All ---
Many posts of interest, lately, on the good old subject of faeries. Anne is right as rain (yes it's
raining now all around Seattle) with her comment on the 'utter absence from Spenser of ... fairy
theory.' Yes, but one can infer, between the lines as it were, a good deal of demon theory, and I
think it provides a basis for thinking about faeries. (I like Gordon Teskey's observation that FQ
is most of all 'about thinking.') Back when I wrote about Platonism for the Spenser
Encyclopedia, I opined at the end that Spenser was especially interested in the order of reality
that Plato had termed 'daimonic,' and I still believe that many figures in FQ are, very much like
Eros according to Socrates and Diotima, daimonic, mediatory between humanity and the divine.
I've elaborated on this theme at several points in 'Spenser's Supreme Fiction,' and would be
interested to know if readers find my references to the Symposium and the tradition of
commentary on that text either a) helpful in this connection or b) all too confusing.
I don't think I'd go so far as to say that the fays as a race, according to Spenser, are good
demons, as their kind was understood by Plato's interpreters, but it's possible. Louis Le Roy's
commentary, accompanying his translation, 'Le Sympose de Platon,' traces daimones back to
Hesiod, according to whom there are four kinds of ensouled creatures: gods, daemons, heroes,
and men. This understanding of Hesiod probably comes from Plato's 'Cratylus,' 398B-C, where
good men who become daemons after death are termed 'chryso genous,' of golden race, and
'hero' is derived from 'eros.' Maybe Spenser read the Cratylus in Plato's 'Opera' entire, either
Ficino's or Serranus' version, but maybe he just took Le Roy's 'Sympose' to bed with him: Le
Roy was the F. M. Cornford of his day.
Jon Quitslund (emeritus, Geo. Washington U.)
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