I wonder if I can get you to go on to speculate a bit about Milton's use
of Isiris picking up the scattered limbs of Osiris as a vehicle for the
"sad friends of truth" going up and down collecting "her" [Truth's]
pieces while awaiting the return of "her Master"?
Marshall Grossman
Professor
Department of English
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20895
301-405-9651
[log in to unmask]
James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
> Yes, and the logic as to why the lewd Mistress Missa is what she is,
> in Protestant polemic, is because of a kind of reactivation of the
> biblical typology whereby Israelite idolatry is indissociable from the
> prophetic diatribe informed by -- and reacting against -- the temple
> practice of temple prostitutes in the Ancient Near East, where
> religion was fertililty cult(ic).
>
> The pun on pride is essential to the meaning of FQ III.xi.32 (on Leda
> and the swan), which is why I think this text, III.xi.32, in in turn
> essential to the meaning of I.vii.9f ("Puft vp ... grown great through
> arrogant delight" -- or swollen with phallic pride). And AnFQ thought
> -- at the point Lacan was quoted on circumcision-sacrifice as "le
> phallus d'Osiris embaumé" for the virtually entombed Redcrosse -- that
> "his members chast / Scattered on euery mountaine" at I.v.38 (on
> Redcrosse/Sansjoy as a Hippolytus) required glossing with the "member"
> delusively attributed to Britomart at FQ III.i.60. ("The interment of
> Sansjoy, if our interpretation of the House of Pride episode is
> correct [reading it as a tour through an idolatrous church], might be
> described as an ironic deposition of the body of Christ. Duessa's
> disposal of Redcrosse in the Orgoglio episode inviates a similar
> interpretation, since Arthur's lifting of Redcrosse's 'pined corse'
> (I.viii.40) decidedly suggests a pictorial 'quotation' from the
> deposition subject [in church art]"). Thus one arrives at the
> equation of Una's ministrations to Redcrosse -- or of Duessa's to
> Sansjoy -- with those of Isis in behalf of the fallen and dis-membered
> Osiris.
>
> Also: "The suggestion is that pride is always looking for an
> occasion; after the Fall it is something of an independent
> reflex...Orgoglio is the tumescence of the proud man to the exclusion
> of any other characterization." ("The proud man becomes human Pride,
> and the man himself is correspondingly emasculated.") Perhaps it
> helps to remember that at the time Redcrosse succumbs to Orgoglio Sir
> Satyrane (a knight of maidenhead who bears a satyr-headed shield at
> III.vii.30f) is struggling with Una's would-be rapist Sansloi, when
> "that proud Sarazin [= Sansloi] ... gan reuiue the memory / Of his
> lewd lusts, and late attempted sin" (I.vi.46), just before canto vii
> begins. (The two episodes are narratively aligned again, at I.vii.20,
> by the intervention of the go-between dwarf.)
>
> I suppose there are practical objections to testing the matter of the
> preventative application of erectile dysfunction antidotes to jetlag
> on humans in the air rather than hamsters. One "Airplane" is enough.
>
> On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 16:43:01 -0400
> anne prescott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I have nothing to add so wide-ranging and erudite a comment, but I'll
>> just add, if with some repetition, that I myself find Schroeder's
>> essay on Orgoglio as a phallus quite convincing--and his evidence
>> about classical and early modern hydraulic theories about
>> earthquakes and erections not a little funny, although not as funny
>> as recent research showing that hamsters don't get jetlag if fed
>> Viagra. The phallicism involved plays with both the Elizabethan pun
>> on sexual swelling as "pride" but also on sexual swelling as
>> "will"--which in turn recalls the tradition of a rider's horse as
>> his "will" in more than one sense (an allegory I'm convinced that
>> Spenser had read because it's structured like Book I has a knight
>> who rides a horse named "Will"). The theological implications are
>> significant because the temptation to horse around with Catholicism
>> and the Mass was also sexualized in Protestant polemic--as see
>> Douglas Waters on "Mistress Missa" and some unspeakably obscene and
>> sexualized images of the Pope and the Mass. To be poured out in
>> looseness on the grassy ground with Duessa is one way of indicating
>> a loose and prideful willingness to ignore the Gospel. I don't think
>> this is to "freudianize" the giant-- or at least not any more than
>> was done at the time. Lust is one traditional way to symbolize
>> Luciferian pride. St. Augustine would have no trouble in making a
>> connection. As Jim says, sexual lust (not the "kindly flame" of
>> natural sexual desire, but a self-indulgent "infected will" in the
>> old punning sense) and spiritual pride were not then so separate as
>> they might appear now. And I say that as one with profound doubts
>> about Freud. Anne Prescott.
>>
>> On Jun 3, 2007, at 3:00 PM, James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
>>
>>> An off-list correspondent wanted to know why Orgoglio had to be
>>> freudianized
>>> at all (and thus trivialized--since he represents a "Luciferian
>>> pride" and
>>> not a libidinous lust), and, also, why Dante's giants (esp.
>>> Antaeus) had to be
>>> phallicized or discussed in these terms at all.
>>>
>>> Respondeo:
>>>
>>> I don't think of Orgoglio as exclusively "phallic pride," quite the
>>> contrary, I regard the phallic giants as a symbol of quite
>>> different kinds
>>> of spiritual fault. Thus Don Quixote (at Pt. 2, ch. 8), in explaining
>>> knight errantry, maintains that "in confronting giants, it is the
>>> sin of
>>> pride we slay" (--as well as envidia, ira, gula, lujuria and
>>> peroza!) -- presumably because pride is puffed up. The expansion
>>> of the list, of course, opens the way to the kind of boisterous
>>> giant met in Orlando's friend Morgante in Pulci and in Gargantua
>>> and Pantagruel in Rabelais.
>>>
>>> In Dante (to get back to pride in the Inferno) the arrogance of
>>> Fillipo Argenti, the inveterate caste pride of the contumacious
>>> grand seigneur Farinata, the injured
>>> vanity of suicidal Piero della Vigna, the rebellious defiance of
>>> Capaneus, the blasphemous contempt of Vanni Fucci, the senseless
>>> grandosity and foolish ignorance
>>> of the giants, and Lucifer's original self-exaltedness form a chain
>>> of desperate
>>> and despairing sinners who are anything but luxurious in their
>>> sinning (see
>>> Homer to Brecht, 88-91) -- pride has hardened their hearts,
>>> stiffened their
>>> necks, and frozen their fellow feeling.
>>>
>>> As for Orgoglio (and especially in relation to Despair in canto
>>> ix), "The escape from
>>> the joyless House of Pride issues in a vain and shallow optimism,
>>> and the
>>> void left by the rejected trappings of external pride is suddenly
>>> filled by
>>> an overwhelming interior pride. The hero's 'postmortem'
>>> contemplation of his
>>> humiliation by his pride, after its alleviation, is so dismaying
>>> that it
>>> leads to Despair: the humiliation of the earlier episode is
>>> retroactivated,
>>> as it were, upon the withdrawal of Arthur's support." (AnFQ. )
>>>
>>> And: "Almost before we know it the Philistines are upon him
>>> [Redcrosse in FQ
>>> I.vii] (Judges 16:20) and the knight has disappeared into Orogoglio's
>>> dungeon. In effect Orgoglio replaces Redcrosse, becoming Duessa's new
>>> master. And yet Redcrosse survives at the bottom of the palace,
>>> Orgoglio's
>>> 'eternall bondslaue' (I.viii.14). Interpreting the allegory, we may
>>> say that beneath any haughty exeterior there is the fearful victim
>>> of a humiliation. He is kept by Ignaro, of
>>> course, since we do not usually acknowledge the poor creature's
>>> existence."
>>> Thus the same page of AnFQ that quotes Lacan on the phallus also
>>> quotes Augustine
>>> on the loftiness that debases, and the lowliness that exalts.
>>>
>>> If Orgoglio gets or possesses Duessa, and if in this kind of
>>> projective
>>> allegory he is an aspect of Redcrosse, then Orgoglio's sudden
>>> insurgence and
>>> sudden 'dejection' (as it were), are aspects of Redcrosse too--his
>>> body
>>> included. Thus the context for the argument about Orgoglio's
>>> phallic insurgence and
>>> deflation is Redcrosse's being seduced in a dissolute state, and
>>> committing idolatry
>>> with Duessa, which is adultery biblically speaking (a form of
>>> political-relgious promiscuity, according to the OT prophets) under
>>> every green tree. --Plus the feeling that Spenser sexualizes
>>> Redcrosse's experience from the outset, with his nearly wet-dream
>>> of Una as lasciviously Duessan. The argument also depends on the
>>> partial analogy of the events in cantos vii-viii of Book I with
>>> those in the same cantos of Book IV. [E.g., "a captive victim
>>> (Redcrosse, Amyas), a relentless giant pagan (Orgoglio, Corflambo);
>>> a faithful companion who sues for Arthur's aid (Una, Placidas); a
>>> jailor who
>>> is himself in a kind of bondage (Ignaro with 'the keyes of every
>>> door'; Paeana's captive dwarf with 'the keyes of every prison door'
>>> [I.viii.30, IV.viii.54]), and the unveiling of Arthur's shield
>>> (I.viii.19-21, IV.viii.42)."]
>>>
>>> Antaeus in Dante -- to explain that giant's particular eligibility
>>> re damnable pride
>>> -- is (implicitly) convicted of (a foolish) vanity by his response
>>> to the
>>> artfully flattering words -- like those of the seducer Jason --
>>> that Virgil uses to
>>> obtain the two pilgrims' conveyance to the bottom of hell.
>>>
>>> As for Dante's immobilized giants generally, it is their position
>>> in hell's
>>> body that determines their own bodily character. "The giants
>>> themselves seem
>>> to sum up a vast range of doby imagery found throughout the
>>> Inferno. The
>>> lustful are borne on the winds that are the sighs with which they
>>> ventilated
>>> their passions. The gluttons lie under a sudden deluge representing
>>> the flow
>>> of matter they guzzled and relased in life. Out of such
>>> observations emerges
>>> the image of Hell as a gigantic, shadowy creature suffering the
>>> interior
>>> life of the fallen man. It breathes with the lovers; it is
>>> nourished with
>>> the gluttons; it is irrigated with the polluted river of tears; it is
>>> steeped in the blood of our violence. It ruminates upon the sinners
>>> immersed
>>> in its fluids and canals, and it is half-poisoned on the wastes
>>> that clot
>>> its visceral foul pouches. Finally, though locked by an icy waste
>>> that is
>>> all impasse, it is voided by a cathartic vision of evil." (Homer to
>>> Brecht.)
>>>
>>> Similarly, but à la Jules Verne, rather than Dante: "Isaac Azimov's
>>> The
>>> Fantastic Voyage is presumably titled after a traditional, Odyssean
>>> topos of
>>> allegorical romance, but is concerned with the map-like tracing of
>>> a terrain
>>> that is physiological. The story visits the post-Vesalius and post-
>>> Harvey
>>> topography--the body within--as presently and routinely explored by
>>> probes,
>>> scopes, radiation, and target-specific chemicals. Asimov's
>>> narrative of an
>>> endo-somatic mission assigned to a miniaturized, cell-like spaceship,
>>> coursing through the vital passages of a stricken corpus [the comatose
>>> patient has had a stroke], predictably traces those clinical
>>> interventions
>>> so frequently instrumental in the modern body's preservation or
>>> destruction:
>>> which are co-ordinated--collusively or traitorously--with the
>>> body's own
>>> internal activity at critical sites. A loud noise rocks the ship in
>>> the
>>> channels of the ear, the arterial sailors run short of oxygen in
>>> the lungs,
>>> a [heartless] traitor is discovered on board in the heart, and a
>>> clot has to
>>> be dissolved--and the security problem resolved--in the recesses of
>>> the
>>> brain. Just before the miniaturization period of the mote-like
>>> vessel is due
>>> to end, the ship is flushed through the eye. ... The visit to the
>>> inside of
>>> a stroke victim's prostrate anatomy takes us back to traditional
>>> initiations
>>> into allegorical underworlds and pilgrimages through figurative
>>> landscapes.
>>> And if mutually destructive allelophagy results from the infinite
>>> desire of
>>> bodies to consume eath other, it is logical that a ravnous white
>>> corpuscle
>>> devour the villain cast off from Asimov's innerspaceship. Moreover,
>>> if the
>>> vessel deminiaturizes before it surfaces, each body will annihilate
>>> the
>>> other." ("Allegory De-Veiled")
>>>
>>> Analogously, the medieval and leviathanic hell is likewise
>>> allelophagic, so
>>> at the end of the Inferno the Gospel's Satan that enters Judas
>>> becomes the
>>> Dante's Judas who enters Satan. Our explaining of the giants as
>>> located in
>>> the groin of hell, and as standing out phallically from the
>>> perimeter of
>>> hell's body, and as located near that body's nadir, seems to follow
>>> the
>>> logic of identifying them with the genitals of hell, a nadir whose
>>> presence
>>> is insisted on by the course Dante shortly takes over Satan's own
>>> subthoracic
>>> region and across his hairy flanks. So by leaving behind the reign
>>> (Lat. regnum)
>>> of hell, Dante also leaves behind the devil's reins (the loins,
>>> once the
>>> seat of the passions [from Lat. ren/es, kidney/s]).
>>>
>>> -- Jim N.
>>>
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> James Nohrnberg
>>> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>>> Univ. of Virginia
>>> P.O Box 400121
>>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
>
> [log in to unmask]
> James Nohrnberg
> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
> Univ. of Virginia
> P.O Box 400121
> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
|