Midterm Flashcards
(28 cards)
Allegory
An allegory is an extended metaphor which reveals meaning about current sociopolitical events. Faerie Queen supposedly QEI. The story situates Catholic church as full of corruption and deceit. Duessa and her falsehood for example represents the Roman Catholic Church.
Error
Error’s babies feed on her, representing cannibalism and a reverse breastfeeding. Scattered brood = religious sects, shows how sects feed off religion, and how people who take advantage of others for personal gain. Maternal imagery shows how church created various dangerous ideology. Poisonous breastfeeding demonstrates how Roman Catholic propaganda seeks to falsify and harm faith.
Archimago
Shape-shifting sorcerer, separates Redcrosse from truth. Also: arch magician, creator, architect. He is the manifestation of the devil. Attempts to contain Red in dungeon = symbolic hell. Protestants commonly used sorcery to vilify Catholics. Analogous to Pope who uses sacred traditions for self-gain. Archimago demonstrates hypocrisy, warns about the power of magic. His weakness is sexual jealousy, cuckolddry. He represents inadequacy of individual to overcome demonic.
Duessa
Represents DUALITY. Falsehood, skin-deep beauty, Roman Catholic Church. Pretends to be Fidessa (Fidelity). Antithesis to Una. Showcases female power over male identity, prowess.
Redcrosse
Represents HOLINESS. Armed with bloody cross to signify faith and sacrifice by Christ. His entire journey symbolizes internal struggle as a result of faith. His story is a parallel political narrative to St. George. His journey derives from Faerie Queene commanding him to slay dragon and save Una’s family.
Una
Represents TRUTH. Accompanies Redcrosse and separation from her is akin to separation from truth.
Fradubio/tree
Fradubio warns Redcrosse not to trust Duessa but Redcrosse ignores this warning. Fradubio (=doubt), parallel to Red who is separated from lover and wrongly trusts Duessa. Establishes rhetorical pattern for Red’s immaturity.
Britomart
Represents CHASITY (sexual purity but also being virtuous). Her quest is to seek lover from magic mirror. Suffers from lovesickness.
Castle Joyous
Lavishly decorated and decorated with pictures of Venus. Must renounce own love or defeat 6 knights. The 6 knights represent stages of lechery. Castle also demonstrates excess passion and overindulgence.
Malecasta
Challenge to Britomart’s chasity. Foreshadows Britomart’s own foolishness for love; her actions challenges the idea of love at first sight.
Blazon poem
Rhetorical catalog of women’s beauty. (Example, Britomart escaping Castle Joyous and Gardante’s gaze on her).
Merlin
Cures Britomart of Lovesickness and prophecizes her relation to QEI.
Humoral body
Body constantly in flux due to humors. (EX: Black Bile = Melancholic). Women = cold and moist (phlegmatic) and Men = hot + dry (choleric).
Lovesickness
Excess fluides require purge (menstruation). Female seed release necessary post-puberty because the build up of seed causes fainting, pale/green skin, madness, melancholy. The cure is marriage/sex.
House of Pride
Seven deadly sins reside here and signifies that Pride is the base of all sins or that all sin leads to pride. The castle is described as looking beautiful but has a rotting foundation.
Ghosts (Catholic vs. Protestants)
Catholic = ghosts teach and perform God's work. Protestant = ghosts are manifestations of devil to haunt.
Cure vs. healing
Medicine is diminished as curative. Herbal cure contrasts with spiritual healing.
Hell journey purpose
1) cultivate fear in the reader
2) invites reader to question if punishment fits the crime; fairness and if people are placed fairly
Grotesque body
Idea that the body is unfinished, porous, and susceptible to elements and humors.
Geohumoralism
Geohumoralism is attributes placed in regional terms. Middlers = Britons, temeprate, balanced. Northeners = Saxons, valiant, brute. Saxons displayed as wicked, foreign, corrupt while Britons are restorative, and a civilizing force.
Sensational body
Sensational body is the body caught in grip of intense sensation. It eroticizes pain. Gratuitous violence against women highlights aesthetics of excess. Think of females in horror.
Satyrane
Half-man, Half-satyr = conflates barbaric and humane. He destroys animals with symbolic resonance; overcomes animals to show self-restraint, victory over negative passions. Actions impose hierarchical structure on nature. He is trained to be insensitive, fearless. Unbridled masculinity render him beast-like. Defines masculinity as dallying with death.
Garden of Adonis
Represents natural paradise and contrasts the barren landscape of hell. Defies human labor. Spontaneous, asexual reproduction suggests reincarnation, cyclical. Establishes Time as enemy.
Time
Time deliberately destroys without regard; is the enemy; is always eroding garden. Time as enemy suggests that beauty and youth are valued and preferable, decay as threat to immortals.
