“So shedding manie teares”: The Problem of Passion in Spenser’s Book of Temperance
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In his old and yet still indispensable book on Spenser’s poetry, Paul Alpers famously states that “we find numerous inconsistencies, some of which produce major interpretive difficulties” in The Faerie Queene (5). Spenser’s treatment of the passions in the Book of Temperance exemplifies one of the numerous inconsistencies yielding no tidy theoretical solution to the ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic complexities of the passions. Spenser, on the one hand, clearly pays attention to the reader’s feelings―which Alpers argues give the poem poetic coherence―and works with “poetic motive...to elicit a response―to evoke, modify, or complicate feelings and attitudes” (Alpers 5) when he constructs with affective poetry pitiful spectacles such as Amavia’s and Phaon’s torments, and when he renders the ethical response that arises out of Guyon’s compassion. On the other hand, Spenser allows the Palmer and Guyon to possess the narrative space as moral philosophers and reduce the passions into an abstract subject. Put another way, the ethical valence of the passions ceaselessly oscillates between praxis and theoria. In so doing, Spenser refuses to offer a definitive answer to the traditional debate about the value or harm the passions pose and instead raises a vexing question about their ethical weight. Although the tension between the power of affect and the injunction of moral philosophy is tenacious, Spenser nevertheless makes a subtle and yet discernable suggestion that the passions may break out of the boundary of ethical discourse. Despite their Stoic denunciation of inordinate emotions, Guyon and the Palmer after all bury Amavia and Mordant, “So shedding many teares, they closed the earth agayne” (2.1.61.9). These tears―the tears for the dead―are, to appropriate Donne, “outward declarations” of natural tenderness or affection, which can be extended to a civil affection, the love of friends or fellow human beings (Sermons 163-64). Guyon and the Palmer become most ethical when they cease to be moral philosophers of the passions and let themselves moved by compassion.
Abstract
In his old and yet still indispensable book on Spenser’s poetry, Paul Alpers famously states that “we find numerous inconsistencies, some of which produce major interpretive difficulties” in The Faerie Queene (5). Spenser’s treatment of the passions in the Book of Temperance exemplifies one of the numerous inconsistencies yielding no tidy theoretical solution to the ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic complexities of the passions. Spenser, on the one hand, clearly pays attention to the reader’s feelings―which Alpers argues give the poem poetic coherence―and works with “poetic motive...to elicit a response―to evoke, modify, or complicate feelings and attitudes” (Alpers 5) when he constructs with affective poetry pitiful spectacles such as Amavia’s and Phaon’s torments, and when he renders the ethical response that arises out of Guyon’s compassion. On the other hand, Spenser allows the Palmer and Guyon to possess the narrative space as moral philosophers and reduce the passions into an abstract subject. Put another way, the ethical valence of the passions ceaselessly oscillates between praxis and theoria. In so doing, Spenser refuses to offer a definitive answer to the traditional debate about the value or harm the passions pose and instead raises a vexing question about their ethical weight. Although the tension between the power of affect and the injunction of moral philosophy is tenacious, Spenser nevertheless makes a subtle and yet discernable suggestion that the passions may break out of the boundary of ethical discourse. Despite their Stoic denunciation of inordinate emotions, Guyon and the Palmer after all bury Amavia and Mordant, “So shedding many teares, they closed the earth agayne” (2.1.61.9). These tears―the tears for the dead―are, to appropriate Donne, “outward declarations” of natural tenderness or affection, which can be extended to a civil affection, the love of friends or fellow human beings (Sermons 163-64). Guyon and the Palmer become most ethical when they cease to be moral philosophers of the passions and let themselves moved by compassion.
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