Hey, I've just found the best story! Edmund Spenser is even more nuts about etymology and symbolism and color semantics than I am! It's terrific!

This morning I was looking through the Book House books, which I hadn't done in a long time. If you've never seen them they're a set of twelve books, each meant for a different age, advancing from nursery rhymes through parts of the Oddysey. The set we've got is from the fifties, but they were originally published in the twenties and it's fairly obvious from the choice of material. I guess at that point there wasn't much in the way of novels for children, so they mostly read older stories or adaptations of older stories. And so in the eleventh book I found an adaptation of St. George and the Dragon from Spencer's Faerie Queen, 1596. I had seen Margaret Hodges' children's book and loved the illustrations, but I hadn't realized how much more there was to the story than the dragon part.

I love Una. She's such a great character because even though it's 1696 and she plays the part of the damsel in distress, she's the only one who's got any sense. It's cool because instead of having St. George be this great strong knight who always knows what to do and her the helpless maiden who depends on him, George is the great strong knight who never knows what to do and Una is the helpless maiden on whom he depends. They're each half a stereotype. He's the personification of courage and she's the personification of wisdom. It's pointed out early in the book that together they're invincible, so when this evil wizard wants to destroy them he has to seperate them first.

He really is clueless. After he gets seperated from Una he hooks up with this evil chick who calls herself Fidessa, the faithful, but is really Duessa, the false. (Is this great or what? The etymology of all the names except George's and Una's are significant.) So she's running around being very obviously a sorceress and somebody finally tells George this, so he runs away to the woods. But Duessa catches up with him and says, "Hey, I'm not evil." And he says, "Really? Oh, that's all right then," and they're all chummy again. So she tries to get him to drink out of some enchanted stream and I think at this point Una finally finds George and tells him, "Hey, she's evil. What are you doing with her?" So George says, "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right."

And then the coolest part was after that when Una and George are travelling to her kingdom to defeat the dragon. So they come to this old guy sitting around in a cave and they stop to rest. The guy is talking to George and he says, "You're a worthless bum. You were hanging out with that evil chick when you should have been helping Una. You're not worthy to be on this quest. You're a real loser, do you know that? You're not even worthy to live." And George says, "Hey, I guess you're right! I'm such a jerk!" And the guy says, "Here's a dagger." And George says, "Thanks," and is just about stab himself when Una reappears and says, "Hey, what do you think you're doing? Don't listen to that guy! I still love you! Are you going to help me kill this dragon or what?" Una's so terrific.

May 26
June 18