The besieged house of Temperance in Book II sets at point the ‘hewing and slashing’ blades of the knights Arthur and Sir Guyon against a climactic opponent: an insubstantial, gnat-like ‘swarme’ urged on by their ‘cruell Captaine,’ Maleger, a terrifying more (and less)-than-human figure (II.ix.15). The traditional allegorical exegesis reads this battle as one between the temperate body and intemperate forces and passions. But it also illuminates an ecological conundrum. How is the fragile embodied human to survive the onslaught of determined ‘shades’ (II.ix.15), whose lack of concrete ‘substaunce’ and overwhelming numbers requires the assistance of a ‘fierce Northerne wind’ to ‘blow them quite away’ (II.ix.16)? Read more…

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