Bruner 1 David Bruner Dr.

Strait ENG 375 27 November 2010

Liquid Ayre: Images, Iconoclasm, and Truth in Book I of The Faerie Queene
Opening to the first pages Book I of Spensers Faerie Queene is like getting lost in a sea of images along with Redcrosse Knight, the errant hero. Readers are only enabled to see things slantwise; woods that seem hospitable turn into labyrinths, characters that seem to be friends show themselves to be Redcrosses deadliest foes. Often, the reader comprehends this duplicity at the same moment as the protagonist, only finding Spensers imagistic cues upon successive rereadings. How, then, should a reader approach such a complex work? One way into this difficult text is to read it with the lens of iconoclasm. Spenser was a Protestant, and he learned from his religious doctrine not to trust images. This idea carries over into his poetics, where the distrust of images compels Spenser to show how deceptive images can be. Thus, the reader has to become a sort of iconoclast in order to expose false images, and finally, to arrive at the true picture of the world that Spenser hopes to portray. Spenser establishes the pattern of imagistic deception from the beginning of canto I, when Redcrosse and Una enter the Wandering Wood. He describes the woods: A shadie grove not far away they spide, That promist ayde the tempest to withstand: Whose loftie trees yclad with sommers pride, Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide (I.I.7, emphasis added) Initially, the woods offer hope of a place for Redcrosse and Una to seek shelter from the rain. The trees are pleasant to look at and wide for protection. It seems like they will make a short

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stop, and continue when the storm passes. However, a more ominous note begins to sound in the following passage: Not perceable with power of any starre: And all within were pathes and alleies wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farre: Faire harbour that them seemes; so in they entred arre. (I.I.7, emphasis added) On initial reading, the emphasized words might seem innocuous. Even though the impenetrability of the woods keeps Redcrosse and Una out of the rain, there is an edge to Spensers use of seemes. He appears to be warning that the obscurity of the forest will actually become a trap instead of a shelter. This warning comes to fruition three stanzas later, when Redcrosse and Una realize, They cannot finde that path, which first was showne (I.I.10). Thus, from the beginning of the poem, Spenser provides hints to the reader that any presented image may or may not be truthful. I. False Texts: Errour and Archimago Given the prevalence of deceptive images in the work, it would be easy to categorize Spenser as a Protestant propagandist who simply wanted to debunk the usefulness of iconology. However, his anxiety about images is not limited to theological nitpicking. Reaching beyond this narrow category, Spenser calls his own poetic work into question as a possible arena of deception. He begins to introduce this idea in the Errour episode. Within Errours vomit is a shower of bookes and papers (I.I.20). Of course, on one level, this is simply a jab at Catholic pamphlets. But something more unsettling is at work here; the texts spewing out of Errours mouth suggest that writing can be used in the propagation of falsity (Lees-Jeffries, 153). If this is true, is Spenser not implicated in this dangerous and possibly deceptive art? The reader begins to

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realize that iconoclasm in this poem is not just to be applied to religion, but to the whole of life. Spenser spares no one, not even himself, the test of truth. The idea of writing as a possibly false image expands beyond its initial bounds when Redcrosse and Una go to Archimagos hermitage, which is the locus of the most traumatic deception of the entire book: Redcrosses false vision of Una copulating with Archimagos sprite. Archimago meets the protagonists in the guise of a monk or priest: Sober he seemde (I.I.29, emphasis added). Again, the use of seemde indicates that the image presented is not the image proper. The characters engage in some perfunctory conversation, and Archimago puts his visitor-victims to bed, leaving them especially vulnerable to his enchantments. He proceeds to consult his books, a detail which again implicates writing in the practice of deceit. Spenser adds yet another dimension to this idea, though, in the passage where Archimago creates the female sprite that will stand in for Una: [Archimago] Had made a Lady of that other Spright, And framed of liquid ayre her tender partes So lively, and so like in all mens sight, That weaker sence it could have ravisht quight(I.I.45) Archimago is designing, as Harry Berger notes, an image that hides true nature (Una) and seeks to appeal to Redcrosses sexual desire (34). So Archimago becomes a kind of artist, engaged in the process of deception that first appeared in Errours books. What happens next is much more interesting: The maker selfe for all his wondrous witt, Was nigh beguild with so goodly sight (I.I.45, emphasis added) The female sprite not only appeals to Redcrosses desire, but Archimagos, as well (Berger 34).

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Thus, the maker becomes entranced by his own work. Why does Spenser feel the need to include this detail, though? It is likely that he is expressing the pressure of being an iconoclast whose poetic occupation requires the making of images. This evil sorcerer is the authors own negative image: a writer who purposefully deceives and is accidentally deceived by his own art. Believing that writing has so many possibilities for deception, Spenser seeks to break the power of false images by conditioning the reader to distrust them, as seen above in the description of the woods. The ideal response from the reader, then, is an iconoclastic questioning of the poems images as productions of a faulty process. II. False Pageantry: The House of Pride Spenser does not constrain the deceptive images to the world of writing, though. Through the House of Pride, he identifies the pageantry of court life as a purveyor of deception. Pageantry, as A. Bartlett Giamatti indicates, was at the height of its popularity in the Elizabethan court in which Spenser served (695). Giamatti goes on to define a pageant as an empty show, a spectacle without substance or reality, which is a perfect definition for this papers view of the House of Pride (697). Luciferas House of Pride is a place that thrives on its pageants, which serve to lull visitors into accepting the houses way of life until they are thrown into its dungeons to rot. The reader, even knowing that the House of Pride is a lie, can easily see why it would be attractive. Spenser notes that the building is covered with gold foil. Lucifera generates her own light, which doth all mens eyes amaze (I.IV.16). The height of the House of Prides pomp, though, is the parade of the Seven Deadly Sins who pull Luciferas chariot. Giamatti identifies pageants, even in their emptiness, as a public language that exposes the inner life of a nation (698). Thus, the personified sins reveal the wickedness at the heart of pride to the reader, even if Redcrosse

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cannot initially perceive this. At the same time, the reader sees the efficacy of the public function of Luciferas pageant: So forth they marchen in this goodly sort, / To take the solace of the open aire, / And in fresh flowring fields themselves to sport (I.IV.37). Lucifera has effectively made her house seem like a goodly place of solace and sport, creating an illusion that is tempting even though just prior to these lines Spenser has described the broken skulls and bones of those whose life had gone astray under the feet of the sins (I.IV.36). In addition to showing how Spenser wants to expose false images at the heart of court pageantry, this episode is interesting as an example of how Spensers language prefigures the final exposure of the true image. As noted above, Redcrosse, though dismissive of the pageant as unfit for warlike swaine, remains oblivious to the true nature of the house. After his fight with Sansjoy, the dwarf leads Redcrosse into the dungeons of the house, exposing the hellish fate of those who succumb to pride. This is a grotesque revelation on first reading, but subsequent readings show that Spenser has conditioned the reader to make this conclusion for him or herself. In his initial description of the house, Spenser notes that it was a goodly heape (I.IV.5). Later in the same canto, he describes heapes of people thronging in the hall (I.IV.16). Spenser loads this seemingly innocuous word with meaning by putting all of the bodies in the dungeon in one heape (I.V.49). Thus, in the description of the false image, Spenser includes a specifically chosen word that prefigures the true image; the house is indeed a goodly heape, but it is a heap of corpses that exposes the empty promises of Luciferas pageant. Here, the pattern of images and words shows the deceptive power of the images of public life, which combine with the ambivalence about the writing process expressed in earlier episodes. This amalgamation of two areas of false production conditions the reader to iconoclastically test every single image Spenser presents. The poems nebulousness as described in the introduction is purposeful, because it

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leads the reader down the road of inquiry to the position of complete iconoclasm that Spenser advocates. III. Participatory Iconoclasm: The Unmasking of Duessa As seen above, Spenser tends to slowly unmask how false images work by a subtle accumulation of words and motifs that hint at the truth of the image before it is made clear to the characters within the text. However, in one striking scene, he forces the reader to participate in a brutal unmasking of Duessa, his mistress of falsity: Her craftie head was altogether bald, And as in hate of honorable eld, Was overgrowne with scurfe and filthy scald; Her teeth out of her rotten gummes were feld, And her sowre breath abhominably smeld (I.VIII.47) Starting from the top of Duessas unclad body, Spenser catalogues her ugliness with excruciating detail. Her mouth, out of which so many sweet-sounding lies have come, is full of the smell of what she has actually been saying. The image becomes more disgusting as the poem moves downwards: Her drid dugs, like bladders lacking wind, Hong downe, and filthy matter from them weld; Her wrizled skin as rough, as maple rind, So scabby was, that would have loathd all womankind Her neather parts, the shame of all her kind, My chaster Muse for shame doth blush to write; But at her rompe she growing had behind

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A foxes taile, with dong all fowly dight (I.VIII.47) Here, Spenser reveals a fair bit of misogyny. He associates female organs with deception; the breasts are full of hot air and the vagina is the site of shame. In this visceral encounter, Spenser forces the reader to engage in the process of unmasking a false image. Disgusting as it is, this is the extent to which Spenser expects his readers to go to arrive at the truth behind deceptive images. It may be a difficult task to perform in a world dominated by sight, but Spenser is obsessed with showing the necessity of rightly identifying what appears before the eye, both figurative and literal. The unmasking of Duessa is the most intense expression of this task Spenser gives to the reader. IV. Interlude: Is There a True Image? From the accumulation of false images spanning from Errour to Duessa, the reader begins to question whether or not Spenser ever provides a stable image. Does the text of The Faerie Queene then devolve into a maze of impenetrability and suspicion of all of the presented visions? Some post-modern critics conclude that Spensers images are simply endless chains of signifiers and signifieds that can never be brought to harmony; they enter into what Harry Berger calls suspicious reading (25). This reading asserts that pure iconoclasm necessarily ends in the current school of deconstructionist theory. Certainly, the kind of iconoclasm that Spenser demands of his readers is a kind of deconstruction. Images (signifiers) do not match with what is generally considered to be their proper truth (signifieds). The unmasking of Duessa is a harsh example of this kind of deconstruction. However, the rest of Book I, especially the House of Holinesse, suggests that Spensers program is to show the reader how to recognize a true image rather than leave the reader in a process of endless deconstruction.

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V. The Pressd Gras: A Prologue to True Images So, if Spenser believes the poet is able to help a reader identify a true image, where is such an image to be found? He begins to hint at his criteria for truth in imagery when Arthur, the model Christian prince, is recounting his vision of Gloriana, the eponymous Faerie Queene. After he awakes, Arthur recounts that he found her place devoyd, / And nought but pressd gras, where she had lyen (I.IX.15). The tenderness of this passage is striking; after a pleasant dream, the dreamer, and by proxy, the reader, awake to find that the dream was real. An actual indentation marks the place where the dream-image had been. Compare the dent in the grass to Archimagos deceitful sprites, which are formed of ayre. The false image has no ability to physically interact with the world; it can only attempt to obscure truth in a kind of mist. Gloriana, on the other hand, as a true image, leaves her mark on the earth. Spenser is suggesting that a true image has a power and concreteness that cannot be wafted away by the skeptical gaze. The reader needs to be an iconoclast to perform this test, but he or she will find that the image will withstand all inquiries. VI. The House of Holinesse: Home of the True Image Once Redcrosse and Una arrive at the House of Holinesse to begin Redcrosses convalescence, Spenser shows the reader how iconoclasm in a proper context leads to the unveiling of true images. He begins doing this by subtly inverting cues that originally signified falsity. As Una and Redcrosse ascend to the House, Spenser remarks, They passe in stouping low; / For streight and narrow was the way, which [Humilt] did show (I.X.5). Recall how the Wandering Wood was full of pathes and alleies wide (I.I.7) and how the broad high way (I.IV.2) led to the deceitful House of Pride. Of course this is an allusion to Matthew 7:13, where Jesus says that the way to destruction is broad. Since the broad ways of prior experiences have

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led Redcrosse into deceit before, the inversion begun by traveling the narrow way indicates that he will encounter truth in the House of Holinesse. Another inversion occurs in Spensers mentions of prayer beads. When Redcrosse and Una arrive inside the House, Caelia has been praying: That aged Dame, the Ladie of the place: Who all this while was busie at her beades: Which doen, she up arose with seemely grace, And toward them full matronely did pace. (I.X.8) Archimago, in his initial disguise as a hermit, also had prayer beads: Silly old man, that lives in hidden cell, / Bidding his beades all day for his trespass (I.I.30). Both Archimago and Caelia offer hospitality out of religious duty, but Archimagos offer is simply a ruse so that he can attempt to enchant his guests. Caelia, on the other hand, is a true example of hospitality, and Redcrosse experiences his healing in the care of her house. In yet another inversion of prior imagery, Spenser implies that the House of Holinesse is a locus where the images presented will actually represent an embodied truth instead of an airy lie. One could go on at length about more inversions in the House of Holinesse: Contemplations hermitage (I.X.46) recalls Archimagos dwelling (I.I.34) and the seven Beadmen in the hospital (I.X.36) are negations of the seven deadly sins (I.IV.18) in the House of Pride. The weight of these combined inversions shows that the House of Holinesse is a reversal of the deceit enacted by earlier images. Here, even the most iconoclastic reader finds signs that point to their proper referents. Of course, even after establishing that the House of Holinesse shows true images, Spenser still has to deal with the suspicion he brought upon the production of his own text

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through Errour and Archimago. He begins to find a way out of suspicion in the description of Fidelias book, which is both signed and seald with blood, / Wherein darke things were writ, hard to be understood (I.X.13). As Kathleen Williams rightly says, this is a copy of the New Testament, much like the one that Redcrosse gave to Arthur (28). Up to this point, as the reader will recall, books have been purveyors of deception, like Archimagos books of enchantment (I.I.36). The Bible, however, is written in blood, which is another instance of physicality like the grass where Gloriana lay. Though it is full of darke things and it is hard to be understood, Redcrosse learns to read it from Fidelia, who disclos[es] every whit (I.X.19). Spenser is saying that the production of texts, which has been suspect, can be truthful because, in his worldview, the Scriptures are both text and truth. Spenser brings his redemption of the poetic production of images to its culmination in Redcrosses vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Contemplation leads Redcrosse to a mountain: [The mountain was] like that sacred hill, whose head full hie, Adornd with fruitfull Olives all arownd, Is, as it were for endlesse memory Of that deare Lord, who oft thereon was fownd, For ever with a flowring girlond crownd (I.X.54) Spenser associates the mountain with the Mount of Olives, where Christ was arrested. This association makes what follows extremely interesting: [The mountain was] like that pleasaunt Mount, that is for ay Through famous Poets verse each where renownd, On which the thrise three learnd Ladies play Their heavenly notes, and make full many a lovely lay. (I.X.54)

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Spenser makes a shocking juxtaposition of the Christian Mount of Olives with the mountain home of the Muses. The girlond on Christs head recalls Apollos laurel wreath that was often given to poets. Thus, Spenser recasts Christ as a kind of arch-poet. If Christ is all truth, as Spenser would surely have believed as an orthodox Protestant, then the poet who is inspired by Christ has the ability to make a true image. This corrected vision, as Angus Fletcher puts it nicely, is Spensers solution to the instability of images produced by his own poetic work (43). Writing, though untrustworthy, is redeemed in Spensers personal belief in Christian redemption. VII. Conclusion Through Book I of The Faerie Queene, Spenser leads his readers through a maze of deceitful images. These false images foster iconoclasm in the reader, who must engage in difficult work to expose them. Spenser also forces the reader to question all images that come from poetic production, especially through the activities of Archimago and Errour. Where this view of images could develop into total epistemological uncertainty, Spenser decides to redeem images by casting them in what he sees as their proper place in a Christian conception of life. The final vision is of a sanctified poetics that points to absolute truth; his Heavenly Jerusalem is an icon for poets as much as it is for warrior-saints.

Bibliography
Berger, Harry Jr. Archimago: Between Text and Countertext. Studies in English

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Literature 1500-1900 43.1 (2003): 19-64. Print. Fletcher, Angus. The Prophetic Moment: An Essay on Spenser. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971. Print. Giamatti, A. Bartlett, Pageant Show, and Verse. Edmund Spensers Poetry. Eds. Hugh MacLean and Anne Lake Prescott. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. 695704. Print. Lees-Jeffries, Hester. From the Fountain to the Well: Redcrosse Learns to Read. Studies in Philology 100.2 (2003): 135-176. Print. Williams, Kathleen. Spensers World of Glass. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Print.