Sir Walter Raleigh in Faerie Lond
Vincen Avichavil
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is a richly allegorical English epic and chivalric romance. At its heart, the poem is unequivocally an encomium for Queen Elizabeth I but also of the English nation and the Protestant faith. A great deal of Spenser’s biblical and religious, moral, historical, political, and social allegory is palpably obvious to the reader. Gloriana representing Queen Elizabeth I, the Red Crosse knight as the ideal Christian knight, Britomart as the Early Modern view of chastity, Una as the Virtuous Maid or the one true Church of England, Duessa as the Whore of Babylon, and the monster Errour as Catholic doctrinal corruption are all made clear in the poem (Emmerichs Feb. 3, Greenblatt 777). However, Spenser “clowdily enwrapped” his allegory in a network of multiple meanings which elude one definitive explanation even by readers of his time (Greenblatt 776; Spenser 778). Several characters in The Faerie Queene can be seen as double metaphors, such as the giant Orgoglio as either an earthquake or, like the monster Errour, as Catholic corruption. Spenser describes his Faerie Lond as based in Arthurian history and his Prince Arthur as the brave knight, perfect in all twelve virtues, which would each compose a book within his epic had he finished it (777; Emmerichs Feb. 3). Arthur is another multiply-analogous figure in The Faerie Queene. Spenser states his Arthur is the embodiment of the virtue “magnificence,” which is the perfection of the twelve Aristotelian virtues (Spenser 778-79). Arthur can also easily be seen as analogous to Christ. Several readers, such as Laura E. Creel, argue that Prince Arthur is an “obvious dramatization” of Jesus Christ (12). When considering the account between the giant Orgoglio (viewed in either allegory presented above) and Prince Arthur, the obvious picture of Arthur as a Christ figure can be demurred and replaced with an allusion to Sir Walter Raleigh, Spenser’s highly regarded contemporary. This paper will establish a new view of Prince Arthur in Book I of The Faerie Queene, not as Christ, but as Sir Walter Raleigh.
Poetry during the Renaissance existed through patronage or poetic conversation with poems being written between poets as a means of intellectual discourse. Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser were contemporaries and well-regarded friends (Greenblatt 775; Spenser 780). Considering the ongoing conversation through poetry and the extended allegory of Spenser’s epic, it is probable that Raleigh, like other prominent English figures of the time, made an appearance in The Faerie Queene. The friendship between these two poets is clearly presented in a letter Spenser wrote Raleigh and appended to the original 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene (which has since become the standard preface to the work) (Greenblatt 777). The letter is addressed “To the Right noble, and Valorous, Sir Walter Raleigh knight…” and concluded, “So humbly craving the continuance of your honorable favour towards me, and th’ eternall establishment of your happiness, I humbly take leave… Yours most humbly affectionate. Ed. Spenser” (Spenser 777, 780). Spenser’s gratitude is well reasoned considering it was Raleigh who brought Spenser from Ireland and into Queen Elizabeth’s court (Greenblatt 1023). This indebtedness to Raleigh, mixed with the extended allegory of Spenser’s epic, makes it credible that Spenser represented Raleigh in The Faerie Queene.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a poet, courtier, soldier, colonialist, and explorer - an adventurer intent on the expansion of the British Empire and in search of El Dorado (Greenblatt 1023; Emmerichs Feb. 7). Raleigh describes the golden vision of his desire and his intent on the conquering of new lands in The discovery of Guiana while The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd shows his belief in the impermanence of nature under British exploration (Emmerichs Feb. 7).
Raleigh wrote of the intent of his expedition to Guiana, “the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those so far extended beams of the Spanish nation” (Raleigh 1031). When Arthur’s shield is unveiled while battling Orgoglio, “The light whereof, that heaven’s light pas, / Such blazing brightnesse through the aier threw” and the giant was “amazed / At flashing beames of that sunshiny shield” (1.8.19-20). Arthur’s shield is analogous to Raleigh’s conquest. Spenser gives us the image of Raleigh, as Arthur, carrying “the shining glory of [his] conquest” into battle and toward unexplored lands beyond the Spanish empire. Raleigh also wrote that Guiana had “never [been] conquered or possessed by any Christian prince” (Raleigh 1032). Arthurian legend depicts King Arthur as the ideal Christian knight and Spenser’s Arthur is a prince, possessing Raleigh’s image of conquest. Spenser, knowing Raleigh well, analogized Raleigh’s notions of conquest into Arthur.
Nature is dangerous in Faerie Lond and in need of subjugation. One view of Orgoglio is as the embodiment of dangerous nature – an earthquake; perhaps the most dangerous natural phenomenon in England. Throughout the Early Modern Period, people believed an Aristotelian view of meteorology and that earthquakes were caused by great winds breaking free from the earth (Martin 266). The language of Orgoglio’s introduction is filled with the Early Modern image of an earthquake as an exhalation from the earth:
The greatest Earth his uncouth mother was,
And blustering Aeolus his boasting sire,
Who with his breath, which through the world doth pas,
Her hollow womb did secretly inspire,
And fild her hidden caves with stormie yre,
That she conceived (Spenser 1.7.9).
Spenser clearly states that Orgoglio is generated by boisterous wind blowing through the caves in the earth. Not only the giants’ genesis, but the description of its movement further establishes Orgoglio as an earthquake. His entrance is presaged by “a dreadfull sound, / Which through the wood loud bellowing, did rebownd, / That all the earth for terrour seemed to shake, / And trees did tremble” and when he walks, “The ground eke groned under him for dreed” (Spenser 1.7.7-8). Though these descriptions of Orgoglio could simply imply the great weight of the giant, its final demise at the stroke of Arthur’s “sparkling blade” reaffirms the clear image that he is indeed an earthquake given shape:
But soon out of his breast did pass,
That huge great body, which the Gyaunt bore,
Was vanish quite, and of that monstrous mas
Was nothing left, but like an emptie bladder was.
(Spenser 1.8.24)
Orgoglio is a bladder filled with hot air rumbling out of the earth’s caverns and when Arthur decapitates him, the wind is released and the bladder exhausts into harmlessness. With Orgoglio as an earthquake given physical form, he represents the dangers of wild nature. Prince Arthur slaying Orgoglio and nullifying the calamitous earthquake is analogous to Raleigh conquering and vanquishing wild, dangerous nature and uncivilized lands. Orgoglio’s defeat by Arthur is written as if the Prince were cutting down a mighty tree as an arborist would, limb by limb. Orgoglio’s club is a “snaggy Oke” which he buried in the ground from a misplaced blow. The giant becomes an extension of the tree-club as Prince Arthur fells him:
With blade all burning bright
He smote off his arme, which like a blocke
Did fall to ground, deprived of native might;
Large streames of bloud out of the truncked stocke
Forth gushed, like fresh water streame from riven rocke.
(Spenser 1.8.10.5-9)
Arthur continues to eliminate the natural hazard. He cuts off a leg and “down he tombled; as an aged tree” (Spenser 1.8.22.5-6). The analogy of Orgoglio as an earthquake given form or as the hazards of uncivilized nature directly supports the analogy of Arthur being Raleigh.
The second analogy of Orgoglio is similar to Errour’s, that being the corruption of the Catholic Church; a bladder filled with the hot air of the Catholic clergy. Language of corruption and infection surround the nature of Orgoglio: “This monsterous mass of earthly slime, / Puft up with emptie wind, a fild with sinfull crime” (1.7.9). “Underneath his filthy feet did tread / The sacred things, and holy heasts foretaught” is symbolic of the Catholic clergy muddying the Bible (1.7.18). His dungeon is particularly described as corrupt:
All the floore (too filthy to be told)
With bloud of guiltless babes, and innocents trew,
Which were slaine, as sheepe out of the fold,
Defiled was, that dreadfull was to view.
(Spenser1.8.35).
The empty bladder he dissolves into after his defeat is the quantification of Catholic truth in that their doctrine has been puffed up with lies. Orgoglio as Catholic corruption does not hinder the perception of Raleigh as Prince Arthur. While on expeditions, Raleigh frequently had violent encounters with Spanish and Portuguese Catholics. He had been reprimanded by Queen Elizabeth on multiple accounts for slaying these Catholics he encountered and later by King James (Emmerichs Nov. 5). The episode of Prince Arthur versus Orgoglio as Catholic corruption is then still analogous to Raleigh, but rather than taming the wild land, he is victoriously ridding the world of Catholics. Raleigh is seen as paving a safe passage for the expansion of the Protestant English nation.
Raleigh’s The discovery of Guiana uses sexual, forceful, penetrative language and equates the country to a virgin which “hath never been entered by any army of strength” and within her are “stores of gold” (Raleigh 1032). Arthur’s entrance into Orgoglio’s earthly dungeon is a similar forcefully penetrative act followed by metaphors common of Renaissance literature to depict the womb and vagina:
With percing point…
… he rent that yron dore,
With furious force, and indignation fell;
Where entered in, his foot could find no flore,
But all a deepe descent, as darke as hell,
That breathed ever forth a filthie banefull smell.
(Spenser 1.8.39).
And after forcing his way into the earthly womb:
There all within full rich arayd he found,
With royal arras and resplendent gold,
And did with store of every thing abound
That greatest Princes presence might behold.
(Spenser 1.8.35).
The stores of gold reflect not only to the gold profited by the Catholic Church, but also of Raleigh’s vision of the spoils of penetrating and conquering virgin land. Spenser gave Raleigh a fitting end to Book I, delivering his treasure pried out of the earth.
Sir Walter Raleigh as Prince Arthur works with Spenser’s paean to Queen Elizabeth as it equates Raleigh’s desire, El Dorado, with Prince Arthur’s desire, Gloriana. Through metaphor, Spenser is equating Queen Elizabeth, and by extension, England, as the City of Gold. We may never know the exact significance of Spenser’s symbols. Though many of them are obvious depictions of specific Renaissance issues, they each can be deciphered through different lenses producing a plethora of possible interpretations. The Faerie Queene is not as simple as Spenser’s letter to Raleigh explains it to be. It seems likely that the letter was either part of his allegory or a foil to his epic designed to stray the reader into over simplification. It is then possible too that the letter was part of a poetic discourse designed to tell Raleigh something specific and leave readers in the darke. If nothing else, this paper shows that The Faerie Queene should not be set aside as a transparent depiction of English Renaissance topics but has the mass and density to carry a scholarly conversation so long as there are inquisitive minds to do so. It has the depth and breadth to produce postulations as vast and deep as the darke.
Works Cited
Creel, Laura E. Arthur and Una: Mis-pairings and Delays in ‘The Faerie Queene’ Book I. MA thesis. Florida International University,
2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
Emmerichs, Sharon. “Marlowe & Raleigh.” Renaissance Literature. University of Alaska, Anchorage. 7 Feb. 2016. Lecture.
---. “Sir Walter Raleigh.” British Literature 1. University of Alaska, Anchorage. 5 Nov. 2015. Lecture.
---. “Spenser - The Faerie Queene continued.” Renaissance Literature. University of Alaska, Anchorage. 3 Feb. 2016. Lecture.
Greenblatt, Steven, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Martin, Craig. “The Ends of Weather: Teleology in Renaissance Meteorology” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 48.3 (2010): 259-282.
Raleigh, Walter Sir. “The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 1030-1033. Print.
Spenser, Edmund Sir. “The Faerie Queene.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 775-984. Print.
Poetry during the Renaissance existed through patronage or poetic conversation with poems being written between poets as a means of intellectual discourse. Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser were contemporaries and well-regarded friends (Greenblatt 775; Spenser 780). Considering the ongoing conversation through poetry and the extended allegory of Spenser’s epic, it is probable that Raleigh, like other prominent English figures of the time, made an appearance in The Faerie Queene. The friendship between these two poets is clearly presented in a letter Spenser wrote Raleigh and appended to the original 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene (which has since become the standard preface to the work) (Greenblatt 777). The letter is addressed “To the Right noble, and Valorous, Sir Walter Raleigh knight…” and concluded, “So humbly craving the continuance of your honorable favour towards me, and th’ eternall establishment of your happiness, I humbly take leave… Yours most humbly affectionate. Ed. Spenser” (Spenser 777, 780). Spenser’s gratitude is well reasoned considering it was Raleigh who brought Spenser from Ireland and into Queen Elizabeth’s court (Greenblatt 1023). This indebtedness to Raleigh, mixed with the extended allegory of Spenser’s epic, makes it credible that Spenser represented Raleigh in The Faerie Queene.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a poet, courtier, soldier, colonialist, and explorer - an adventurer intent on the expansion of the British Empire and in search of El Dorado (Greenblatt 1023; Emmerichs Feb. 7). Raleigh describes the golden vision of his desire and his intent on the conquering of new lands in The discovery of Guiana while The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd shows his belief in the impermanence of nature under British exploration (Emmerichs Feb. 7).
Raleigh wrote of the intent of his expedition to Guiana, “the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those so far extended beams of the Spanish nation” (Raleigh 1031). When Arthur’s shield is unveiled while battling Orgoglio, “The light whereof, that heaven’s light pas, / Such blazing brightnesse through the aier threw” and the giant was “amazed / At flashing beames of that sunshiny shield” (1.8.19-20). Arthur’s shield is analogous to Raleigh’s conquest. Spenser gives us the image of Raleigh, as Arthur, carrying “the shining glory of [his] conquest” into battle and toward unexplored lands beyond the Spanish empire. Raleigh also wrote that Guiana had “never [been] conquered or possessed by any Christian prince” (Raleigh 1032). Arthurian legend depicts King Arthur as the ideal Christian knight and Spenser’s Arthur is a prince, possessing Raleigh’s image of conquest. Spenser, knowing Raleigh well, analogized Raleigh’s notions of conquest into Arthur.
Nature is dangerous in Faerie Lond and in need of subjugation. One view of Orgoglio is as the embodiment of dangerous nature – an earthquake; perhaps the most dangerous natural phenomenon in England. Throughout the Early Modern Period, people believed an Aristotelian view of meteorology and that earthquakes were caused by great winds breaking free from the earth (Martin 266). The language of Orgoglio’s introduction is filled with the Early Modern image of an earthquake as an exhalation from the earth:
The greatest Earth his uncouth mother was,
And blustering Aeolus his boasting sire,
Who with his breath, which through the world doth pas,
Her hollow womb did secretly inspire,
And fild her hidden caves with stormie yre,
That she conceived (Spenser 1.7.9).
Spenser clearly states that Orgoglio is generated by boisterous wind blowing through the caves in the earth. Not only the giants’ genesis, but the description of its movement further establishes Orgoglio as an earthquake. His entrance is presaged by “a dreadfull sound, / Which through the wood loud bellowing, did rebownd, / That all the earth for terrour seemed to shake, / And trees did tremble” and when he walks, “The ground eke groned under him for dreed” (Spenser 1.7.7-8). Though these descriptions of Orgoglio could simply imply the great weight of the giant, its final demise at the stroke of Arthur’s “sparkling blade” reaffirms the clear image that he is indeed an earthquake given shape:
But soon out of his breast did pass,
That huge great body, which the Gyaunt bore,
Was vanish quite, and of that monstrous mas
Was nothing left, but like an emptie bladder was.
(Spenser 1.8.24)
Orgoglio is a bladder filled with hot air rumbling out of the earth’s caverns and when Arthur decapitates him, the wind is released and the bladder exhausts into harmlessness. With Orgoglio as an earthquake given physical form, he represents the dangers of wild nature. Prince Arthur slaying Orgoglio and nullifying the calamitous earthquake is analogous to Raleigh conquering and vanquishing wild, dangerous nature and uncivilized lands. Orgoglio’s defeat by Arthur is written as if the Prince were cutting down a mighty tree as an arborist would, limb by limb. Orgoglio’s club is a “snaggy Oke” which he buried in the ground from a misplaced blow. The giant becomes an extension of the tree-club as Prince Arthur fells him:
With blade all burning bright
He smote off his arme, which like a blocke
Did fall to ground, deprived of native might;
Large streames of bloud out of the truncked stocke
Forth gushed, like fresh water streame from riven rocke.
(Spenser 1.8.10.5-9)
Arthur continues to eliminate the natural hazard. He cuts off a leg and “down he tombled; as an aged tree” (Spenser 1.8.22.5-6). The analogy of Orgoglio as an earthquake given form or as the hazards of uncivilized nature directly supports the analogy of Arthur being Raleigh.
The second analogy of Orgoglio is similar to Errour’s, that being the corruption of the Catholic Church; a bladder filled with the hot air of the Catholic clergy. Language of corruption and infection surround the nature of Orgoglio: “This monsterous mass of earthly slime, / Puft up with emptie wind, a fild with sinfull crime” (1.7.9). “Underneath his filthy feet did tread / The sacred things, and holy heasts foretaught” is symbolic of the Catholic clergy muddying the Bible (1.7.18). His dungeon is particularly described as corrupt:
All the floore (too filthy to be told)
With bloud of guiltless babes, and innocents trew,
Which were slaine, as sheepe out of the fold,
Defiled was, that dreadfull was to view.
(Spenser1.8.35).
The empty bladder he dissolves into after his defeat is the quantification of Catholic truth in that their doctrine has been puffed up with lies. Orgoglio as Catholic corruption does not hinder the perception of Raleigh as Prince Arthur. While on expeditions, Raleigh frequently had violent encounters with Spanish and Portuguese Catholics. He had been reprimanded by Queen Elizabeth on multiple accounts for slaying these Catholics he encountered and later by King James (Emmerichs Nov. 5). The episode of Prince Arthur versus Orgoglio as Catholic corruption is then still analogous to Raleigh, but rather than taming the wild land, he is victoriously ridding the world of Catholics. Raleigh is seen as paving a safe passage for the expansion of the Protestant English nation.
Raleigh’s The discovery of Guiana uses sexual, forceful, penetrative language and equates the country to a virgin which “hath never been entered by any army of strength” and within her are “stores of gold” (Raleigh 1032). Arthur’s entrance into Orgoglio’s earthly dungeon is a similar forcefully penetrative act followed by metaphors common of Renaissance literature to depict the womb and vagina:
With percing point…
… he rent that yron dore,
With furious force, and indignation fell;
Where entered in, his foot could find no flore,
But all a deepe descent, as darke as hell,
That breathed ever forth a filthie banefull smell.
(Spenser 1.8.39).
And after forcing his way into the earthly womb:
There all within full rich arayd he found,
With royal arras and resplendent gold,
And did with store of every thing abound
That greatest Princes presence might behold.
(Spenser 1.8.35).
The stores of gold reflect not only to the gold profited by the Catholic Church, but also of Raleigh’s vision of the spoils of penetrating and conquering virgin land. Spenser gave Raleigh a fitting end to Book I, delivering his treasure pried out of the earth.
Sir Walter Raleigh as Prince Arthur works with Spenser’s paean to Queen Elizabeth as it equates Raleigh’s desire, El Dorado, with Prince Arthur’s desire, Gloriana. Through metaphor, Spenser is equating Queen Elizabeth, and by extension, England, as the City of Gold. We may never know the exact significance of Spenser’s symbols. Though many of them are obvious depictions of specific Renaissance issues, they each can be deciphered through different lenses producing a plethora of possible interpretations. The Faerie Queene is not as simple as Spenser’s letter to Raleigh explains it to be. It seems likely that the letter was either part of his allegory or a foil to his epic designed to stray the reader into over simplification. It is then possible too that the letter was part of a poetic discourse designed to tell Raleigh something specific and leave readers in the darke. If nothing else, this paper shows that The Faerie Queene should not be set aside as a transparent depiction of English Renaissance topics but has the mass and density to carry a scholarly conversation so long as there are inquisitive minds to do so. It has the depth and breadth to produce postulations as vast and deep as the darke.
Works Cited
Creel, Laura E. Arthur and Una: Mis-pairings and Delays in ‘The Faerie Queene’ Book I. MA thesis. Florida International University,
2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
Emmerichs, Sharon. “Marlowe & Raleigh.” Renaissance Literature. University of Alaska, Anchorage. 7 Feb. 2016. Lecture.
---. “Sir Walter Raleigh.” British Literature 1. University of Alaska, Anchorage. 5 Nov. 2015. Lecture.
---. “Spenser - The Faerie Queene continued.” Renaissance Literature. University of Alaska, Anchorage. 3 Feb. 2016. Lecture.
Greenblatt, Steven, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Martin, Craig. “The Ends of Weather: Teleology in Renaissance Meteorology” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 48.3 (2010): 259-282.
Raleigh, Walter Sir. “The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 1030-1033. Print.
Spenser, Edmund Sir. “The Faerie Queene.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 775-984. Print.