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XIII. The Narrative-Technique of the Faerie Queene
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Although to the casual reader, and indeed to some serious critics, the Faerie Queene seems to consist only of an unsystematized accumulation of episodes bound together merely by the rich glamor of Romantic atmosphere, yet there can be no doubt that Spenser had a rather definite theory of narrative art, and that, at least along general lines, he developed his material according to a preconceived plan. He had already showed himself a literary theorist by his experiments in diction and style in the Shepheardes Calender; and the Faerie Queene itself has a certain symmetry in the arrangement of its episodes: in most of the books, a knight and a lady engage upon a quest; the knight falls into sin, usually the antithesis of the particular virtue portrayed in that book; he is saved by a sort of deus ex machina, usually in the person of Arthur; he is taught the virtue that corresponds to his sin; and he proceeds upon his quest and conquers.
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References
Right so it fares with me in this long way
Whose course is often stayed, yet never is astray.1
1 F.Q. VI, xii, 1.
2 See also F. Q. II, iii, 40 et seq. The existence of twelve knights has troubled some critics, for, if the last book were given over to the adventures of the twelfth knight, space would seemingly be lacking for the narration of the antecedent action. Very possibly, however, Spenser would have made room for this material in the last two or three cantos of the final book. He would, perhaps, have brought the twelve knights together at the end of a year of adventures at a second annual feast, and there have narrated in retrospect the events that took place at the first one. In any event, this study is concerned rather with the sources of Spenser's plan, as far as we know it, than with guesses as to his probable method of completion.
3 H. E. Cory, Critics of Spenser, Berkeley, Cal., 1911, p. 115 et seq.
4 E.g., Upton, ed. Faerie Queene, London, 1758, I. xx et seq., Hurd, On Chivalry and Romance, Letter VII; Aikin, ed. Spenser, London, 1802, I, xxviii, et seq.; Dodge, ed. Spenser, Boston, 1908, p. 132.
5 Hughes, ed. Spenser, London, 1715, I. lxi et seq. Spenser mentions Ariosto in the passage already noted in the letter to Raleigh, and in writing to Harvey he had evidently expressed a desire to “overgo” Ariosto—if we may judge from. Harvey's reply.
6 Warton, Observations, London, 1754, p. 10 et seq. and 157-8.
7 Hazlitt, Lecture II, On Chaucer and Spenser.
8 Masterman, ed. Spenser, London, 1845, I, xxvii,
9 De Vere, Spenser's Works, ed. Grosart, I. 293 et seq.
10 Dodge, ed. Spenser, p. 132.
11 Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, Oxford, 1904, I, lxxiii.
12 Shakespeare's England, Oxford, 1916, I, 235.
13 Smith op. cit. I, lxxv, 29, 71, 74, 117, 198, 230, 250.
14 Scaliger's Poetics, Book III, Sec. 96. See also S. L. Wolff, Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, New York, 1912, 343 et seq. On the structure of Mhiopica, see C. W. Keyes in St. in Ph., XIX, 42.
15 Fletcher in Jour. of Germ. Ph., II, 203 et seq. and Keightley, Fairy Mythology, London, 1860, p. 53 et seq. On the wide popularity of the romances during this period, see, for example, Crane in P. M. L. A., XXX, 125 et seq.
16 Ayres in M. L. N. XXIII, 177 et seq.
17 Broadus in M. L. N. XVIII. 202 et seq.
18 Hall in P. M. L. A. XXVIII. 539 et seq.
19 Warton, Observations, London, 1754, (14) et seq.
20 Gilfillan, ed. Spenser, Edinburgh, 1859, I. vi.
21 In the letter to Raleigh, Spenser contrasts the poet who begins in medias res and the “historiographer” who “discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne.” A comparison of the poet and the historian appears in Aristotle, in Boccaccio's De Genealogia (Book XV), and in various other Renaissance authors who seem to have followed him (Smith op. cit., I, lxxix); but, as far as I have learned, Spenser is unique in making the opening in medias res the cardinal point of contrast. Possibly by “historiographer,” he meant Malory—who has on occasion been so called (Miss D'Evelyn in J. E. G. Ph., XIV, 76, quoting Chester). If this be true, Spenser, in the letter, is simply pointing out an essential difference between his treatment of Arthur and the treatment in one of his chief sources.
22 Delattre seems to suggest this influence in his English Fairy Poetry, London, 1912, p. 80 et seq.
23 The textual influence of Du Bartas upon the House of Alma and perhaps upon other parts of the Faerie Queene has been pointed out (Upham, French Influence in English Literature, New York, 1918, 67, 168 et seq); but the poem as a whole has little in common with the Faerie Queene apart from its didactic purpose and its loose structure.
24 Murison suggests this in the Camb. Hist, II, 265 et seq.
25 See Manly in Ency. Brit. 11th ed., IX, 612, for a discussion of this influence.
26 I find these arguments most fully set forth by Dodge in P. M. L. A. XII, 151 et seq.
27 Although no modern critic would for a moment credit Ariosto with a serious moral purpose, yet the literary theorists of the mid-sixteenth century, in order to square the Orlando with their own ideals, read a complicated moral allegory into almost every part of the poem. Spenser was doubtless following this generally accepted doctrine—as indeed, did Harrington, as the notes to his translation attest.
28 Works of Harvey, ed. Grosart, 1884, I, 94-5.
29 Dodge has pointed this out, P. M. L. A. XII, 192 et seq.
30 Cory has already suggested this, Edmund Spenser, Berkeley, 1917, p. 53
31 Smith, op. cit., I, lxxviii, etc. See also Mary Augusta Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian, Boston, 1916.
32 Dodge has summarized the progress of epic criticism in Italy during the mid-sixteenth century (P. M. L. A. XII, 157 et seq.); and, at one point (p. 163) he suggests that the critics of Ariosto were a strong influence; but he seems to feel that Ariosto's example was the more important matter; and he does not show what specific theories Spenser took from the critics.
33 R. C. Williams has made a very convenient summary, Rom. Rev. XII. 3 et seq.
34 Minturno, L'Arle Poetica, Venice, 1564, p. 17.
35 Ibid. p. 5; and Williams, Rom. Rev., XII. 12.
36 Caxton in the Preface to Malory's Morte D'Arthur.
37 Holinshed, Hist. of Eng., Book V, Ch. xii, etc.
38 Camden, Britannia, London, 1789, I. 59 etc.
39 Williams in the Rom. Rev. XII, 15 et seq. Spenser in two other matters, although he does not mention them in the letter to Raleigh, has complied with the teaching of the Italian critics: he has made his chief subject deeds of arms; and he has kept “low” persons in the background.
40 R. C. Williams, The Theory of the Heroic Epic in Italian Criticism of the Sixteenth Century, Johns Hopkins U. diss., 1917. pp, 13-14.
41 Ibid. p. 8 et seq.
42 Ibid. pp. 15-16.
43 Vida, De Arle Poetica, II, lines 78-79. Minturno, op. cit., pp. 38-39. Spenser's curious differentiation of the poet and the “historiographer” on the ground that the former begins in medias res, may possibly have been drawn from a rapid reading of the passage in Minturno that follows, and a misinterpretation of his “come sono avvenute” to mean “in chronological order.”
44 Vida, op. cit., II. 98 et seq. and Scaliger, Poetics, Book III, Sec. 96. The discussions of in medias res by this group of critics seem to me to be written in a peculiarly crabbed and ambiguous fashion; and it is hard to tell just what Spenser may have gotten out of them.
45 See Fletcher in Jour. Germ. Phil., II. 429 et seq. Ronsard borrowed his epic theory from Minturno, Cinthio and other Renaissance critics. See Williams in M. L. N. XXXV, 161 et seq.
46 Fletcher in the Eng. Grad. Record, Col. Univ., 1905, pp. 70-71. One is tempted to say that Spenser based his letter to Raleigh almost purely on one authority, possibly Minturno; but his method of dealing with the chronicles and similar learned sources suggests that he rather consulted several and made a cento of their teachings.
47 See Helen E. Sandison, P. M. L. A., XXV, 150.
48 Camden, Britannia, London, 1789, I. 59.