Juicy bits
14 July 2004 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammerA sampler of erotic passages of The Faerie Queene:
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.
| 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.