Poetic Parthenogenesis and Spenser's Idea of Creation in The Faerie Queene.(Critical Essay)

Recent scholarship has been interested in the early modern period as an age of self-actualization for the writer. Even in a moment in which criticism has distanced itself from old humanism, Renaissance man reappears in the works of such critics as Stephen Greenblatt, who describes how writers demonstrate new forms of subjectivity and employ sophisticated models of self-representation in which they seem to think themselves into being. While such accounts question humanist belief in individual autonomy, they also risk reenacting old stories in new critical histories. [1] However, this story of self-actualization is not limited to literary studies. Descriptions of what authors such as Spenser do to "make themselves" men have a curious affiliation with accounts of how a different kind of creation was thought to function--biological reproduction. In work that has been almost as influential as Greenblatt's, Thomas Laqueur argues that natural philosophers likewise understood man's thoughts to be a powerful means of self-production. As the rational part of physical creation, male "conception" was essentially an "idea" that was realized in material form through the female. Both literally and physically, men thought progeny into being. [2]

While nuanced and heuristically powerful, these accounts may tell us more about our understanding of creation than they do about the Renaissance's. [3] Recognizing that feminist readers have called attention to the physical aspects of Laqueur's account, this essay focuses on the corollary issue of the cognitive--and in this context aesthetic--implications of the one-sex model. [4] Saying that men could think ideas into being involves accepting not just Galenic humoral theory but also an Aristotelian model of creation that was increasingly contested during this period. This essay revises this critical perspective by examining how Spenser, in The Faerie Queene, draws on contemporary recognition that men's thoughts were not sufficient to bring forth new creation. In doing so, I focus on moments of initiation in The Faerie Queene that are described using the language of biological reproduction: the Letter to Ralegh (pp. 15-8); Redcrosse's first battle with Errour (1.2); Arthur's dream of Gloriana (1.9); and Britomart's experiences after seeing Artegall in Merlin's mirror (3.2). [5] These moments of initiation are represented in biological terms because they exemplify Spenser's understanding of poetry as the expression of an idea. In engaging Aristotelian natural philosophy, these initiatory moments self-consciously demonstrate Spenser's belief that poetry must be not just entertainment or edification, but the material expression of an idea. Having said that, however, I also argue that Spenser's creations do not remain Aristotelian, but instead depict perversions of that model current in the early modern period. Ultimately, Spenser's portrayal of what constitutes creation encompasses biological, ethical, and poetic acts in ways at odds with critical understandings of early modern interiority and poetic s elf-actualization. Spenser's evocation of the language of biological reproduction responds not so much to a breakdown in Aristotelian reproductive theory itself, but to a breakdown in the poetics implied by that theory. Following Judith Butler's suggestion that, in bodies, we experience a "process of materialization," this essay expands on recent feminist analysis of physical sexuality in The Faerie Queene by looking at Spenser's initiation scenes as moments of intellectual sexuality through which corporeality is realized. [6]

More than Petrarch's Canzoniere, Shakespeare's sonnets, or Paradise Lost, The Faerie Queene has been read as the exemplary Renaissance self-creation narrative. For Greenblatt, Spenser is a primary instance of "self-fashioning" because he is a son who re-fathers himself: through The Faerie Queene and the patronage it generates, a man who began as "the son of a modest free journeyman of the Merchant Taylor's Company" becomes "a substantial colonial landowner... 'a gentleman dwelling in the county of Cork.'" [7] Richard Helgerson shows us how Spenser transforms his status by redefining authorship as a category: as early as The Shepheardes Calender (1579), Spenser anticipates his national laureate role when he uses Colin Clout to define poetry not as private desire but as public duty. [8] For Louis Montrose, the self-formation in The Faerie Queene is primarily political as the queen and her political power become "subject" both of and to this text that seeks to redefine Spenser's position in the Elizabethan cour t. [9] In discussing the problems that protestant writers faced in trying to avoid poetic idolatry, Linda Gregerson argues that The Faerie Queene is a device "for the formation, and reformation, of subjects." [10]

As these and other critics suggest, The Faerie Queene is an epic production in which knights, readers, and the author participate in forms of self-actualization. Throughout the poem, Spenser uses the language of biological reproduction to characterize this process. Adapting Plotinus and Sir Philip Sidney, he uses this language to define authorial creation as a form of spiritual and ethical rebirth. Just as the reader "makes" himself a gentleman by participating vicariously in the experiences of the knight quester, Spenser presents himself as a "self-made" man who articulates himself in and through this parthenogenesis, the production of The Faerie Queene. In his twinned creation accounts, however, Spenser represents an intellectual tradition that found its definitions of man as a creator--both poetic and scientific--increasingly in conflict with one another. Where recent scholarly accounts emphasize the power in self-creation, the forms of creation depicted by Spenser also reflect concern that man's thoughts were no longer sufficient to bring forth new creation.

This essay focuses on one aspect of Aristotle's biology that became widely influential not only as a scientific explanation, but also as the basis for aesthetic theory. Aristotle's claim that creation begins with an idea that originates in the male is, initially, a biological theory that revises the tradition he inherits from Plato. Plato uses biological metaphors--ejaculation, pregnancy--to describe poetic creation in order to argue that intellectual creations like poetry are higher forms of physical reproduction. For Plato, men who think differ from those who merely procreate. [11] Where Plato uses the term eidoV to refer to metaphysical substances that exceed human intellect and creation, Aristotle redefines eidoV to refer to the form within man which is expressed through his creative acts. [12] Aristotle thus collapses Plato's distinction between poetic and physical creation when he describes physical procreation as the imposition of the male's idea onto and into the female body. By arguing that the male contributes the rational part of procreation, Aristotle's model ensures that the male is always involved in what Plato called the "procreancy of the spirit," even while procreating in the flesh. [13]

Even as Aristotle's biology was modified by Galen's more moderate understanding of the female contribution to procreation, his cultural narrative remained central. [14] Thus Gabriel Harvey's theory of poetic imitation is, at heart, identical to Hieronymus Fabricus's definition of biological procreation. For Harvey, poetry involves conception: like a mother who will focus her mind on beautiful statues to get beautiful children, the poet imitates beautiful poetry. [15] Fabricus similarly describes the procreative process as occurring just as "a bed comes into being from the carpenter and the wood." [16] This statement implies more than a simple Renaissance analogy; the two writers both recognize that man's creations are the physical consequence of an intellectual act. Having the ability to impose ideas on an otherwise chaotic material world elevates the human male above women, other lower animals, and nature as a whole. Although evidence refuting Aristotle's biology did not exist until after the development of the compound microscope, this gendered model of creation becomes increasingly problematic during the early modern period. While it is not possible to discuss here the larger counter-Aristotelian movement, reactions against theories of man as an intellectual progenitor appear in anatomy texts, gynecological tracts, and theological satire. Writers such as Ambrose Pare describe women giving birth to monstrous offspring: babies are marked with red spots because their mothers coveted strawberries; white women produce black babies after looking at pictures of Moors; harelips occur when mothers are frightened by animals. These stories pervert Aristotle's paradigm in describing women's ideas, not men's, as a formative force. [17] Other sources depict an equally monstrous alternative: males taking the physical part in reproduction by giving birth. Religious satires reveal "Pope John" to be "Pope Joan," giving birth in the streets of Rome; roosters stand trial for "the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg"; me n report sexual transformations in which they become pregnant. [18] Instead of giving the female control over the rational aspect of creation, these stories show the male grotesquely entangled in the physical part of creation.

Spenser responds to the possibilities inherent in such perverse, "unnatural" generations when he defines the romance quest as a search that creates new life. As consequences of the knights' quests, spiritual rebirth, military induction, and sexual maturation are described using the language of biological reproduction. Like pregnancy, quests involve a nine-month gestation: Redcrosse is held captive for thrice three months (18.38, lines 6-7), Britomart's lovesickness "First rooting tooke" nine months before she begins her quest for Artegall (3.3.16, line 6), while Amavia's search for her husband is coextensive with her own pregnancy (2.153). Just as Aristotelian biology depicts children as the result of male ideas "informing" female matter, Spenser defines the quest as a birth that is the expression of an idea. This claim about the importance of Aristotelian "ideas" is intended to augment current understandings of how Platonic "ideas" work in The Faerie Queene. As the knights develop toward ideal qualities, th ey participate in the movement from becoming to being, from physical reality to abstract idea, that Plato describes in the Timaeus. In this sense, the quests are Platonic. Yet, for most Renaissance thinkers, ideas were not immanent or even innate. Rather, in keeping with Aristotle's definition of eidoV, ideas are the product of human cognition, "made" through man's apprehension and intellection. [19] Understood in the context provided by this intellectual tradition, The Faerie Queene retains a basic material quality that cannot be translated into abstraction. By using the language of biological reproduction to describe the way that characters, in some sense, come into being in his text, Spenser suggests that ideas are not just the end of the quest--or text--but also its beginning.