Spenser's Allegory of Love: Social Vision in Books III, IV, and V of the Faerie Queene.

In this accessible, commonsensical, and provocative book, Broaddus analyzes Books III, IV, and V of The Faerie Queene in the light of Renaissance theories of conception. Everyone used to think Spenser followed Aristotle who affirms (contrary to experience) that the male contributes form to the embryo, the female, only matter. Broaddus has proved that Spenser followed the Galenic theory, as exemplified in Helkiah Crooke's Microcosmographia (1631; first ed. 1615): both male and female have testes and produce seed; both are driven by sexual desires; both impose form on matter. From this Broaddus derives compelling and revisionary, if sometimes overheated, physiological interpretations of Britomart's innamoramento, the Garden of Adonis, the House of Busyrane, the Temple of Venus, and the Marriage of the Thames and the Medway. His readings are bold but not too bold, his Spenser "conservative, but not merely orthodox." Ideal love, while sometimes "sublimated," arises from the body; contrary to Broaddus and popular belief, this doesn't preclude Platonism in that even Plotinus and Porphyry affirmed a form-giving female seed. For the most part, Broaddus leaves untouched the wider significance of Galen's reproductive theory for Spenser, e.g., his relation to 'Galenic feminism'; instead, he insists that Spenser like Crooke inconsistently retained in most respects the hierarchical view of the binaries of male/female, form/matter, active/passive. The undeniable importance of subordination in Spenser, coupled with Broaddus's privileging of plot over abstract statement, inflects his interpretations of Isis Church (143-45), and Mercilla's Castle.

Whereas for Lewis and Roche the characters under discussion symbolize various permutations of the sex drive, for Broaddus and his Galenism they all dramatize this drive in their "interior life" (15, 159-60, n. 3). Britomart, for instance, awakens sexually when she begins to produce seed; she thus acquires an interiority founded on desire. She is important not for what she figures in the static allegory - monogamous chastity - but for how she attains her desire. Her attacker, Spenser's armed Cupid, is not invariably bad, he is just "psychological," whereas Spenser's "unarmed Cupid [is good only in a limited sense, being associated with animals and] with Venus, who is identified consistently throughout The Faerie Queene with the physiological causes of sexual desire" (67). Courtiers such as Ralegh/Timias learn to subordinate themselves to Belphoebe/Elizabeth and her active, virginal lifestyle; other men learn to subordinate themselves not to their ladies but to love; each exemplary woman takes her lover "for her lord."

Ignoring the fact that Amoret was kidnapped just "before the bride was bedded" and rejecting attempts to compare and contrast her innamoramento with Britomart's, Broaddus dismisses the current interpretation of Amoret's experiences at the House of Busyrane: "it is not likely that [Spenser] would focus a climactic episode . . . on the inhibitions with which a bride may anticipate her wedding night [but see Catullus 61; Chaucer, Man of Law's Tale II 708-14] or would see as serious concerns either such inhibitions or the male assertiveness that could cause them" (90). Busyrane is simply an external seducer, a rival of Scudamour, attempting to instill in Amoret a false notion of love - gallantry leading to adultery; he is undersexed like Malbecco and Proteus, needing to have his "Desyre" "kindled busily" and auto-erotically "by his higher faculties" (84); that he wounds Amoret means he is a threat "to love and marriage as social institutions" (90) - surely a reading more allegorical than psychological. At the Temple of Venus, Doubt, Delay, and Danger are within Amoret; her obstructionism and that of Womanhood are not normative; Scudamour's aggressiveness is proper male behavior, which Concord confirms by abetting the abduction (61, 83-84). Broaddus never mentions the Amoretti. My reservations notwithstanding, Broaddus covers the secondary scholarship, considering its bulk, judiciously and sensitively; he lays an indispensable foundation for those scientific interpretations of Spenser which are sure to follow.

DAVID ALVAREZ CAROL KASKE Cornell University