On Sunday morning I got up at 3:19 because I’d gone to bed at 22:30 the night before.
I finished my yoga a little after 4:00 and did my five year and thirty year journal posts.
At 5:30 I felt sleepy again so I went back to bed for about an hour and fifteen minutes.
I had skipped song practice for two days in a row because of my essay. I still needed to work on the paper but I couldn't stand to be away from practising for another day so I did a shortened version of my normal rehearsal by singing just one verse and one chorus of most of my regular songs.
I started on my essay at around 8:00. I made progress and just before 13:00 I was over the hump. I decided at that point that I could spare the time to go to the supermarket. At No Frills I got three bags of red grapes, a bag of black grapes, a half pint of raspberries, mouthwash, a pack of three steaks, strawberry-raspberry Greek yogourt, plain Greek yogourt and a jar of hot salsa.
I worked on my essay and at 16:00 I took an hour siesta.
At around 18:00 I uploaded the paper and relaxed. Here it is:
I told my lies to lie between your matchless thighs – Leonard Cohen
Sexual Deception in Edmund Spenser’s The Fairy Queen
Comparing two cases of sexual deception in Edmund Spenser’s The Fairy Queen we find that both are assisted by the fantasies of their victims. In one the malicious Archimago fools the Red Cross knight with a lusty illusion of his lady in the dream of a wedding presided over by Roman gods (1.2.416-432). In the other the trickster is the naive female knight Britomart, while her victim is the lascivious Lady Malecasta. Mistaking the disguised Britomart for her own Adonis, Malecasta is compelled to imitate the passion of Venus (3.1.298-547). She uses Britomart’s lie to feed her own delusion that Britomart is the man of her dreams, while Britomart further deceives by pretending not to understand this (3.1.450,459). Malecasta takes that pretence for consent (3.1.494-495). When the truth shatters her delusion she is terrified (3.1.553). Both of these situations teach us that sexual trickery requires the receiver’s hope that the imposture be real.
In Book 1 Red Cross is made to dream of libidinous play, but it is the idolatrous imagery of the hallucination that seduces him. A mirage of Una is beside him in bed and telling him that Cupid has made her want to satisfy her desires (1.2.418-423). It seems to him that Venus has delivered him a flower crowned by Flora while Love’s handmaids, the Graces are singing the Hymn to Hymen (1.2.424-432). This Christian knight imagines that he is not a Christian and believes that he has married Una in a pagan ceremony. If this dream were truly offensive to him he would perceive it as a nightmare, but he does not.
In Book 3 Britomart travels while posing as a male knight but her mendacity does not result in harm until she encounters the Lady Malecasta. When Britomart reveals her beautiful face she is perceived by Malecasta as a desirable young man like Adonis as he is portrayed in the tapestries on her castle walls (3.1.298-306,376-387). Then like Venus by Adonis, Malecasta is smitten with Britomart (3.1.415-423). The beguiler is Britomart but her lie is spiked by the voluptuous heathen mythology that Malecasta reveres.
It is said that this lover of the classical world gives control of her body to appetite, so that like an unruly horse it tramples her honest name (3.1.444-445). Later the Lady begins to be called “Malecasta” as if her behaviour caused her name to be changed (3.1.508). But to be “Unchaste” as this title indicates is not in itself dishonest. Her actions do less harm than Britomart’s fraud to protect her chastity. This renders Britomart far more dishonest than Malecasta, who only dupes herself by allowing Britomart’s lie to enhance her own fantasies. Malecasta is said to be false but only in the sense of living contrary to Christian morality rather than by being untruthful (3.1.448). Her behaviour is not “ladylike” in the way that ladies are expected to behave in noble English society but there is nothing harmful or malicious about it.
If true love always inspires honour to perform generous deeds Malecasta shows herself to be generous and truthful, which are honourable attributes (3.1.365) . She makes her sexual desires obvious and speaks openly about them (3.1.424-430, 449,462-474). But Britomart in feigning ignorance of her meaning shows more falsity than Malecasta (3.1.450-459).
Britomart will not let herself understand the meaning of Malecasta’s glances. She circumvents herself by pretending not to know. “Would not” shows that she applies her will to not knowing (3.1.459). Britomart’s lack of protest is taken as an invitation, but if she had made her objections clear then Malecasta would not have come to her bed (3.1.495).
Malecasta gently slides into bed with Britomart to re-enact the scene in her tapestry that depicts Venus coming to care for the sleeping Adonis (3.1.316-324,523-547). Since she had not rejected her declarations of desire at dinner she reasons with pagan logic that Britomart would not resent such a gentle intrusion.
Britomart draws her sword because she thinks that her chastity is under siege (3.1.551-553). Malecasta’s fantasy of finding her own gentle Adonis is shattered when she is threatened by a fierce and violent Christian woman and so she faints in terror (3.1.553-555,562-567). Both she and Malecasta have been mistaken about one another. Britomart thought that a man had come into her bed while Malecasta thought she had come to a man’s bed. This would not have happened if Britomart had made it clear from the start that she is a woman.
The Red Cross knight and Malecasta are disarmed by counterfeit realities. But in each case the misconceptions play upon the polytheist wishes of the victims. Red Cross, whose passions are self imprisoned in the hard armour of Christian morality, recognizes and welcomes the arrival of Venus, Cupid, Flora and Hymen into his dream of Una (1.2.416-432). And Malecasta, whose castle walls prove her worship of the love between Venus and the androgynous Adonis, is easily fooled by a female knight concealing her gender (3.1.298-306,376-387). Deception must be made beautiful for its illusion to truly fool.
For dinner I made pizza out of the last lengthwise slice of the loaf of roasted garlic bread but first I ran the bread under the tap because it had come out too hard last time. This worked better because the bread came out of the oven soft but it could have stayed in a little longer. I had it with a beer while watching Interpol Calling.
This story begins with the end of a record breaking Channel swim. When the swimmer walks onto the beach he is asked by the press for a statement. He begins, “I found out that ..." and then he is shot and killed. Because the swimmer was a Finn swimming from France to England it's an international crime and so Interpol is called in. Duval goes to interview the trainer Harry Vontelle and meets a female swimmer who Harry is training and is going to try the channel the next morning. That night Duval sneaks onto Vontelle’s boat to snoop around and while he is there someone comes aboard. Duval hides as two canisters are delivered. In one of them he finds a false bottom containing heroin. He replaces the heroin with sugar and takes the real stuff for the lab. The next day the woman makes the swim and all the police are watching for Vontelle to make a hand over, but morning arrives and nothing has happened. Duval figures out that the handover was made when Vontelle left his boots for the hotel shoeblack. Duval goes to Vontelle’s boat where, as he suspected, fireworks are about to start over the sugar in the canister. Vontelle is about to be shot when Duval arrives with his trusty karate chops.
It's hilarious to return to a time when people had not yet experienced real martial arts movies and all they had was this image of the exotic "karate chop" that every kid imitated.
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