I have always believed that the passage means all this and more. But part
of the reason for the doubt, if Spenser is as funny as I think he is, would
be that Arthur himself, dreaming of bliss, could very well be the one who
pressed that grass . . .
D
At 12:48 PM 7/18/2002 -0700, you 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
> >
David Lee Miller
Department of English 543 Boonesboro Avenue
University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40508-1953
Lexington, KY 40506-0027
(859) 257-6965 (859) 252-3680
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