~Faerie Queene~

Is it just me or does Duessa remind anyone of Morgan Le Fay from "Sir Gawain & the Green Knight"? (For those of you who have read about her- If not, she's an evil seductive sorceress who is always concocting malicious plans against her half-brother, King Arthur in Arthurian legend. ) Here's a painting of her to the right---

I see the same idea going on in "The Faerie Queene" as I did in "Sir Gawain" - concealing identities for malevolent deception. Façades and reality are obscured because the story meanders between the two, so one can become easily lost in the narrative. For this blog, I'm just going to note many symbolic characters from the first four cantos:

*The Faerie Queene represents Queen Elizabeth

*Redcrosse the knight symbolizes all that is holy and/or the Christian

*Una's name means truth.

*Duessa is Una's opposite- a sorceress who made me think of Ms. Le Fay

*Archimago- the evil magician

Then I have to mention Error, the beast Redcrosse slays- very symbolic that it vomited books that were Catholic propaganda. Lines 72-78 are revolting:

"Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw / A floud of poyson horrible and blacke, / Full of great lumpers of flesh and gobbets raw, / Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke / His grasping hold, and from her turne hum backe: / Her vomit full of bookes and papers was, / With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke"

Spenser "borrowed" from many texts for this work also: the Bible, the great epics, Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" along with Virgil's "Aeneid". Wonder what the next cantos will bring to this story?