Jim, there's a possible biblical reference in the word
"pourd," though I'm on the road and don't have a Geneva
Bible or a Great Bible available to see if it comes into
Enlish translations before 1590 or what the Greek original
is. 2 Tim 4:6-7 reads (in the in KJV)"For I [Paul] am ready
to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course. I have
kept the faith." Some modern translations render "offered"
as "poured out," picking up the idea of sacrificial
libation. The rest of the passage is clearly relevant to
RCK's situation, since he has given up ("Sat downe to rest
in middest of the race") rather than finishing his "course."
Might be worth checking out, especially given RCK's lapse in
faith with Duessa and his failure to "fight the good fight"
against Orgogio.

Donald Stump

> Re: Redcrosse and Duessa at the FountainI thank those who
> responded to my query about the sexuality involved the
> meeting of Redcrosse and Duessa at the fountain.
>
> I still would like to know, as Roche put it, "who or what
> is 'Pourd out in loosenesse''" but I probably never will.
>
> I will take a look at Shroeder's essay at my first
> opportunity. Thanks for the reference, Anne.
>
> I had not noticed the point Katherine Eggert made, that
> while sexual acts are often referred to in the FQ, the
> only one actually described is that of the satyr and
> Hellenore.
>
> It is curious that Satyrane, the offspring of another act
> of bestiality, would be a faery knight who seems not to be
> essentially different from other faery knights.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Jim Broaddus
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Katherine Eggert
>   To: [log in to unmask]
>   Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 1:43 AM
>   Subject: Re: Redcrosse and Duessa at the Fountain
>
>
>   Even if we could read the physiognomics of what
> Redcrosse is doing with Duessa (or having done to him, or
> doing and then blaming her for having done), wouldn't we
> be more surprised if we found he *were* participating in a
> "a regular [heterosexual, actively male] sexual act"?
> Arguably, the FQ contains no such sexual acts.  Unless you
> count the satyrs and Hellenore -- and that is bestiality.
>
>   Katherine Eggert
>   Associate Professor of English
>   Chair, Department of English
>
>   Department of English
>   University of Colorado
>   226 UCB
>   Boulder, CO  80309-0226
>   tel and Voicemail (303) 492-7382
>   fax (303) 492-8904
>   [log in to unmask]
>
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     From: Harry Berger, Jr.
>     To: [log in to unmask]
>     Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 9:28 AM
>     Subject: Re: Redcrosse and Duessa at the Fountain
>
>
>     -->
>       All in all, would it be better not to try to uncover
> specific  physical activity in the words, but to read them
> in an Alper-ish kind of way as a generalized depiction of
> moral, spiritual, and physical dissolution?
>
>
>     Sure. Always pull back. But not until the last minute.
>
>
>     A heavily alliterated case of acedie/accidia. And the
> verse is really enjoying its punitive moment clobbering
> and hissing at the poor devil, giving him what-for. But at
> the same time it's finding excuses for him, blaming the
> failure of his manly forces on the nymph's waters, blaming
> his looseness on "his looser make." As he so much as says
> much later to Una's dad, "It wasn't my fault." So I'd
> worry less about what, precisely, they were doing (that
> gets into Othello territory) and more about who's being
> held responsible for it.  "Dissolution" is a metaphor
> encouraged by the passage. But it's the wrong metaphor. It
> accedes to the displacement from moral to physical
> debility.
>
>
>     The depiction is not all that generalized. Isn't the
> chief meaning effect produced by the way this passage
> begins with a repetition and echo of Sansloy resting
> "foreby a fountaine" 10 or 11 stanzas earlier? Which
> reminds us that what he's been doing with Duessa is part
> of what he did and is still doing to Una.
>
>
>       Happy Sabbath
>
>
>
>
>       Valued members of the list,
>
>       This is about a page long, so if you don't like
> lengthy postings, delete now.
>
>       Can one tell what, if anything, is going on
> physically with Redcrosse and Duessa in stanza 6 and 7 of
> canto vii?
>
>       The water so chills Redcrosse that it seems unlikely
> he would be able to participate in a regular sexual act.
>
>       After drinking from the fountain,
>
>           His chaunged powres at first them selues not
> felt,
>           Till crudled cold his corage gan assayle,
>           And chearful blood in fayntnes chill did melt,
>       Which like a feuer fit through all his body swelt.
>
>       Vital heat in the form of vital spirits sent from
> the heart (the seat of "corage") effects all bodily acts.
> Erection, observes Helkiah Crooke (_Microcosmographia_,
> 247-48), results from "heate, spirites and winde, which
> fill and distend these hollow bodies [in the penis].
>
>           Yet goodly court he make still to his Dame,
>               Pourd out in loosenesse on the grassy
> ground,
>               Both carelesse of his  health, and of is
> fame:
>
>       "[G]oodly court" does not, of course, necessarily
> indicate a sexual advance, and "Pourd" and "looseness"
> definitely do not indicate a sexual act. If an early
> modern reference is needed, Crooke describes the way seed
> "comes indeed leaping forth, and yet is continued one part
> of it with another as a company of Antickes holding  hand
> in hand, do vault vpon a stage." And, with regard to
> "loosenesse," Crooke says  "in the auoyding of seed the
> legges and the armes are contracted and the whole body
> suffereth a kinde of convulsion" (287).
>
>        Pouring and looseness are, however, evocative of
> Gonorrhea or "running of the reyns." Crooke says the
> emission of seed in gonorrhea "neither hath any
> imagination going before nor pleasure accompanying it,
> neither is it driven out by the strength of Nature, but
> falleth away by reasone of the waterishnes or acrimony of
> the seed, the weaknes of the vessels, their convulsion and
> the inflammation of the neighbour parts: finally, which
> bringeth vpon the Patient an extenuation and consumption
> of the whole body." (287)
>
>       Surely it would be a stretch to understand Redcrosse
> to have contracted a venereal disease, even though he is
> "carelesse of his health, and of his fame" in the company
> of the whore of Babylon.
>
>       All in all, would it be better not to try to uncover
> specific  physical activity in the words, but to read them
> in an Alper-ish kind of way as a generalized depiction of
> moral, spiritual, and physical dissolution?
>
>        In any event, I hope you have found the medical
> lore interesting, even at times amusing.
>
>       Jim Broaddus
>
>
>       emeritus, Indiana State University
>       Route 3 Box 1037
>       Brodhead, KY 40409
>       606-758-8073
>       [log in to unmask]
>
>