Abstract
Mr. A. D. S. Fowler's article in Modern Language Notes, of April 1960, ‘The River Guyon’, makes the interesting suggestion that the name of Guyon, Spenser's Knight of Temperance in Book Two of The Faerie Queene, may be derived from Gihon, one of the four rivers of Paradise mentioned in Genesis 2:13. Mr. Fowler cites the commentaries of Philo and Ambrose, which allegorize the rivers as the four cardinal virtues, to prove a definite relationship between Gihon, later written Geon or Gyon, and the virtue of temperance. Other authorities for this equation can be added: Bede's Commentary on the Pentateuch, the Glossa Ordinaria, and Alexander Neckham's De naturis rerum. It seems very likely that Spenser meant the name of Guyon to recall this traditional association.
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