Page 169 - Costellazioni 5

DANIEL T. LOCHMAN, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

The network that comprises Britomart’s revelations is built of
textual memories that are reinstantiated in varied narrative contexts,
and, as is characteristic of networked memories, it is scaffolded with
others, including a related network of near-slayings. The la er extends
back again to Sans loy’s stunned discovery in Book 1 that the apparent
Redcrosse was Archimago in disguise. Book 4 returns to this narrative
experience and aligns it with the potential trauma of the near-slaying
during single combat of both Britomart and Arthegall at their first
meeting. After Britomart unhorses first Scudamour and then Arthegall
following a tournament, the martial maid unwi ingly engages in a
long sword fight with her future husband. After Arthegall delivers the
“wicked stroke” that shears off a “ventayle” and reveals Britomart’s
“angels face” and its border of “yellow heare / Hauing through stirring
loosd [its] wonted band” (4. 6. 19. 1-3, 4. 6. 20. 1-3), he responds with
a “secret feare” and “trembling horror” that stirs memories of Brito-
mart’s previous revelations. Moreover, he is “benumbd” to inaction
and at first tries to make cognitive sense of what he sees by considering
the woman a “heauenly goddesse” (4. 6. 22. 4). Because he is stunned,
Arthegall loses his advantage, and it is the uncomprehending Brito-
mart who then gives him the choice to fight or die. When Arthegall
unmasks to reveal his face, Britomart in turn recognizes the man
prophesied to be the father of her child, and she, as he had been, is
stunned to inaction and silence — this episodic complex of recogni-
tion, fear, and future-oriented revelation being heightened by the
threat of death to either or both characters essential to the destiny of
Britain but ending with the characters being reconciled and, after some
36
time of chivalric courting, betrothed. Other iterations of this memory
appear in episodes in Book 5, where Spenser toys with readers’ expec-
tations by twice presenting a surprising unmasking. Although here a
vengeful jilted lover and Amazon-like Queen Radigund replaces Brit-
omart in ba le, the unhelmeting by Arthegall of the woman’s face

36 When Arthegall’s identity is revealed to Britomart, his “louely face,” “Tem-
pred with sternesse and stout maiestie” (4. 6. 26. 2-3) stops Britomart’s action
and stirs her memory of Arthegall’s image in her father’s “enchaunted glass”
and the origin of her search for Arthegall.

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