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“Nor Man It Is”: The Knight of Justice in Book v of Spenser's Faerie Queene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Judith H. Anderson
Judith H. Anderson*
Affiliation:
Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.
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Abstract

Artegall's limitations and those of his Legend are largely inherent in the nature of justice. The subject of justice leads to the dream of a Golden Age in Book v, but it leads also to the presence of historical allegory, often a painful reminder of Elizabethan shortcomings. Artegall's experiences in Book v reflect both the historic and the symbolic poles in the poem; hence they mirror a strain and a more general duality in the techniques and concerns of the Book. From the beginning of Book v, Artegall is divided against himself. With two exceptions, brief moments of unified identity found in his meetings with Arthur and Britomart, Artegall has always a choice between being Justice, a virtue and an abstraction, and being a Knight, a virtuous man and a human being. (JHA)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , January 1970 , pp. 65 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1970

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References

1 See Aristotle and Aquinas, n. 4, below; Richard Hooker, “A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride,” Works, 7th ed. (Oxford, 1888), 'iii“, 616–617; Cicero, De Officiis, trans. W. Miller, 3rd ed., Loeb (New York, 1928), Bk. i.xliii.153–155; Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke named The Couernor, ed. H. H. S. Croft (London, 1883), 'ii”, 187; Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Medieval Books and Their Posterity (Princeton, N. J., 1966), p. 66; Edmund Spenser, Spenser's Faerie Queene, ed. J. C. Smith, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1961), 'ii“, Bk. v. Pro.x.1–2. All references to The Faerie Queene are to this edition.

2 See A. C. Hamilton, The Structure of Allegory in “The Faerie Queene” (Oxford, 1961), pp. 152, 189–190; Frances A. Yates, “Queen Elizabeth as Astraea,” JWCI, x (1947), 30, 63; Plutarch, “De Iside et Osiride” in Plutarch's Moralia, trans. F. C. Babbitt, Loeb (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), p. 151: 377A.

3 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York, 1956), pp. 306–307.

4 Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics,” Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York, 1947); Nic. Eth. v.i. 1130a 1–15. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Dominican Province (New York, 1947), 'ii-ii“, q.58, a.2, 12.

5 Allan H. Gilbert, ed., Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (New York, 1940), pp. 482–183, 488, 490–491, 306, 367–370; Joel E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (London, 1889), pp. 120–121; Spenser's Letter to Raleigh in Spenser's Faerie Queene, 'ii“, 485: ”I chose the historye of king Arthure, as . . . furthest from the daunger of enuy, and suspition of present time.“

6 Hamilton, p. 152; Kathleen Williams, Spenser's Faerie Queene: The World of Glass (London, 1966), p. 188; Janet Spens, Spenser's Faerie Queene: An Interpretation (London, 1934), p. 85; Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1958), p. 81; Thomas P. Roche, Jr., The Kindly Flame: A Study of the Third and Fourth Books of Spenser's “Faerie Queene” (Princeton, 1964), p. 193.

7 Hamilton and Alastair Fowler emphasize the possibility of apocalypse in v: Spenser and the Numbers of Time (London, 1964), p. 43 n. Donald Cheney suggests that the inclusiveness of v constitutes an “imaginative failure”: Spenser's Image of Nature: Wild Man and Shepherd in “The Faerie Queene” (New Haven, 1966), p. 168. Cf. also T. K. Dunseath, Spenser's Allegory of Justice in Book Five of “The Faerie Queene” (Princeton, 1968), a helpful study which has unfortunately-appeared too late to bear on the present article.

8 F.Q. v.xi.46, 52 [my italics], 56.

9 F.Q. v.xiii.2. Cf. Williams, p. 152.

10 Cf. Tuve, pp. 302, 309–310, 424: Miss Tuve makes a number of relevant points, though she erects too impenetrable a wall between tenor and vehicle (or content and form).

11 Gilson, p. 309. Cf. Aquinas, S.T. 'ii-ii“, q. 58, a. 10.

12 Harry Berger, Jr., “The Prospect of Imagination: Spenser and the Limits of Poetry,” SEL, 'i“ (1961), 100–101. Suggestions advanced by Berger in this article have been seminal here, as elsewhere in these pages.

13 The Works of Edmund Spenser (A Variorum Edition), “The Faerie Queene,” Bk. v, special ed., Ray Heffner (Baltimore, 1936), pp. 165–166.

14 See, e.g., William Nelson, The Poetry of Edmund Spenser (New York, 1963), p. 264; Williams, pp. 70, 180. In A View of the Present State of Ireland (ed. W. L. Renwick, London, 1934, p. 124) Spenser makes the distinction between evil and an evil person: “cuttinge of those evills which I before blamed, and not of the people which are evill, for evill people by good ordynance and gouernment, maye bee made good.”

15 E.g., see F.Q. v.v.39–40.

16 F.Q. v.v.7–8. On the traditional syrmbolism of the anvil, see Tuve, pp. 270 ff.

17 H. S. V. Jones, A Spenser Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York, 1958), p. 257. Cf. Elyot, pp. 73, 80, 86; Cicero, Bk. ‘i.xv“.46; Bk. ‘iii.xi”.46–47.

18 Hamilton, p. 183.

19 Cicero, Bk. i.vii.23; xiii.39; Elyot, pp. 246 ff., 260; and n. 31, below. In Artegall's waiting for Britomart we can also see Justice's waiting for Mercy; and fallen man's, for Love.

20 See Berger, “Prospect,” pp. 98–99.

21 Cf. Una in i.vii.20-27; also W. B. C. Watkins, Shakespeare and Spenser (Princeton, 1950), pp. 139–143; E. M. W. Tillyard, The English Epic and Its Background (London, 1954), p. 271.

22 Kathleen Williams suggests that these echoes of Christ's passion remind us that “perfect justice is also love, perpetually betrayed by the wickedness or weakness of man” (p. 162), but this suggestion fails to account for the tone of the stanzas involved or for the quality of Britomart's experiences. A notable gap lies between Britomart's passion at this point and Christ's, even though a relation can be seen between the two. (Given Britomart's state of mind in canto vi, it is worth noting that the cock is also a “conventional symbol of jealous wakefulness” and hence of self-interest: see John M. Steadman, “Spenser's House of Care: A Reinterpre-tation,” S Ren, 'vii“, 1960, 223–224.)

23 See Berger, “Prospect,” p. 100; Hamilton, p. 180; Graham Hough, A Preface to “The Faerie Queene” (New York, 1963), p. 200;Plutarch,pp. 121, 129–131:371B, 372E–P“; Edwin Greenlaw, ”Some Old Religious Cults in Spenser,“ SP, 'xx” (1923), 239–240; Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, N. Y., 1964), pp. 321–322.

24 Cf. F.Q. 'iv“. Pro. 4–5. See Northrop Frye, ”The Structure of Imagery in The Faerie Queene,“ Fables of Identity (New York, 1963), pp. 75, 77; Roche, p. 200.

25 F.Q. v.x.22, 23. Cf. Hamilton, pp. 173–174. Paul J. Alpers starts with similar observations; his conclusions suggest that rhetorical criticism does not by itself offer an adequate approach to Book v: The Poetry of “The Faerie Queene” (Princeton, 1967), pp. 299–303.

26 Traditionally Justice is associated with Time (the Litae in canto ix, or Horus, the son of Isis/Osiris; or Artegall's deadline in Ireland); see Samuel Chew, The Virtues Reconciled (Toronto, 1947), p. 90; Plutarch, pp. 131: 373A; 139: 374D–F; Fowler, p. 216. Given the history of Artegall in Bks. ni-v, the association of Justice with Time suggests another dimension: “according to Plotinus, awareness of self is the foundation of memory.” G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time (London, 1961), p. 111; Plotinus, The Six-Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page (Chicago, 19S2), En. 'iv“. iv. 2; 'iv”. iii. 24–32; 'iv“. iv. 1–8.

27 Gilson, p. 349. Perhaps more to the point, Romans xiii. 10; I Cor. xiii. Cf. Aquinas, S.T. ‘II-II“, q. 23, a. 7–8; ‘I-II”, q. 65, a. 2–3; q. 63, a. 1–4; q. 66, a. 6. Cf. Tuve, pp. 49, 66–68.

28 Gilson, p. 308.

29 Aristotle, Nie. Eth. v.xi. 1138b 5–10. Cf. Aquinas, S.T. 'ii-ii“, q. 58, a. 2.

30 Gilson, pp. 308–309. Cf. Aquinas, S.T. 'ii-ii“, q. 58, a. 10; q. 60, a. 1.

31 Aristotle, Nic. Eth. v.iv.1132a 22–26; Aquinas, S.T. 'ii-ii“, q. 60, a.l; Gilson, p. 316.

32 Gilson, p. 312. Cf. Aquinas, S.T. 'ii–ii“, q. 63, a.l; and Chew, p. 92.

33 Cf. J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London, 1924), p. 58; Edwin B. Benjamin, “Fame, Poetry, and the Order of History in the Literature of the English Renaissance,” SRen, 'vi“ (1959), 70, 80–81.

34 M. Pauline Parker, The Allegory of the “Faerie Queene,” 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1962), p. 317; but conversely, Viola Blackburn Hulbert, “The Beige Episode in the Faerie Queene,” SP, 'xxxvi“ (1939), 124–146; and Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of ”The Faerie Queene“ (Chicago, 1942), pp. 190–191. Whatever the precise historical referents of the Beige episode, it is obvious in canto x that Beige's emissary first seeks aid from Mercilla-Elizabeth and Arthur goes to Beige's assistance. At the very least, then, time is telescoped (Bennett, p. 190) and unhappy events—the death of Sidney, for example (Hulbert, p. 140)—are simply overlooked. Surely the Beige episode is a simplification (or idealization), even though it is possible to argue that Leicester's campaign is neither precisely nor exclusively intended.

35 Parker, pp. 317 ff.; and Spenser, View, pp. 137–139 (on Grey) and pp. 283, n–285, n.

36 Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), pp. 293–303.

37 On Artegall's name (Art equal or Arthur's equal) and relation to Arthur, see Roche, pp. 48–49; and Nelson, p. 257.

38 See F.Q. v.vii.41; v.21. It may simply be the fact that Arthur sees Artegall in armor, rather than in Artegall's old armor. The point is that Artegall's real self, or at least his inner self, is disguised to Arthur's view; Arthur sees him as inhuman, hard, cruel, pagan, “ded.”

39 F.Q. v.ix.46,49; i.l4.

40 This statement is indebted to Berger, “Prospect,” p. 101.

41 Cf. Kathleen Williams, ‘“Eterne in Mutabilitie,‘: The Unified World of The Faerie Queene” That Soueraine Light, ed. William R. Mueller and Don Cameron Allen (Baltimore, 1952), p. 42; and Cheney, p. 165.

42 See Natalis Comitis, Mythologiae sive Explications Fabvlarvm, Libri decern (Genevae, 1651), Bk. 'vii“.i, p. 679; Henry Gibbons Lotspeich, Classical Mythology in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser, 2nd ed. (New York, 1965), pp. 113, 63, 56.

43 Even in this battle, an ironic tone (reminiscent of early cantos) creeps in: 'v“.xii.23, vs. 9.