To get this week’s conversation rolling, I wonder if we might return to Katherine Eggert’s comment, “In Book 2, the question is, ‘what kind of a creature is that?’" I wonder to what extent Book 3’s and Spenser’s construction of chastity relies on the ability to answer this question? Does asking what is Guyon, instead of or alongside who is Guyon, provide any new insights into Britomart’s encounter with Merlin’s mirror?
Somewhat relatedly, I’ve always been struck by Glauce’s worry that Britomart’s desire might be similar to Ovid’s Myrrha and Pasiphae:
Not so th'Arabian Myrrhe did set her mind;
Nor so did Biblis spend her pining hart,
But lou'd their natiue flesh against all kind,
And to their purpose vsed wicked art:
Yet playd Pasiphaë a more monstrous part,
That lou'd a Bull, and learnd a beast to bee;
Such shamefull lusts who loaths not, which depart
From course of nature and of modestie?
Sweet loue such lewdnes bands from his faire companie.
In _The Reformation of the Subject, Linda Gregerson suggests “Chastity’s exemplary pathway moves between excessive likeness (the incestuous primary family, the narcissistic gaze) and excessive divergence (the outlandish margins of exogamy). Time and again . . . Spenser makes the case that love’s two versions of monstrous trespass are structurally implicit in one another” (70). Glauce is worried about rather extreme forms of transgressive desire—incest, too similar in kind, and bestiality, too different in kind. But I’ve always been interested in Spenser/Glauce’s use of the adjective “Arabian”—a curious (significant?) detail for Spenser to have recalled from reading Ovid.
Dennis
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