I've just finished teaching Book I in a survey of English Renaissance
lit., and if they don't like it they don't dare say so to my face,
perhaps because I assign my own edition--and give each of them a
dollar bill to replace my royalty, which is not just honest but more
to the point is great theater. I distribute--handout and e-mail--a
quickie three-page guide to the Reformation, tell them a few truly
horrific things that were being said against Catholics (one polemical
pamphlet tells how the dead Pope, now a whore, bleeds into a chalice
then used in an infernal mass--boy, does that get their attention) to
show that Spenser wasn't the worst of the lot, remind them of what
Kaske and others (including me) have said about Spenser's
appropriation of some Catholic stuff, and say a word about allegory.
My main contribution in terms of plot and allegory, I think,
is to note that a) Spenser is exploring virtues and not illustrating
them, that b) he is mixing a whole lot of genres and traditions from
Ovidian tree-catalogues to Virgil (read in the MA as allegory of the
wandering soul) to the chic Italians to Bale-like polemic to
pilgrimage allegory as in Erasmus et al. with a dragon fight recalling
Hawes (thanks, Carol Kaske), and that c) [this is one pedagogical
suggestion) the basic structure through the house of Holiness is very
well anticipated and explained by the allegorized parable by St.
Bernard, very well known in Spenser's England, that describes a young
man on a feisty horse named Desire or Will who gets off the path into
Error, then falls into Pride, then into Despair, and then goes to a
sort of hospital to get better. Identical to Spenser--but in the
original (and in it's later versions by Jean Cartigny and Olivier de
la Marche as trans. Stephen Batman) he die, whereas in Spenser he has
to fight the dragon and then go back to work. Now, Batman's version
has lots and lots of illustrations, so I photocopy them and hand them
out, showing Will the Horse and the knight dressed in Pauline armor.
No Una, but there is a female Memory a nice Reason the Palmer. I also
hand out copies of Durer's pilgrim knight as well as Peacham's
pictures, based on Spenser, of Archimago and a Philautia that works
with Lucifera. Oh, and a Wither showing that "all flesh is grass," as
in being poured out on it.
The stuff from Bat(e)man is in an essay I did, but if anyone
doesn't have EEBO and wants a TIFF or PDF of some of the pictures,
just ask. I really do think that Bernard's structure as redone, with
pictures, by Renaissance allegorists, works well to explain the basic
plot/pattern up to the dragon fight, and pictures are good to have.
(There's also a very funny little one, from the MA, of some poor monk
staring at the whole armor of Christ and clutching his head, probably
wondering how the Hell he's going ti put it on.)
My other pedagogical suggestion is that although there's no
avoiding the religious background (and my students are ignorant even
when, as they often are even here in NYC, pious--ignorance doesn't
correlate with practice) Book I works fairly well in secular
psychological terms, too--not to believe you are loved and accepted or
at least worth being alive is not uncommon. Many struggle with being
"too solemn sad" and Despair is a version of clinical depression (I
also tell them about the physics of melancholia, which amuses them).
Anne.
On Oct 29, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Germaine Warkentin wrote:
> The question really is, "where does the 'plot' LIE?" It's hard to
> adapt to the fact that the plot *is* in the "description." They need
> contemporary comparisons to help them. I don't know if you get BBC
> America where you are, but I enjoy their techno-thrillers, like for
> example "Spooks" -- known in the US as MI5. Anybody who watches it
> gets almost more action than they can cope with, but what fascinates
> me is the way Spooks turns the visual scene of London into an aspect
> of the plot: dark, mordant, incredibly urban and modern. Of course
> those of you versed in the repertoire of current noir movies and
> digital games will have better examples. One of my English relatives
> was stunned and shocked to learn of my fascination with Spooks!
> Elderly lady professors are supposed to prefer Jane Austen (I like
> her too). Speaking of visuals that tell the story, has anybody here
> seen "The Duchess"? I'm interested in it because of course the
> Duchess in question is a lineal descendant of the Sidneys. But that
> very high-end chick flick is expert at creating an aspect of plot
> out of costumes, rural vistas, etc. Germaine.
>
> --
> ***********************************************************************
> Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus)
> VC 205, Victoria College (University of Toronto),
> 73 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA
> [log in to unmask]
>
> “The primary rule of intellectual life: when puzzled, it never hurts
> to read the primary documents” (Stephen Jay Gould)
> ***********************************************************************
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