Book contents
1 - Into other arms: Amoret's evasion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
I haue seldome seene an honest woman to haue many frinds that wil take hir part … You may quickely ghesse a Strumpet by her multitude of friendes.
Barnabe Riche, Favltes Favlts, G4v–rA wind fane changabil huf puffe
Always is a woomman.
Virgil, Thee First Fovre Bookes (trans. Stanyhurst), 81In a relatively minor passage from The Faerie Queene's Book IV, Spenser gives us a haunting description of Amoret as she recovers from a swoon to find herself in the “darknesse and dread horrour” of Lust's cave:
She waked out of dread
Streight into griefe, that her deare hart nigh swelt,
And eft gan into tender teares to melt.
Then when she lookt about, and nothing found
But darknesse and dread horrour, where she dwelt,
She almost fell againe into a swound,
Ne wist whether aboue she were, or vnder ground.
With that she heard some one close by her side
Sighing and sobbing sore, as if the paine
Her tender hart in peeces would diuide:
Which she long listning, softly askt againe
What mister wight it was that so did plaine?
To whom thus aunswer'd was: Ah wretched wight
That seekes to know anothers griefe in vaine,
Vnweeting of thine owne like haplesse plight:
Selfe to forget to mind another, is ouersight.
Aye me (said she) where am I, or with whom?
(IV.vii.9–11)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Limits of Eroticism in Post-Petrarchan NarrativeConditional Pleasure from Spenser to Marvell, pp. 25 - 46Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998