Guyon and his Palmer Spenser's emblem of temperance

Abstract

This article aims at a new and refined appreciation of the figure of the Palmer in The Faerie Queene, Book II, in which the identification of him with the virtue of prudence or right reason is seen to be no more than a starting-point. It is suggested that subtleties of Renaissance doctrines (both humanist and scholastic) concerning the taking of due care, the vice of curiosity, the gift of counsel, and the nature and function of guardian angels, among other things, may be used to illuminate the allegory of extraordinary complexity that is woven about the figure of the Palmer-most particularly (and paradoxically) in those episodes from which he is absent. Spenser appears to have conceived of the Palmer as representing the taking of due care as defined in Matthew's gospel, with Phaedria in canto vi and Mammon in canto vii of Book II signifying the two extremes (carelessness and carefulness respectively) of which the Palmer/prudence is the mean. It is also suggested that the Geneva Bible's gloss on Matthew 7-8 may have been the inspiration for Spenser's pairing of Tantalus and Pilate at the climax of Mammon's temptations. In a more selfreflexive reading, it may be that the figure of the Palmer (himself a hermeneut) functions as a meta-figure for the interpretation of the allegorical text or allegoresis, so that there is a fundamental correspondence between Guyon's struggling towards the related virtues of temperance and prudence and the reader's struggling towards a providential (prudens = providens) interpretation of The Faerie Queene, Book II.