List ---
The responses to this have been delightful. I'm not up on my Arthurian lore and I'm not in a position to pursue the question of precedents for triple inheritance very far. Does the back-story of Redcrosse / St. George present any parallels? Spenser worked into the George legend some features of the Perceval / Parsifal romances, but I don't know in what form(s) that story came down to him. Was Perceval, the clownish young man, typically a foundling? By nurture he is a holy innocent, and by nature he aspires to glorious knightly deeds. As I recall (vaguely), in Chretien's and Wolfram's accounts, P's preparation for a hero's career comes from several reclusive figures; in Spenser's adaptation, Una's ewigweiblichkeit surpasses whatever mentoring Redcrosse received before coming to Gloriana's court.
Cheers, Jon Quitslund
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: anne prescott <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Dear list: I have a friend, Manny Schonhorn, an 18th c. scholar, who
> asked me what I thought of Spenser's Arthur's birth/parentage, about
> which he has been thinking. Right after being removed from his
> biological father, writes Manny to me in an e-mail, he is delivered
> to Old Timon in the Wales valley, and then receives his moral
> education from Merlin. That's an intriguing melange of Briton and
> faerie right there, which of course turns up elsewhere. "My hunch is
> in the triple paternal inheritance. It's unusual. Oedipus and Moses,
> easily coming to mind, have single mentors after their abandoment.
> The only figure that I am reminded of is Theseus--see Dryden-Duke's
> *Plutarch's Lives*, my 1703 text, I, 3-6. The triplet is strangely
> significant, for it structures the plot and design of much of the
> English narratives that follow. I find it in Crusoe's Friday,
> Fielding's Andrews and JHones, Sterne's Tristam. And, not too
> surprisingly, but perhaps not for many convincingly, I can argue for
> it in Clarissa and Burney's heroines too. (Dorothy's three fellow
> travelers on their way to Oz are NOT part of my problem!!) Spenser's
> Arthur's triple inheritance is not in folk literature as far as I can
> tell. It does not appear in Thompson's *Motif-index of Folk
> Literature*. Heroes of folk and myth are usually bastards or
> abandoned, and of course have foster-fathers, adopted fathers. But
> three? Odd. Spenser's creation? Does anyone know?
> Any thoughts for me to pass along? Anne P.
|