43. M. Pauline Parker, The Allegory of the Faerie Queene
This is a sane book and well written. If it is at times more eloquent than the sullen fashion of the moment allows, what matter? Multa renascentur. The author finds the key to F. Q. in theology ‘not dogmatic but ascetic and moral’; claims (I think, rightly) that Spenser was no Puritan; soft-pedals his Platonism; relegates the historical allegory to a short appendix: and produces (p. 10) an interesting interpretation of ‘as Aristotle hath devised’. As might be expected, she is especially happy on Spenser's images of good and evil; but I could have wished for more about that whole iconography of pageant and emblem through which his moral theology was mediated.
It will always be disputed how far we can trust to logic in the interpretation of Spenser. If A in the story symbolizes α in the real world and B symbolizes β, are the relations of A and B within the story to be interpreted as symbols of those between α and β in the world? Clearly, we must not go the whole hog. Otherwise, since Belphoebe ‘is’ Elizabeth and is begotten by the Sun, the Sun will ‘be’ Henry VIII; which is nonsense. The author is well aware that ‘there are moments when the story is only a story’ (p. 158), but she trusts the logical method further than I. Thus she believes that the combat between Guyon and Britomart must represent some sort of opposition between Temperance and Chastity. Again, following Kitchin, she takes the Dwarf in Book I to be Natural Reason. Logically, a case can be made for this. But not imaginatively. I will never believe that so elusive and unimpressive a figure stands for so high an abstraction. When logic suggests anything contrary to the actual quality of Spenser's images – their immediate impact on the eye and the emotion – logic is, I believe, misleading us.
A few points on detail may be noted.
I must not end without praising the almost Johnsonism finality of certain sentences. For critics (like myself) who jib at Talus there is the unanswerable reply ‘it is highly desirable that unshakeable justice should be attended by irresistible strength’ (p. 9). The principle behind modern methods of reading is stated in the form ‘If there is to be a meaning it shall be ours’ (p. 28). And of Spenser in general we read, ‘No poet has less to say about great cities’.