to me that Spenser would have
> thought of wonder as an *ethical* stance -- as something that created a
> subject position that would allow for ideologically-minded action -- not
> as something without use that remained within the frame of his text to no
> end.
>
> Anyhow -- perhaps you can all see why I was looking for pith! Thanks to
> everyone who addressed the question, and thanks to the list for helping me
> begin to work this through...
>
> Genevieve
>
> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, J.B. Lethbridge wrote:
>
> > The passage in question is in Lewis: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance
> > Literature, 158-159. Hamilton's report in FQ first ed. ad loc, to which
> > you seem to refer, is perhaps a little misleading?
> >
> > J.B. Lethbridge
> > Tübingen University
> >
>
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