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The Red Crosse Knight and Mediæval Demon Stories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Rosemond Tuve
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Extract

Three times in Canto X of the First Book of the Faerie Queene the ‘godly aged Sire’ impresses upon Red Crosse the fact of his earthly, rather than elfin, lineage.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1929 , pp. 706 - 714
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 707 Robert the Deuyll, ed. Thoms, Early Engl. Prose Rom. I.

Note 2 in page 707 Lyfe of Roberte the Deuyll, ed. Hazlitt, Early Pop. Poetry, I.

Note 3 in page 707 Gesta Romanorum, ed. Early Engl. Text Soc. ex. ser. 33, p. 75.

Note 4 in page 708 F. Q. I, x, 25-27.

Note 5 in page 708 Hazlitt, op. cit. 252; also Thoms, op. cit. 34, Robert le Diable, ed. Löseth, Soc. Anc. Textes Fr. 1903, v. 1265.

Note 6 in page 708 Robert le Diable, v. 1268.

Note 7 in page 708 R. leD. 3495 ff., Thoms 44, Hazlitt 256.

Note 8 in page 708 R. le D. 3548.

Note 9 in page 708 Thoms 47.

Note 10 in page 708 F. Q. I, x, 46-52.

Note 11 in page 708 R. le D. 638, 656, 706, 720. Upton “remarks that the residence of Contemplation on a hill seems imaged from the Table of Cebes . . . .” (Todd III, 134).

Note 12 in page 709 Hazlitt 248.

Note 13 in page 709 R. le D. 4961, 4986.

Note 14 in page 709 R. le D. (ed. Löseth), introd. i.

Note 15 in page 709 Breul, Sir Gowther (1886), p. 57.

Note 16 in page 709 Gordon Duff (Hand-lists, p. 24) assigns this date with a query; Breul (op. cit., p. 62) and Wells (Manual of Writings in Mid. Eng., p. 137) give the date as “c. 1510.”

Note 17 in page 709 Breul 63; Wells 137.

Note 18 in page 709 Printed by Whitley Stokes in Rev. Celt. xiv, 22 ff.

Note 19 in page 709 Hibbard, Med. Rom. in Eng. 53: ‘possibly 11th century.’

Note 20 in page 710 Schofield, in Harvard Stud. and Notes iv, 48, 52.

Note 21 in page 710 Thomas of Erceldoune, EETS, orig. ser. 60-61, lvi.

Note 22 in page 710 ed. Graf, I Complementi della Chanson d'Huon de Bordeaux, I.

Note 23 in page 710 The article of J. B. Fletcher in J. E. G. Ph. ii concerns itself chiefly with parallels in general action, but various details have been noted by J. R. Macarthur in an article on the “Influence of Huon of Burdeux upon the F. Q.”, in J. E. G. Ph. iv, 215-238, and by Miss Winstanley in the introduction to her edition of Book I.

Note 24 in page 710 Huon of Burdeux, EETS ex. ser. 41, p. 606.

Note 25 in page 710 By Miss Winstanley and by Macarthur, who also notes the parallel in the castle descriptions.

Note 26 in page 711 Huon of Burdeux, EETS ex. ser. 40, p. 78.

Note 27 in page 711 The parallel in general action between the stories of Libeaus Desconus and of the Red Crosse Knight has of course been frequently noted, e.g. in Ker, Epic and Romance, 392, Cambridge History I, 295; Broadus in M. L. N. xviii, 202-4, Maynadier The Arthur of the English Poets, 263. Miss Paton (Studies in Fairy Mythology of Arth. Rom., 134) compares Dunostre, which in Fergus receives its light from a miraculous shield (cf. Auberon's hauberk) with Dun-an-Oir in the Lay of the Great Fool, with the Il d'Or in Bel Inconnu, and the Chef d'Oire of Partonopeus (v. Gaston Paris' connection of oire with the portae aureae of Jerusalem).

Note 28 in page 711 Huon of Burdeux, EETS 41, p. 597.

Note 29 in page 711 Ibid., p. 596.

Note 30 in page 711 Ibid., pp. 74, 599.

Note 31 in page 712 Ed. Graf, op. cit. For convenient summary see Gautier, Les Epopées Francaises III, 725 ff.

Note 32 in page 713 It is perhaps more than interesting to note that in that book of the ‘Anliquitie of Faerie lond’ (F. Q. II, x) in which Guyon reads the high history of the elfin line which was to give the Faerie Queene to England, which had built the Cleopolis, and the Panthea ‘all of Christall,’ whose glory Red Crosse had known (F. Q. I, x, 55),—in this complicated genealogy, that same Oberon whose political counterpart (Henry VIII) has sometimes been connected with the Red Crosse knight is also the halfmortal descendant of a Fay. Inescapably, a Celtic Fairy Mistress in the royal family. This Fay had been met in the gardens of Adonis by that anomalous creature, the ‘man so made [by Prometheus] . . . . called Elfe, to weet Quick, the first authour of all Elfin kind,’ as he wandered ‘through the world with wearie feet.’ (F. Q. II, x, 71).

Note 33 in page 713 Upton explains ‘Georgos’ as follows: ‘Georgos in the Greek language signifying a husbandman, our poet hence takes occasion . . . . of introducing the marvellous tale of Tages . . . . the son of the earth: a ploughman found him’ (Todd III, 146). He also notes the legend in the Seven Champions. (Todd III, 145). Padelford and O'Connor in an article on “Spenser's Use of the St. George Legend” (S. in Phil. xxiii, 142-156) stress other parallels in the legend, but do not mention the birth story.

Note 34 in page 713 Johnson, Richard, Seven Champions of Christendom, ed. 1670, ch. 1.

Note 35 in page 713 Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, III, 223-4.

Note 36 in page 714 Drayton's Polyolbion, Spenser Society New Ser. 1, 2, 3, p. 68. I am indebted for this note to Professor Edwin Greenlaw.

Note 37 in page 714 See Nutt's discussion, Voyage of Bran, II, 22 ff.