The Augustinian Epic, Petrarch to Milton

Afterword: Augustinian Epic in Romance Epic—Rejections on Spenser’s Faerie Queene

Afterword Augustinian Epic in Romance Epic—Re›ections on Spenser’s Faerie Queene =< For some readers, possibly, the rhetoric of my argument in chapter 6, especially the ‹nal section’s characterization of Milton’s answer to what could only be, for him, an unacceptable binary opposition in the Augustinian epic between being a prisoner to lust and living a life of contemplative celibacy, will imply a picture of the poet that has of late been much decried by those critics who lament that it is the prevailing one: a Milton who is supremely con‹dent in the tenets of his faith, in his self-knowledge and understanding of human nature, in the aims and art of his epic masterpiece . Yet to observe that Milton evinces, in Paradise Lost, “far more con‹dence than Petrarch that his epic is doing God’s work” is not, after all, to claim so very much, given Petrarch’s skyscraping anxieties.1 I do hope that I have demonstrated in this study that Milton was working as deeply as he was broadly within a tradition that includes both Neo-Latin and vernacular exemplars: that he adapted certain features and adopted certain strategies of the allegorical and biblical epics that he knew, and that by crafting a ‹gural link between the ideal relation of husband and wife (as he conceived it) and that of poet and reader, he imagined an alternative to the stark logic of the “doctrine of the two Venuses” and yielded a new apology for the vocation of Christian poet. Thus our alternate course through the literary 183 history of Renaissance Christian epic illuminated some aspects of Milton’s poem that we otherwise neglect or, more typically the case, that we attend to but less ably interpret when their precedents are mainly sought in Spenser’s Faerie Queene or in Vergil’s Aeneid directly. The same I hold true of our understanding of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata when its primary points of reference are Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso or the Aeneid without its allegorical dressing. Even so, I will be the ‹rst to concede that there are good reasons for the comparatively more intensive study that scholars have given to the vernacular romance epics. These much vaster poems not only re›ect but interrogate and critique many more facets of their cultural milieu, and speak to us across the centuries on several more levels, than do the Latin works discussed in this book. And they do so not only because they speak in living modern languages rather than in a “dead” classical one. Petrarch’s Africa, the Christiads by Vida and Ross, and other normally neglected Latin works do merit and will reward more critical attention for their own sake; but even if such attention originally should be motivated, as mine was here, by a curiosity about the intertextual commerce between the Latin and vernacular traditions, we in the ‹eld of Renaissance studies stand to gain by whatever more light can be shed on both traditions, because in at least some respects, they are not different traditions but one. We might anticipate, therefore, future studies of epic poetry that explore more systematically than I have done here (in my analysis of Ross’s Christiad in chap. 5) the in›uence of vernacular epics on Latin ones, rather than, as has so far been the rule, the other way around. Here, however, there is opportunity to take up the related question of how my analyses of Augustinian epics might supply new terms for characterizing both the differences and the relations between their kind and romance epic. For this purpose, it is only ‹tting that I return to the poem that was most conspicuously passed over in my alternative history of the epic, The Faerie Queene. Though I would not claim, as I have of Paradise Lost, that The Faerie Queene was written both within and against the Augustinian epic tradition, it has nevertheless been long established that Spenser’s allegorical method owes much to Tasso’s example in Gerusalemme liberata, and important studies by Patrick Cheney, John Watkins, and others have greatly enhanced our understanding of Vergil’s and the allegorized Aeneid’s place in Spenser’s imagination.2 In many episodes where it is obvious, The Faerie Queene at once playfully and seriously (or, to reapply Harry Berger’s words, in ways to be “taken seriously as the augustinian epic, petrarch to milton 184 < play” [1988, 60]) evokes the themes and structures of the allegorical epic and incorporates its imagery—albeit with widely varying purposes, attending its romance form and Spenser’s unique psychological, moral, and theological vision. Having here discussed the allegorized Aeneid and Gerusalemme liberata as Augustinian epics, I am now in a position to revisit The Faerie Queene and to perceive afresh some dimensions of its “Vergilianism” and its depiction of the Christian warrior/wayfarer. When we consider, for example, the structural design of The Faerie Queene, we may be led to reevaluate the nature of its “un‹nished state” in a manner that modi‹es somewhat Michael Murrin’s keen and well-known statement on the issue. Murrin af‹rms that “no allegorical tale ever really ends,” and he dismisses the question of whether The Faerie Queene is a fragment or a ‹nished work. No allegorical poem was ever ‹nished in our sense of the term; and, therefore, it was quite appropriate that so many medieval and Renaissance poets should try to write immensely long poems, beyond human ability to complete. They did not absolutely need to ‹nish them. Their plots were made up of episodes, but the plots themselves functioned in the manner of an episode: they led on to something else. An allegorical tale resembles a maze of separate rooms through which the critic picks his way, only to discover that the maze itself is part of a larger complex, which in turn is a maze. (1969, 101)3 This characterization seems to apply best to books 2–6 of The Faerie Queene, not to book 1, where we could well argue that Spenser does ‹nish his allegory—indeed, that “the Legende of the Knight of the Red Crosse, or of Holinesse” contains the beginning and end of the whole poem, not just as we have it in its present length, but however much more of it Spenser might have written had he lived longer. Redcrosse, of course, is Spenser’s version of Aeneas as Everyman: as Lawrence Rhu puts it, Spenser “begins Book 1 proper with his own arma virumque: ‘A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, / Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde’” (1994, 105). Like every spiritual pilgrim, his physical appetites, his pride and bouts of wavering faith, get him into trouble, until at last, through the grace of God, he is brought to heavenly contemplation and his faith is reforti‹ed, enabling him to ful‹ll his divine calling by defeating the last of his ›eshly weaknesses. Afterword 185 = For Redcrosse, the Turnus-like ‹gure is a dragon that symbolizes the beast of Revelation, whose slaying in canto 11 therefore alludes to Christ’s Second Coming and ‹nal victory over Satan, besides representing the personal salvation of Redcrosse as Everyman. Truly, then, this event must mark the end—the conclusion and the divine purpose—of the poem, of human life, of all human history. Along the way toward this end, moreover, Spenser periodically invites us to associate the legend of book 1 with Augustinian epic. Like Scipio and Goffredo, for example, Redcrosse is given the bene‹t of a Scipionic dream just before his decisive battle: he is delivered into the care of “an aged holy man” named “heavenly Contemplation” (1.10.46.5, 8),4 who takes him up “the highest Mount” (1.10.53.1) to view the “new Hierusalem” (1.10.57.1). There he is reminded of his duty to the earthly city Cleopolis, and he learns of his future fate as “Saint George of mery England,” spending eternity “emongst those [other] Saints” in the heavenly city (1.10.61.6, 9). Also like Scipio and Goffredo, Redcrosse, when he hears this prophecy, yearns to join the heavenly ranks at once. O let me not (quoth he) then turne againe Backe to the world, whose ioyes so fruitlesse are; But let me here for aye in peace remaine, Or streight way on that last long voyage fare, That nothing may my present hope empare. (1.10.63.1–5) As we know by now to expect, Contemplation gives Redcrosse the requisite , familiar lecture at this point—directing him on to the performance of his martial obligation and achievement of earthly glory and instructing him to await his time for translation to the celestial spheres. Once he kills the dragon, Redcrosse is ripe for apotheosis, and this is of course symbolized by his betrothal to Una—at which there was heard “an heavenly noise” that sounded “through all the Pallace pleasantly, / Like as it had bene many an Angels voice, / Singing before th’eternall maiesty” (1.12.39.1–4)—just as Aeneas’s readiness for heaven was signaled by his marriage to Lavinia in Vegio’s Supplement. But this is not the allegory of Augustinian epic tradition; it is allegorical romance. Redcrosse returns to Cleopolis because he owes more service to the Faerie Queene. To say that the poem is ‹nished when Redcrosse slays the dragon is true only in the sense that Spenser has sped us through Everyman’s story, allowing us to witness the highlights and to glimpse the ending. The images of Redcrosse the augustinian epic, petrarch to milton 186 < in the House of Pride, in the arms of Duessa, in the dungeon of Orgoglio, and in the cave of Despair portray the soul in its direst states, while the killing of the dragon represents his attainment of holiness, the ultimate, completing virtue that marks the end of the pilgrim’s progress. The Faerie Queene continues past book 1 because we have to go back to ‹ll in all the gaps that we missed in our ‹rst “sneak overview.” For such endless work, Spenser utilizes not one hero but several, not one Aeneas or Redcrosse to represent the Christian warrior/wayfarer but (after Tasso) many errant knights to anatomize each learning experience at every stage of the good man’s life. And in romance, these stages are not in any coherent, let alone necessary, order. So, for instance, when Arthur is delayed in his attempt to rescue Redcrosse by Ignaro’s inability to direct him to the captive knight’s cell in Orgoglio’s dungeon, he is at ‹rst “displeased” and then grows angry; but once he “ghest [Ignaro’s] nature by his countenance,” Arthur “calmd his wrath with goodly temperance” (1.8.33.3, 34.4–5). We might ask ourselves at this point: What is “goodly temperance”? How does one de‹ne it, possess it, and practice it? Sir Guyon will seek answers to these questions in book 2. Similarly, questions about what comprises chastity are raised not only by the narrator’s praise of Una’s “chast person” (1.3.9.3) and the ever-childbearing Charissa, who is “chast in worke and will” (1.10.30.6), but by the ‹gure of Contemplation, who “pyn’d his ›esh, to keepe his body low and chast” (1.10.48.7). It seems we are being called upon to conceive of this virtue more deeply than as mere sexual abstinence or spousal loyalty, but how so? We will pick up this question in book 3 with the legend of Britomartis . And when, moreover, we read that Arthur and Redcrosse bind themselves to each other in “fast friendship” (1.9.18.7), that Redcrosse means to exercise “iustice” in avenging Sir Terwin’s suicide (1.9.37.8), and that a group of knights are behaving with “fair courtesie” (1.4.15.4), we have the subjects of our inquiries in books 4–6. Yet, with every step, the questions multiply. Spenser’s original plan for twenty-four total books would have ›eshed out much more of this life of the Romance Everyman, but there would always be many more mazeswithin -mazes still to be explored. Consequently, we do not look in any of the later books for the kind of major breakthrough or ‹nal victory that Redcrosse enjoys, nor do we even expect as much clarity in the outcome of the other knights’ legends, because theirs are lesser stages of progress tenuously won in the unpredictable world of Faerie. We follow them on their journeys to ambiguous revelations of what temperance is, what friendship Afterword 187 = is, what courtesy is, and all the while, we remain (like them) wrapped in error’s train, until we reach the end of the poem and Redcrosse kills the dragon.5 As we would expect, then, Spenser relies on our acquaintance with the allegory of Augustinian epic as much as he does our acquaintance with the conventions of pastoral poetry, the Petrarchan sonnet, and other modes and genres: we have a better sense of what he is up to in any given episode when we perceive the various ways that he is playing off such conventions. But just as I hope was true of my analyses of other works in the preceding chapters, it is in the interpretation of the details of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, rather than its overall design, that this reading process is the most instructive and entertaining. There is no better illustration than the opening stanzas of book 1, which take Redcrosse up to his discovery of the den of Errour. As intensely studied as these stanzas are, their identi‹cation of Redcrosse as a quasi-Aeneas ‹gure means rather more than has yet been suggested.6 To begin with, when we meet Redcrosse, he is at the same stage of development that Aeneas is at when he enters the allegorized Carthage and sees Dido: youth. Redcrosse has the necessary equipment and piety, like Aeneas, but “armes till that time did he neuer wield” (1.1.1.5).7 Redcrosse lacks the workplace experience needed to avoid mistakes; his strength and faith are untested. But Spenser is also aware that we know what attends youth. It is the age that delights in love and is confused by passion, when the mind is compelled by the perturbations of lust to commit lascivious acts. In youth, in Carthage, Aeneas abandons himself to lust, and therefore that must be where Redcrosse is headed—to a meeting with Dido in the Carthaginian cave. There are suf‹cient signs pointing him and us in that direction. He is riding with a “louely Ladie” (4.1); they are caught in “an hideous storme of raine” (6.6); they arrive at “a hollow caue, / Amid the thickest woods” (11.6–7). There are, however, as many signs to steer Redcrosse away from this course. His companion Una is as “pure an innocent” as the lamb she leads (5.1); the “blustring storme is ouerblowne” before they discover the cave, eliminating their need for its shelter (10.2); and once they do ‹nd it, Una and her attendant dwarf recognize the danger and warn Redcrosse to avoid the place (13.3). But he goes in anyway. Why? Our narrator explains that Redcrosse is “full of greedy hardiment” (14.1); hence, The youthful knight could not for ought be staide, But forth vnto the darksome hole he went, the augustinian epic, petrarch to milton 188 < And looked in: his glistring armor made A litle glooming light, much like a shade, By which he saw the vgly monster plaine, Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide, But th’other halfe did womans shape retaine, Most lothsom, ‹lthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine. (14.2–9) In Watkins’s analysis (1995, 93–102), the ‹rst Dido ‹gure of The Faerie Queene makes her appearance in the form of Duessa in the second canto of book 1. But in a sense, Duessa is the third Dido whom we meet, or rather, she is the third rei‹cation of Redcrosse’s desire for a Dido. Errour is the ‹rst. (The second is the demonic, loose-loving Una, whom Archimago conjures up to disturb—we should also say, to answer—Redcrosse’s dreams.) We are told that our “youthful knight” is “full of greedy hardiment ”—hardiment meaning “courage, boldness,” as Roche glosses it in his 1978 edition. But greedy denotes appetite, desire, a boldness that is hungry for something, and hardiment has sexual connotations, not only for the reason that is obvious and puerile. Chaucer has Pandarus use the word hardiment when he is urging Troilus to run away with Criseyde—to “ravisshe hire,” as Pandarus phrases it: “Artow in Troie,” he asks, “and hast not hardyment / To take a womman which that loveth the[e], / And wolde hireselven ben of thyn assent?”8 Redcrosse is so eager to enter that “darksome hole” (more puerile sexual innuendo, but this is the stage of youth, remember ) because he is brimming over with lust, and there is a side of him that cannot wait for what he thinks should be waiting for him there: his ‹rst Dido experience. Una, being the character that she is, could never be tempted to participate in such a sin, and in fact there is another side of Redcrosse that does not want her to, because that part of him is “Right faithfull true” (2.7). But his virtue is now seriously compromised, such that his “glistring armor” casts only “A litle glooming light,” so faint it is “much like a shade,” which does not sound like any light at all but is yet just the right measure of his virtue’s light to enable him to see plainly “the vgly monster” summoned up by his desire. It is a monster that is “Halfe like a serpent,” like the serpent that he must kill at the end of his journey, because this serpent is really part of that one and anticipates it by synecdoche. “But th’other halfe” that Redcrosse sees “did womans shape retaine,” a shape retained from the forma pulcherrima virgo, the whole and wholly beautiful woman who took shape in Redcrosse’s imagining, but who now, in his confusion, his shame, and Afterword 189 = his frustrated sexual desire, is “Most lothsom, ‹lthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.” She is like a horrible monster, mostly, and a little like a proud lady who scorns the sighs of the unrequited lover. His Dido has turned out to be an aloof Laura, and part of him did not want that, so she is ugly in his eyes. Landino’s allegorical reading of the Aeneid best helps us to understand why the monster that Redcrosse discovers in Errour’s den is not strictly a lust monster but Everyerror, breeding “A thousand young ones, which she dayly fed / Sucking vpon her poisonous dugs” (15.5–6). In Landino’s scheme of the good man’s development (discussed in chap. 2 of this study), lust is generalized to represent all the sins intrinsic to a life devoted to earthly activity rather than heavenly contemplation, such that Dido’s lust, by synecdoche, encapsulates Aeneas’s every error. This aspect of Redcrosse ’s experience in the cave, I argue, has already been anticipated in Spenser’s excursus on the different kinds of trees that attract the wanderers’ admiration as they “beguile the way” through the wood in stanzas 8–9. In this passage, Redcrosse and Una wonder at The sayling Pine, the Ceder proud and tall, The vine-prop Elme, the Poplar neuer dry, The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all, The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall. The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still, The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours, The Eugh obedient to the benders will, The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill, The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill, The fruitful Oliue, and the Platane round, The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound. Spenser’s sources of inspiration for this passage are many, we know. They include Orpheus’s forest in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dante’s wood at the opening of the Inferno, the catalog of trees in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles, and the enchanted woods in Huon of Bordeaux and Gerusalemme liberata. The wood deludes and confuses the mind; it is a place deprived of God’s light, and our travelers’ beguilement in its arboreal variety is immethe augustinian epic, petrarch to milton 190 < diately recognized as an illustration of their not seeing the forest of spiritual danger for the trees. However, in a line of inheritance that stretches from Homer’s Circe and Vergil’s Polydorus through Dante and Ariosto to Tasso, these lines already invite us to recognize the speci‹c cupidity that is in our young knight’s heart and to comprehend its ‹gurative relation to every other form of sin to be enumerated in The Faerie Queene.9 In the Orlando Furioso, as Ruggiero learns from the hapless Astolfo, the witch Alcina is in the business of snaring new lovers and turning her former ones into trees: altri in abete, altri in oliva, altri in palma, altri in cedro, altri secondo che vedi me su questa verde riva. (Ariosto 1974, 6.51.4–6) [one into a ‹r, another to an olive, another to a palm, another to a cedar, another as you see me on this verdant bank.] In the role of spokesman for Alcina’s victims, Astolfo appropriately enough is a myrtle, the tree of Venus. He informs Ruggiero as well that, like Homer’s Circe, Alcina sometimes turns her former paramours into wild beasts, welling springs, or whatever “best pleases that proud fairy” (altri in liquido fonte, alcuni in ‹era / come più agrada a quella fata altiera [6.51.7–8]). In canto 1 of The Faerie Queene, Spenser likewise tells us that Errour’s teeming brood is “eachone / Of sundry shapes” (15.6–7), for not only are there a thousand errors, but each error has a thousand forms. Our analysis of the enchanted wood in Gerusalemme liberata, moreover, helps us to recognize the manner in which Tasso followed but inverted Ariosto’s revision of the Polydorus episode from the Aeneid: as Murrin notes (1980, 114–15), Tasso’s is again a wood speci‹cally for “the victims of love,” but instead of being trees themselves, Tancredi and Rinaldo encounter “demonic imitations” of the women they burn for, plus city towers of ›ame that symbolize this burning. For all we know, then, and perhaps we should assume it, each and every one of the trees admired by Redcrosse and Una as they wander through Errour’s wood is a victim of love, a youth lingering (rooted) in a Carthage of the heart by a lust that mirrors Redcrosse’s. In canto 2, after Redcrosse has separated from Una and linked up with Duessa, he will come upon Fradubio—“once a man . . . now a tree” (1.2.33.4)—and will fail to recognize himself in Fradubio’s guilty tale of having abandoned Afterword 191 = his true love for the bewitching Duessa. But this episode only literalizes the condition of our hero in Errour’s wood. There, already, Redcrosse, in his heart, was exchanging Una for Duessa, a Dido who will join him in a cave, toward which he wanders even as he passes many signs of warning.10 The trees comprise a warning, in the ‹rst place, because beyond their immediate association with lust, Redcrosse’s ‹rst failing, is the spiritual sin of despair that will be his last in canto 9. We anticipate his encounter with Despair, in other words, because Dante’s conversion of the Polydorus episode into hell’s realm of suicides also informs our reading of Spenser’s catalog of trees by contributing to its range of allegorical meaning. The scene outside of Despair’s cave in canto 9 will further con‹rm the association : Redcrosse will see there “old stockes and stubs of trees, / Whereon nor fruit, nor leafe was euer seene, / . . . On which had many wretches hanged beene” (34.1–4). Thus we see again that in the part is contained the whole; all of Redcrosse’s earthly error is ‹gured in Dido’s culpa. For Tasso, similarly , the enchanted wood may speci‹cally pertain to the “victims of love,” but the purgation of every sin that is infecting the corporate Everyman— from anger to pride to despair—requires the wood to be felled. If one should object that these signs of warning in the trees are seen by us but not yet by Redcrosse, then there is, in the second place, the sign of the “bloudie Crosse [that] he bore” on his breast and on his shield, “The deare remembrance of his dying Lord” (1.2.1–2)—“who [here I quote 1 Peter 2:24 in the Geneva version] his owne self bare our sinnes in his bodie on the tre, that we being deliuered from sinne, shulde liue in righteousnes.” On this basis, the trees in Errour’s wood not only look ahead to our knight at his lowest point, in canto 9; they also look ahead to the “goodly tree,” the tree of life, that reforti‹es him before his ‹nal battle and victory against the dragon in canto 11. Loaden with fruit and apples rose red, As they in pure vermilion had beene dide, Whereof great vertues ouer all were red: For happie life to all, which thereon fed, And life eke euerlasting did befall. (46.2–6) Redcrosse carries with him the key to this allegory of the trees in Errour’s wood. Hidden within them, there may be Astolfos and Fradubios who are ‹gures for every error of Redcrosse’s to come, but externally there are the augustinian epic, petrarch to milton 192 < “great vertues ouer all” the trees, which may be “red” toward the same “remembrance” that Redcrosse’s red cross is intended to keep always before his sight. If Spenser had written no more of The Faerie Queene after canto 11 of book 1, or if canto 12 described his marriage to Una with nothing to distract us from interpreting it as contemplative man’s attainment of perfection (his soul’s union with Truth and God), then we could call the poem an Augustinian epic.11 But in the middle of the betrothal ceremony in canto 12, Archimago reappears to announce that Redcrosse has already given “sacred pledges” to one Fidessa (27.3). Redcrosse explains to the consternated company that this “Fidessa” was, in fact, the witch Duessa, and Una guesses who this “craftie messenger” is (34.2), so Archimago is discovered and bound and tossed in the dungeon. But the clear point of the episode is that there will be no keeping him there, just as there is no keeping Redcrosse here with Una in the kingdom of Eden. He has a six-year term of service to perform in war “Gainst that proud Paynim king” (18.8). So Redcrosse takes his leave, “Vnto his Faerie Queene backe to returne” (41.8), but the reason he must and the reason that Archimago and other evil types must soon be out of the bag again is not because book 1’s allegorical victory was not all it appeared to be. Spenser is just, himself, returning back again, to pick up questions left unanswered and ‹ll in details left wanting in the narrative of the master plot. “Now strike your sailes ye iolly Mariners,” the narrator sings in the last stanza of book 1 (canto 12), For we be come vnto a quiet rode, Where we must land some of her passengers, And light this wearie vessel of her lode. Here she a while may make her safe abode, Till she repaired haue her tackles spent, And wants supplide. And then againe abroad On the long voyage whereto she is bent: Well may she speede and fairely ‹nish her intent. (42) One reason that we are grateful to Spenser for continuing The Faerie Queene past the point of an Augustinian epic is that it is such a very funny poem, even in these lines. This supertanker of a poem indeed will “speede,” in the sense of “prosper,” quite marvelously in its subsequent pages and Afterword 193 = future fame, but the idea that it might go speeding to some destination, any destination, let alone to the end of its projected conclusion in book 24, is something of a hoot. But again, a part of the joke is that the decisive victory that we expect to mark a poem’s climax just before its conclusion (the vessel ’s presumed “intent”) has been “fairely” ‹nished already in the preceding canto, and the actual “wants” to be “supplide” are the earthly trials and errors and dubious achievements of the poem’s wayfaring Christian warriors during the “long voyage” ahead. Thus Spenser, in an odd way, appropriates the teleology of Aeneas as Everyman, and our study of Augustinian epic helps to foreground this for ready view; but as a work of romance, The Faerie Queene is decidedly of a very different nature. It is, rather, the poetry of Everyerror, the fable of man’s time between youth and holiness, whose Aeneas is allowed to escape Carthage but never to reach Lavinian shores, whose Augustine will always weep for Dido killed by love. the augustinian epic, petrarch to milton 194 < ...