When considering the poem in relation to its social and literary context the answer is an unequivocal “no.” Although that which is comic has traditionally been ignored if not outright derogated by critics going back to Plato the ability to make a joke has long been perceived as a valuable tool to orators and rhetoricians. “Jesting is a neglected subject in historical studies of rhetoric. Its neglect, however, cannot be attributed to a lack of discussions in the rhetorical treatises themselves. From antiquity into the nineteenth century, many rhetoricians viewed jesting as part, oftentimes an important part, of rhetoric” (Holcomb 1). Indeed in the early modern period jesting and comic affectation were viewed as necessary skills particularly for gentlemen, the same gentlemen that Spenser hopes to fashion. If a gentleman were to receive an invitation to court, for example, he must be prepared to mingle with an elite group of people who would be educated, urbane and politically savvy. The gentleman would be expected to fit into this company and hold his own. His duties to his prince, to borrow a term from Machiavelli, would be to carefully assess socio-political situations and offer advice pertaining to them or perhaps to distract the prince from them. It is this diversionary aspect of jesting that Castiglione endorses in his immensely influential Book of the Courtier, first translated into English in 1561 by Sir Thomas Hoby.
Whatsoever therefore causeth laughter, the same maketh the minde jocunde and geveth pleasure, nor suffreth a man in that instant to minde the troublesome greefes that oure life is full of. Therefore (as you see) laughing is very acceptable to all men, and he is muche to be commended that can cause it in due time and after a comlie sort. (Castiglione, The Second Book of the Courtier).A gentleman’s ability to make a joke and please a court was therefore a ticket to social preferment and advancement, a concern of particular importance during the period.
For the early modern period the value of jesting lies in the fact that the comic sensibility transcends social boundaries. “Laughter is such a basic, universal, and useful response that it is difficult to conceive of any group of people—anywhere or any time or any place—not laughing. We commonly speak of a person’s ‘sense of humor,’ acknowledging just how basic laughter is, by ranking it along with the traditional five senses” (Sanders 6-7). When we consider that one of the defining characteristics of the period was the reshaping of social structures fueled by such culturally altering forces as the Black Death, the colonization of the New World and the Protestant Reformation it is understandable that jesting would become a vital way of communicating as it speaks to the lowest common human denominator. In a rapidly changing social landscape in which geographical, economical and educational barriers were breaking down jesting became a valuable rhetorical tool.
As important as jesting is to communication it is also important for dealing with the anxiety created by the breakdown of traditional social order or more precisely the potential conflicts inherent to the mixing of people of disparate social origins. Jesting becomes a means of coping with otherness. “Jests of the period typically dramatize encounters between people of divergent social origins or occupations, and in doing so, they play on the tensions and anxieties that almost invariably occur when different kinds of people find themselves in one another’s company”
(Holcomb 5).
There are three theories regarding humor[1]: the Superiority Theory, the Relief Theory and the Incongruity Theory (Morreall 5). The Superiority Theory holds that humor arises out of situations in which people feel superior to others; when a person slips on a banana peel the watcher feels elated by someone else’s foolishness. As the Caroline philosopher Thomas Hobbes states as he articulates his concept of ‘sudden glory’:
. . . men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consists in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds some absurdity of another: and in this case also the passion of laughter proceeds from the sudden imagination of our own odds and eminency: for what is else the recommending of our selves to our own good opinion, by comparison with another man’s infirmity or absurdity? For when a jest is broken upon ourselves, or friends of whose dishonor we participate, we never laugh thereat. I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly . . . (20)In an early modern context this theory would apply when the joker denigrates another’s place or state of origin in order, for example, to bolster national identity. Consider the English propensity during the period for calling syphilis the “French disease.” Based on the historical rivalries between the English and French it was natural for the English to claim that such an unpleasant and widespread malady would originate from their foes and not from themselves. The jokes made about the origin of syphilis allowed the English to overlook their own faults at the expense of a rival culture.
The benefit of this type of jesting is that it boosts the ego and forges a sense of identity either national as in the above example or personal. It raises morale and camaraderie. However because this type of jesting contains an innate maliciousness both Plato and Aristotle disregarded its merits. Plato felt that such jokes actually harmed the joker by causing damage to the soul. “Our argument leads to the conclusion that if we laugh at what is ridiculous about our friends, by mixing pleasure with malice, we thereby mix pleasure with pain. For we had agreed earlier that malice is a pain in the soul, that laughing is a pleasure, and that both occur together on those occasions” (Philebus 50a). For Plato malice was a type of vice and so therefore to make derogatory jokes is to engage in vicious behavior which prevents one from perfecting his or her soul. While Aristotle disagreed with Plato on the effect these jokes have on the soul he agreed that they lowered the self to a standard that was beneath it.
As we have said, comedy is an imitation of baser men. These are characterized not by every kind of vice but specifically by “the ridiculous,” which is a subdivision of the category of “deformity.” What we mean by “the ridiculous” is some error or ugliness that is painless and has no harmful effects. The example that comes immediately to mind is the comic mask, which is ugly and distorted but causes no pain. (Poetics 5.1-7)To be sure Aristotle is here referring to comedy as a theatrical form and not to jesting per se. Comedy however as Aristotle perceived it functions the same way as jokes that arouse feelings of superiority. They both are vulgar and contrary to Plato’s impression they do not arouse pain which can be used toward attaining catharsis and therefore enlightenment.
In contrast to the Superiority Theory there is the Relief Theory. According to this theory humor acts as a safety valve allowing for the release of nervous psychic energy; the person who slips on a banana peel makes a joke to alleviate the uncomfortable embarrassment that comes from appearing foolish. This is the type of jesting that Castiglione refers to as being praiseworthy as it serves to distract attention from that which is unpleasant. In Sigmund Freud’s examination of humor he posits an example that illustrates this theory. He imagines a man who makes a joke while facing execution. He writes, “Humour is not resigned; it is rebellious. It signifies the triumph not only of the ego, but also of the pleasure principle, which is strong enough to assert itself here in the face of the adverse real circumstances” (217). Freud denies Plato’s assertion that jesting causes the soul pain, claiming instead that people have a natural tendency to avoid pain. Jesting therefore becomes a means of pain avoidance. An early modern example of the Relief Theory in action is expressed in Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “Carnival.” The social inversions frequently seen during early modern festivals presided over by a Falstaffian “king of fools” that mocks legitimate authority allowed the lower strata of society to release its frustrations in a safe way. Just as in the Superiority Theory the Relief Theory thus implies that jesting serves to affirm the self.
Finally the Incongruity Theory perceives humor arising out of situations in which an outcome differs from what is expected, in which reality and expectation diverge; seeing a person slip on a banana peel provokes laughter because it disrupts the expected mechanics of normal human movement. The incongruous nature of the situation is highlighted, arousing delight and amusement by drawing attention not only to what is “wrong” but also to what is “right.” “First, a person who stumbles or stutters surprises us by re-presenting the mundane in an absolutely fresh way. The stumbler permits us to see the grammar of walking, just as the stammerer allows us to hear the grammar of speech. In a sense, both take back what we take for granted in the everyday” (Sanders 8). Early modern examples of incongruous humor abound in the numerous texts that feature cross-dressing; transvestism creates a disjunction between expectation and actuality that was frequently used to create comic confusion. However since the incongruous joke is caused by the unexpected or the frustration of expectations it is perhaps the most difficult to construct. Unlike jesting that falls under the Superiority or Relief Theories incongruous jesting occurs outside the self and hinges on surprise. “It is virtually impossible, for example, to tickle oneself—to give oneself a ribbing—since ticklish laughter must be triggered by surprise. And no matter how sneaky or speedy, one can never surprise oneself” (8).
Despite the theoretical work that has gone into the study of jesting in recent years and the importance placed on the ability to jest and the rhetorical value of jesting throughout history the subject of comic affectation is still largely ignored by critics. To refer back to Esolen’s reaction to Spenser the amusement that comes from reading The Faerie Queene is problematic as it is not considered proper or appropriate to criticism. As Lauren Silberman notes in her analysis of Spenser’s humor: “. . . resistance to Spenserian humor manifests itself not so much in the failure to acknowledge comic episodes in The Faerie Queene, but in an unwillingness to act critically on that knowledge. Perhaps few critics would deny outright that Spenser can be funny, but many more might hesitate to accept laughter as a critical response to The Faerie Queene” (24). This unwillingness is somewhat understandable as it smacks of the Affective Fallacy. Identifying what is funny and why is difficult to pin down. What is considered comic is frequently culturally constructed and conditional to time and place. Tastes change and what was funny in Elizabethan England does not play in Peoria, so to speak. This critical neglect is unfortunate however since creating comic effects is central to Spenser’s purpose and so much of his moral allegory is contingent on “getting the joke.” Moreover laughter can be a valuable critical response to literature. As Bakhtin sees it,
Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing
it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides . . . Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object, before a world, making of it an object of familiar contact and thus clearing the ground for an absolutely free investigation of it. (qtd. in Sanders 16)
By understanding why something makes us laugh we gain an understanding of ourselves and more importantly we gain an understanding of the thing itself. If this is true it goes a long way to explaining why Spenser relies so much on the comic. It forces the reader to examine the allegory more closely and it renders the moral principles expressed more memorable by virtue of being amusing.
While the humor of The Faerie Queene falls under each of the three theories Spenser seems to rely mostly on incongruity particularly in Book 3. Since Spenser sets out to construct an elaborate allegorical world in his poem it is natural, perhaps inevitable, that it be funny since allegory works through the disparity created between signifier and signified (Esolen 3). Such incongruity is personified in Britomart the practically oxymoronic “Martial Maid.” With Britomart Spenser inverts the traditional gender roles of the romance genre by placing her into the “hero” role thereby spoofing the genre. Gender confusion ensues almost immediately with Britomart rescuing not a damsel in distress but the male Redcross Knight. Afterward in a scene that reads like The Crying Game in reverse in which the man is revealed to be a woman Britomart (unexpectedly for a knight) wards off the advances of Malecasta who is understandably shocked to find that Britomart is not a man. “Although she chastely disapproves of Malecasta’s seeming lightness, Britomart entertains her advances out of a naïve courtesy and wish to please, totally unaware of the unfortunate surprise she thereby prepares for Malecasta”
(Silberman 31). The incongruous humor in this situation lies not in the transsexual nature of it but in the fact that we as readers know what Britomart and Malecasta do not. We know what Malecasta is after and we know that her desires are impossible to be fulfilled. While the chaos that ensues can provoke laughter our understanding of the allegorical message that chastity counters and trumps promiscuity can only be grasped by being in on the joke.
Being open to humor is thus a necessary stance for reading and interpreting The Faerie Queene. Attaining such a stance may not be easy though since critics in our culture are not encouraged to value comic affectation and therefore tend to ignore it. “Appreciating Spenser’s humor requires readers to refrain from taking themselves entirely seriously and to recognize that even deeply held values can manifest themselves comically in a world set awry by human foolishness”
(Silberman 32). Such foolishness is illustrated in the story of Malbecco and Hellenore found in cantos 9 and 10 of Book 3. This story allegorizes the jealousy that is attendant on infidelity. Hellenore allows herself to be stolen from her miserly husband’s house, which results in her living lustfully with a group of satyrs.
At night, when all they went to sleepe, he vewd,
Whereas his louely wife emongst them lay,
Embraced of a Satyre rough and rude,
Who all the night did minde his ioyous play:
Nine times he heard him come aloft ere day,
That all his hart with gealosie did swell;
But yet that nights ensample did bewray,
That not for nought his wife them loued so well,
When one so oft a night did ring his matins bell. (3.10.48)
Traditional interpretations of this scene emphasize the licentiousness displayed in it and read it as a critique of unchecked female sexuality. “When, however, one considers the process of Hellenore’s debauchery in its comic context, one might begin to notice the extent to which the cuckolded husband rather than the fallen wife actually suffers as a consequence of female unchastity” (Silberman 24). The problem with the traditional interpretation is that it ignores the role that Malbecco plays in the situation, overlooking the fact that it is his avarice that causes the rift between him and Hellenore. Malbecco is more concerned with his wealth than with his wife and it is this neglect that makes her receptive to being enraptured. The moral lesson embodied in this comic parable is that gentlemen such as those that Spenser aims to educate must attend to their wives.
In Book 3 Spenser deliberately creates incongruity that transcends the allegorical. If Spenser was simply writing allegory chastity could simply have been prefigured as Sir Galahad, a more traditional and better known figure associated with that virtue, and we would have a perfectly serviceable allegory and romance narrative. But Spenser chose to give us Britomart instead and the gender inversion created disrupts the expected structure of the romance and draws attention to it. He deconstructs the genre in a way that challenges our assumptions about it as well as our assumptions about allegory and the very world in which we live. “Britomart’s trials as she undertakes her career as a Martial Maid mirror our own uncertain progress as we learn to make our way through Book III of The Faerie Queene; learning to be open to humor is part of our education as readers” (Silberman 27). Like a good early modern rhetorician Spenser uses the comic effect to his advantage to communicate his moral philosophy in a memorable and relatable fashion while fashioning us as proper gentlemen and women.
Spenser does not employ comic effects only in Book 3 although certain comic tropes are more visible there by virtue of that book’s subject matter: “To be sure, sex is probably funnier than holiness, temperance, friendship, justice or courtesy” (Silberman 27). Comic affectation is also particularly evident in Book 1 as well mostly because the hero of that book the Redcross Knight is a character who is less spiritually perfect and naturally virtuous than his counterparts in the other books. Unlike the elfin knights from fairy land that inhabit most of the poem Redcross is depicted as all too human which befits his changeling origins. The incongruity created by placing the human Redcross into Spenser’s fantasy world reflects the situation found within the early modern jest which dramatizes the tensions inherent to the breakdown of traditional social orders.
The comic incongruities of Book 1 are evident from the very beginning when we see the procession of Redcross, Una and the dwarf. At first glance this parade appears conventional; the confident knight takes the lead followed by his lady and his squire. Upon closer inspection though we see that there is something wrong with this picture. We are told that the knight is “Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde, / Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine, / The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde” (1.1.1). This image of battle-tested armor fits our idea of a gallant knight but that idea is undermined by the very next line: “Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield” (1). We suddenly realize that the armor doesn’t belong to the knight, that it wasn’t made for him and that it therefore doesn’t fit him. The armor is in effect a hand-me-down into which the knight is expected to grow. The image this realization conjures is that of a little boy wearing his father’s comically large clothing which disrupts our expectations and sets our perceptions askew. The off-kilter perspective is carried over to the lady. We are told that she is riding an ass. The allegorical significance of the ass at first seems consonant with the allegorical nature of Una; the ass is a sure-footed beast of burden that moves patiently and methodically with a mulish stubbornness that prevents it from losing its path. We are therefore prepared to associate the animal with fidelity to the one true faith. However the ass is also regarded as a stupid, braying creature that is associated with lust and boastfulness both to the Elizabethans and to people today[2]. We are again jarred by the incongruity which continues further with the squire. Typically a knight’s squire is a boy or a young man; instead we find that Redcross’s squire is a dwarf. While dwarfs were a fairly common sight in early modern courts and were prized as servants the appeal of the dwarf lies in his stunted stature. The incongruity caused by the apprehension of an adult in a child-like body serves to amuse. The dwarf here is rendered even more amusing because he is over-burdened with luggage and is desperately struggling to keep up with his lord and lady: “Behind her [Una] farre away a Dwarfe did lag, / That lasie seemd in being euer last, / Or wearied with bearing of her bag / Of needments at his backe” (6). The fact that the dwarf is not carrying the knight’s shield and weapons as a squire ordinarily would do and is instead carrying the lady’s luggage further upsets our perception of the world Spenser is creating. “In such allegory a humorous incongruity between tenor and vehicle might serve any purpose, from undermining or fortifying the message of the allegory to providing a pleasure which, though semantically empty, inspires the games with which we playful human beings engage each other” (Esolen 3). In this particular case the incongruity that underscores our introduction to Spenser’s world acts as a discordia concors that serves to capture our attention and to deny us the safety of our expectations.
Once Spenser has our attention, he uses comic incongruity to further set the hook and drag us into his world. We become implicated, for example, during the first major conflict of Book 1, the battle with Errour. On one level the scene acts out a nice allegorical conceit about the recursive, self-spawning nature of error and how error receives sustenance from feeding on itself. But then something bizarre happens: Errour spews vomit on Redcross which consists of books and papers.
If they were but eyeless and poisonous amphibians, we might suspend our disbelief, remain in the reasonably coherent romance-world of Faery Land, and enjoy the interesting congruity between those who publish heretical treatises, or the readers who digest them, and Errour’s spawn. But the books and papers . . . jolt us out of any pleasantly self-consistent narrative world, and force us to think again about what Errour might have to do with our own books, or with the very book before us. (Esolen 5)The comic image of Errour’s vomit breaks down the dimensional boundaries between our reality and Spenser’s surreality. We are drawn into a world that we can “finger familiarly on all sides” in which we identify with Redcross and his tribulations become ours.
Due to his peculiarly human nature Redcross becomes a sort of everyman. As a character his mistakes and foibles strike us as understandable and natural, underscoring the absurdity of the situations in which he finds himself.
Redcross’s reactions come across as realistic because we can readily imagine ourselves reacting in the same ways. Consider, for example, his confrontation with Orgoglio. Redcross becomes so preoccupied with dallying with Duessa that he lets the giant catch him with at least his proverbial pants down.Henri Bergson says that we laugh whenever a human being appears as a thing: a man slips on a banana skin, and in an instant he falls from rational enveloper of the universe to a sack of mass and acceleration. How close this everyday slapstick is to Spenser’s allegorical slip-ups, for with little or no warning from his innocent narrative voice Spenser’s characters turn that corner which divides symbolism from naturalism. They become too bulky, too real. Suddenly the artifice is highlighted, playing with the fiction it is supposed to represent. (Esolen 10)
Yet goodly court he made still to his Dame,
Pourd out in loosnesse on the grassy grownd,
Both carelesse of his health, and of his fame:
Till at the last he heard a dreadfull sownd,
Which through the wood loud bellowing, did rebownd,
That all the earth for terrour seemd to shake,
And trees did tremble. Th’Elfe therewith astownd,
Vpstarted lightly from his looser make,
And his vnready weapons gan in hand to take. (1.7.7)
The sudden appearance of the giant catches the unawares Redcross so unprepared that the knight is “astownd” by the “dreadfull sownd.” We can easily imagine the sudden sinking feeling that overcomes him in this scene of coitus interruptus since we have all been caught doing something about which we feel guilty or embarrassed. Spenser uses the comic sensibility to draw us into his world and we become so engrossed that we imbue his text with our own experiences. We can thus relate to the discomfort that Redcross feels, for example, in the House of Holiness. “When Charissa meets the Redcross knight, we know that the reason why ‘her necke and breasts were euer open bare’ (I.x.30) is that she is a rhetorical figure representing charity, profusely generous and loving; and yet we are still surprised by her appearance, because we cannot forget how we would feel if we were in the knight’s shoes” (Esolen 12).
While Spenser relies upon incongruous humor to the greatest extent relief humor and superiority humor are not absent from The Faerie Queene. Spenser mostly uses relief humor to serve a narrative purpose. When his protagonists are put into tense situations that produce anxiety in the reader he frequently undercuts the suspense by using a comic image. When Redcross confronts Despair and is nearly driven to suicide our anxiety is alleviated by the image of Despair’s own futile attempts at suicide. In contrast Spenser uses superiority humor for a more abstract purpose. The superiority humor is mostly evident when Spenser presents the villains or less virtuous characters such as Sir Scudamore. Scudamore is treated as effeminate, weeping helplessly instead of doing his manly duty to rescue his lady Amoret. Although there is an incongruity in Scudamore’s figure the humor arises less from that than from his impotence. The disparagement of characters like Scudamore serves to show the heroes in a better light as the heroes are capable of doing what characters like Scudamore cannot. It should also be noted that the heroes of The Faerie Queene are English; the other characters are not and are frequently like Sir Scudamore, Italian. Just as the Queen Gloriana is meant to extol the virtues of Queen Elizabeth the heroes of the text extol the innate virtues of the English people.
Considering the importance that early modern writers placed on jesting and the comic sensibility it is unfortunate that comic affectation remains largely ignored by critics. Studying the subjects is valuable for many reasons. For one thing it allows us to better understand the literature of the period. As Chris Holcomb points out, “Like the early modern jest, rhetoric and courtesy manuals of the period must be viewed, at least in part, as responses to widespread increases in geographic and, especially, social mobility, although the nature of each kind of manual’s response differs considerably. The rhetorics were, in effect, handbooks on social mobility” (9). The same can easily be said of The Faerie Queene since Spenser intended the text to be a manual on social mobility and it is apparent that he expected his readers to understand the humor. Moreover an understanding of and appreciation for a humorous response to literature is also of critical value because it allows us to reconstruct a culture’s ideas of what is funny. Obviously we cannot hop into a “way-back machine” to find out what made the Elizabethans laugh but we can take an overview of their literature to find recurrent themes or images that seem calculated to amuse. The identification of such tropes would go a long way to reconstructing how a text was meant to be read and received. And finally a receptivity to literary humor is valuable simply for the sake of humor’s ability to uplift and delight. As Castiglione noted laughter makes us forgot our troubles and the person who makes us laugh is to be commended. “In a flash, then, the stumbler pulls aside the thin cloak of civilité, revealing humanity in its gestureless state. Stumblers cause us to laugh in delight, in perceiving our own fleshy essence, at reviewing our unadorned animal nature. We are called back into the Garden” (Sanders 12-13).
Works Cited
Aristotle. Aristotle’s Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature. Trans. Leon Golden. Comm. O. B. Hardison, jr. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1981.
Castiglione, Baldessar. The Second Book of the Courtier. Trans. Sir Thomas Hoby. Ed. Walter
Raleigh. London: David Nutt, Publisher, 1900. 5 Nov. 2005 http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/courtier/courtier2.html.
Esolen, Anthony. “Spenserian Allegory and the Clash of Narrative Worlds.” Thalia: Studies in
Literary Humor 11.1 (1989): 3-13.
Freud, Sigmund. “Humour.” Trans. Joan Riviere. Collected Papers, Volume 5: Miscellaneous
Papers, 1888-1938. Ed. James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1959.
Hobbes, Thomas. “From Human Nature.” The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Ed. John
Morreall. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.
Holcomb, Chris. Mirth Making: The Rhetorical Discourse on Jesting in Early Modern England. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Morreall, John, ed. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1987.
Plato. Philebus. Trans. Dorothea Frede. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993.
Sanders, Barry. Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Silberman, Lauren. “Spenser and Ariosto: Funny Peril and Comic Chaos.” Comparative
Literature Studies 25.1 (1988): 23-34.
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. Thomas P. Roche, Jr. London: Penguin Books,
1987.
[1] N.B. Throughout this article, the term “humor” is used in the modern sense as appertaining to amusement rather than referring to the early modern concept of “humours” or fluids that influence behavior.
[2] Consider the example presented in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which the dim-witted braggart Bottom is given the head of an ass.
