From the Fountain to the Well: Redcrosse Learns to Read

Abstract

From the Fountain to the Well:Redcrosse Learns to Read Hester Lees-Jeffries Much attention has been paid to the unfinished, open, "end-lesse" nature of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, in recent criticism in particular. I do not dispute this approach to the text: many of the labyrinthine, allusive and intertextual qualities that it has illuminated and elucidated are germane to my discussion. Yet book 1 of the poem is in many respects a highly "finished," discrete literary unit; moreover, it is itself vitally concerned with beginnings and endings, origins and sources and, especially, the poet's own negotiations of their congruences and confluences. In this reading, I will suggest that in book 1 Spenser employs various kinds of fountains to explore ideas about sources (including the humanist return ad fontes), questions of genre, the relationship between landscape and narrative, Protestant history and polemic, and his own inheritances, responsibilities and anxieties as a poet. Some of what I will show and argue below is necessarily synthetic, juxtaposing some long-established strands of Spenser criticism. My focus on the fountains, however, is a fresh one, and aims to show that in Spenser's usage this figure is far from being either merely topographical set dressing or a dead metaphor. Rather, it is a syncretic device around which his narratives and ethical concerns frequently coalesce.1 In book 1 the difficulties of Redcrosse's quest and the obstacles that he faces are often brought about by his shortcomings as a reader or interpreter [End Page 135] of signs. Redcrosse "misreads" characters but, more crucially, he misreads genre. This means that he spends the first half of the book in a story that is not rightfully his own. Whatever the relationship of Spenser's "Letter to Raleigh" to the main body of the poem, it seems reasonable to assume that included in Spenser's avowed intent of "fashion[ing] a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" might be some prescription of the proper way to read, of what should be read and of how the reader should situate a text in relation to both its literary antecedence and its contemporary intertexts. In Redcrosse's case, learning to read properly is seemingly part of his task as a Christian knight. Redcrosse's initial deficiencies as a reader can be seen as a caution to the reader of the poem, as well as denoting Spenser's own anxieties over the aesthetic, generic and ethical position of his project. The motif of the fountain can first be introduced in relation to the Christian (and especially the Protestant humanist) imperative to right reading. The first homily in the 1562 Certayne Sermons (more commonly known as the Book of Homilies) is "A fruiteful exhortacion to the readyng and knowledge of holye Scripture," which opens thus: Vnto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessarye or profitable, then the knowledge of holy scripture: forasmuche as in it is conteyned Goddes true worde, settynge forthe his glorye, and also mannes duety. And there is no trueth nor doctrine necessary for our iustification, and euerlasting saluacion, but that is or maie be drawen out of that fountayne and wel of trueth.2 This straightforward metaphorical identification of the Bible as a life-giving fountain accords perfectly with the symbolism of the Well of Life in canto 11: yet, as this discussion will show, fountains in Spenser are only very rarely so unambiguous. Rather, fountains tend to operate as sites of overt syncretism and intertextuality, taxing the interpretative resources of the reader and frequently, as in Redcrosse's case, misleading the protagonist. In book 1, they furnish the landscape of the narrative with catalytic (or catastrophic) landmarks, which shape both Redcrosse's quest and the reading of it. I will elucidate the fountains of book 1 in relation to three influences, in which concerns with sources and genre tend to overlap. The first (and largest) is religious writing. This will include the Bible but also other religious writings that could have been among Spenser's influences, mainly about the reading of Scripture. Chief among these are Erasmus's Enchiridion (1533), which [End Page 136] furnishes...

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