Juicy bits

A sampler of erotic passages of The Faerie Queene:

I.1.45 to 2.8:	Archemago tricks the Redcrosse Knight into believing his Una is unfaithful.
II.5.27-37:	A preview of the delights of the Bower of Bliss.
II.12.42-81:	A tour of the Bower of Bliss; I'm especially fond of the two maidens sporting in a fountain.
III.1.40-63:	A lady attempts to seduce Britomart, not knowing that under the armor is a woman; complete with a bed scene.
III.7.37-52:	A giantess abducts a squire for sexual purposes.
III.10.36-52:	Hellenore, having run away from her miser husband, falls in with a band of satyrs and refuses to return.
V.4.4-20:	Two brothers swap brides along with their inheritances; wacky legal hijinks ensue. Okay, it's not really erotic. But it could have been.
V.4.21 to 7.45:	The Amazon episode entire, with digressions and cross-dressing, concluding with a girl-fight.
VI.8.35-51:	Cannibals sacrifice a naked maiden on an altar. And you thought that cliche was invented in the pulps.
VI.10.10-18:	A chorus line of a hundred naked maidens dance around three naked Graces as they dance with another, also naked, maiden/mother/muse, until a knight stumbles among them and they vanish into thin air. Paging Dr. Freud.

The juicy bits of book IV are, given it's the book of friendship, psychosexual rather than erotic, and not susceptible to easy extraction. Though there is a lovely bit where the narrator admits unselfconsciously that Britomart, when she's pretending to be a male knight, will flirt with the ladies. And she then wonders why the ladies' knights take her for a rival.

If you read only one book, make it III; if you want more, read IV, which is the other half of the story.

---L.