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1 - Into other arms: Amoret's evasion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Dorothy Stephens
Affiliation:
University of Arkansas
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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–r

A wind fane changabil huf puffe

Always is a woomman.

Virgil, Thee First Fovre Bookes (trans. Stanyhurst), 81

In 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 Narrative
Conditional Pleasure from Spenser to Marvell
, pp. 25 - 46
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

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