Faerie Queene, Book VI, Part I

I'm almost there!  Almost finished!  I'd get finished a lot quicker if I was more on the spot with these posts.  They're so long I tend to put them off.

But now we're on Book VI, which is really pretty strange.  Book V consisted mostly of allegorical versions of recent events in Elizabeth's time, and Book VI kind of goes off the rails.  This is the Book of Courtesye, which Spenser partly defines as the art of appropriate speech (or, you might even say, rhetoric?).  The Knight of Courtesye is Sir Calidore, known by all the court as a naturally gentle knight, mild, gracious, comely, and muscular.  He always knows what to say and loves truth and honesty.  But he is sent off upon his quest without a clue of how to accomplish it.  He wanders aimlessly, confused and overwhelmed by his task...and in the end, his quest is actually undone.  All of the Faerie Queene project seems to unravel under Spenser's embittered pen.

Yeah, OK, it's been a year

Calidore's quest is an exciting one; he is to capture the Blatant Beast, a terrible monster.  Of course, the Blatant Beast is also scandalous, lying rumor -- backbiting, reputation-ruining, evil speaking.  In other words, it is language gone wrong, and Calidore's quest is to redeem language and make it clear, useful, and honest.  It is also an impossible quest, and it takes place in a world that is getting more unreasonable, frightening, and violent.

When we meet Calidore, he already has his quest, and he meets Artegall coming home.  Calidore confesses to Artegall how confused he is, but Artegall is able to comfort him by relating his recent meeting with the Beast.  He then meets a Squire tied to a tree, who tells him about an evil castle that demands a toll: ladies' heads are shaved and knights' beards are pulled off.  Briana (shrill) collects the hair to make a cloak for her lover Crudor.  Maleffort, the seneschal, chased the Squire and his damsel, tied up the Squire, and is now seen dragging the girl away.  Calidore gives chase and kills Maleffort right in his own castle gate.  Briana scolds him, and Calidore returns a speech about civility, which she doesn't buy at all.  (This brings up the perennial question: how can we defend civilization from brutality without becoming brutal ourselves?)  Crudor attacks, and Calidore wins through luck -- not skill.  He makes Crudor promise to marry Briana, which makes her happy, and all is well.

Calidore finds the tied-up Squire

Calidore is so charming that nobody notices how clueless he is.  He next meets a youth fighting with a knight, plus there is a lady in soiled clothing.  The youth kills the knight (!) -- he is a handsome youth in green, and explains that he met the knight riding and kicking the lady along the way.  When the youth upbraided the knight for his behavior, the knight attacked.  The lady then explains her story: she and the knight were riding along peacefully enough but, in a glade, met another knight and lady 'sporting' together.  Her knight became jealous, wanted a turn too (!), and attacked the other, unarmed knight. The lady hid, and when she could not be found, the knight became angry and took it out on his own lady by booting her along.  The youth is Tristan; Calidore makes him his squire, and Tristan takes the dead knight's armor and leads the lady away.  Calidore then goes and finds the other unlucky knight, who is only wounded, and they go to the knight's home castle to seek aid.

The castle belongs to Aldus (old knight), father of Aladine, the wounded guy.  The lady who hid from the rotten (and now dead) knight is Priscilla, a guest there; she loves Aladine but her father wants her to marry up, so she is worried that he will discover their tryst.  Priscilla nurses Aladine so well that he awakes, and they ask Calidore for help.  He covers for them by fetching the head and telling an edited version of the story.  Calidore then leaves....only to promptly interrupt two lovers in a glade.  He sits down with them to tell him all about his adventures, which is a little bit tactless.  Serena, the lady, wanders off to look at flowers, and is attacked by the Blatant Beast!  (Wandering around is never a good idea in the Faerie Queene; it implies carelessness.)  Calidore gives chase, whereupon the Beast drops the lady and runs off.  Calidore continues after the Beast...and at this point the story switches to the lover knight, Calepine.  He tends to her and seeks aid; they see a knight and a lady about to ford a river, and he begs for help, but gets only abuse.  Taking Serena (who is bleeding profusely) across alone, he then challenges the rude knight, who simply laughs at him.  They go to the nearest castle, but oh no -- it belongs to the rude knight, Turpine, who refuses them entry (!).  What to do?

As Turpine is chasing Calepine around, a wild man comes by and feels natural pity.  He takes care of Turpine and then takes the lovers to his forest home, where he heals them with herbs.  One day Calepine goes for a walk unarmed (oops) and meets a bear carrying a baby!  He chases, and when the bear rounds on him, he shoves a stone down its throat.  Thus he saves the baby, which is swaddled and unhurt.  Lost, he wanders aimlessly with the baby until he meets Matilda, who sorrows because she and her brave husband Sir Bruin have no child. (This seems suspiciously fairy-tale like to me.)  Calepine hands the baby off and wanders away, hoping to find Serena in the forest.

The wild man can't find Calepine, and Serena is so upset that she's killing herself with woe and bleeding.  (She bleeds a lot.)  She decides to leave on Calepine's horse, so the wild man tries to put on the armor and go with her -- although the sword is missing.  They meet Arthur and Timias (who is friends with Belphoebe again) and we get some news of what they've been up to.  Timias has three great enemies, brothers.  They sent the Beast after Timias, who was in big trouble until Arthur arrived to help and drove the Beast away.  Serena then tells her plight to them; she's getting infected, and Timias is wounded too, so when they all reach a hermit's chapel, they stay there.

Wounds inflicted by the Beast, being infamous accusations, hurt much more than regular wounds.  The hermit has to treat them carefully.  He must cure their infections by teaching them to behave properly, so as not to invite easy slander.  Cured, they leave together, and meet a maiden in a mess.  But now we switch to Arthur and the wild man, who are searching for Calepine.  Instead, they find Turpine's castle standing open.  In a massive fight with the castle folk, the wild man is so enraged that he kills a lot of them, while Arthur chases Turpine right into his lady's chamber, where he is humiliated and loses his knighthood for his awfulness.  The lady is Blandissa, and she gives a peace feast but is in fact all false courtesy.


So that's the story so far, and I'm interested to see where this goes!  What has become of poor lost Calidore?  Who is the messy maiden?  And Spenser is bringing up all sorts of questions and challenges to courtly thought.  The handsome youth is assumed to be noble because he's handsome and nice, but is he?  Does gentle blood really confer generosity and nobility?  The wild man is 'naturally' noble.  There are also questions about truth vs. social ease in Priscilla and Aladine's story; Calidore is courteous and honest, but he lies for them.  Is courtesy really the same thing as honesty?   Oh, so many questions!