Ley 115 de febrero 8 de 1994

The concept of primitivism, introduced in ancient texts and revived in the Renaissance, weighs heavily in Spenser’s work. Aspects of primitivism, “a broad term often used of various expressions of human malcontent with the present manifesting itself in a longing for earlier,

simpler, better conditions of life” (Harrison 39), can be seen in every book of The Faerie

Queene, but most often in Books 1 and 6. In their influential text, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas describe two types of primitivism: chronological and cultural. Chronological primitivism is “in short, a kind of philosophy of history, a theory, or a customary assumption, as to the time . . . at which the most excellent condition of human life, or the best state of the world in general, must be supposed to occur” (1), which usually

“suppose[s] that the highest degree of excellence or happiness in man’s life existed at the

beginning of history” (2). References to the Golden World in ancient texts59

as well as references

to prelapsarian Eden in Renaissance Christian texts60 demonstrate this concept of chronological

primitivism. Spenser demonstrates the concept most explicitly in the proem to Book 5, saying, So oft as I with state of present time,

The image of the antique world compare,

59 _{See, for example, Hesiod’s “golden race of mortal men” (Works and Days 111) and Ovid’s Golden Age, “when}

Man yet new, / No rule but uncorrupted reason knew: / And, with a native bent, did good pursue” (89-91).

When as mans age was in his freshest prime, And the first blossome of faire vertue bare,

Such oddes I finde twixt those, and these which are (5.proem.1) . . .

For during Saturnes ancient raigne it’s sayd,

That all the world with goodnesse did abound: All loued vertue, no man was affrayd

Of force, ne fraud in whight was to be found. (5.proem.9)

The narrator of The Faerie Queene, then, fully engages with the concept of chronological

primitivism, upholding a point in mankind’s history as the pinnacle of achievement and

suggesting that contemporary society has become corrupted.61

While this reference may have become somewhat conventional due to the Renaissance poets’ tendency to model their works after ancient texts, Spenser’s adherence to cultural, as well as chronological, primitivism suggests that his engagement with primitivism goes beyond mere literary trope. William Keach notes that “chronological primitivism is a self-consciously manipulated artistic stance in Spenser’s poetry, and this is even more conspicuously the case with cultural primitivism” (557). Cultural primitivism, like chronological primitivism, values a

simper lifestyle, but it does not necessarily assign that lifestyle to a past era.62 Lovejoy and Boas

define cultural primitivism as

61

For an alternate reading of this, see D.C. Allen, who writes of pessimism in the Renaissance, saying that “Spenser complained of the moral disintegration of man since the youth of the world, a figment that is especially Ovidian and that explains, perhaps, the fundamental motive of the Faerie Queene as a sugar-coated means of inculcating ethical idealism” (215).

62 _{While they are not the focus of this discussion, Meliboe and the Hermit, both of whom rejected the court world for}

the discontent of the civilized with civilization, or with some conspicuous and characteristic feature of it. It is the belief of men living in a relatively highly evolved and complex cultural condition that a life far simpler and less sophisticated in some or in all respects is a more desirable life (7).

In Renaissance poetry, cultural primitivism most often takes the form of pastoral, and Spenser’s work is no exception. Helen Cooper explains that “the metaphoric nature of pastoral allowed poets to use the mode for social, political, and religious comment, while the model of Virgil’s Eclogues lent authority to its use as a symbolic pattern for poetic activity itself” (529). Spenser

takes advantage of this rich context in Book 6 of The Faerie Queene, where heemploys the

pastoral mode, engaging in cultural primitivism.63 This sojourn becomes so attractive to

Calidore, the knight of courtesy, that he abandons his quest to indulge in an “escape for the imagination . . . [which may have appealed to his] recalcitrance to some or most of the

inhibitions imposed by current moral codes, or to the alluring dream, or the hope, of a life with little or no toil or strain of body or mind” (Lovejoy and Boas 9). While in reality the “simpler” life would involve quite a lot of physical toil, poetry has the luxury of presenting an idealized conception of a more primitive culture. The appeal of such a life may be due not just to the complexities of court life, but also its artificiality. G.M. Pinciss explains,

The frustration caused by a rigid, elaborate and artificial code of courtly manners precluding spontaneity of expression and denying natural conduct led men to long to escape the repressions of society, to live unrestrained in nature. Accordingly,

63

Keach views pastoral as a convergence of chronological and cultural primitivism “which offers a fiction of innocence and simplicity that was presumably universal during the Golden Age and may still be imagined to survive among rustic people uncontaminated by decadent civilization” (557), but attributing both types to pastoral seems redundant given the definition of cultural primitivism.

the wild man then became a model for human conduct, a creature free, happy and loving. (70)

Certainly in the context of elaborate, detailed courtesy manuals and specific expectations regarding skilled yet seemingly artless behavior and speech, the relative simplicity of wild or pastoral life would come as a welcome relief.

Primitivism—particularly cultural primitivism—serves at least one other rhetorical

purpose in The Faerie Queene. Because primitivism removes the action from the traditional

court setting, the reader has the opportunity to see Spenser’s characters without the outward show of courtesy necessarily found at court. Pinciss points out that “the savage man’s removal from society allowed him to display the effects of heredity and environment on individual development” (89). In other words, the shell of courtliness has no place in the primitive or wild world. While this sometimes leads to the agressively discourteous behavior of the brigands and the Salvage Nation (see Chapter 2), it also enables Spenser to engage with the idea of an innate

moral courtesy. Moreover, movement between the primitive and court settings throughout The

Faerie Queene gives Spenser the opportunity to explore courtesy in the wilderness as well as wildness in the court and thus complicate what it means to be courteous.