Mother Queen
"But the echo of Cybele in particular gives a further dimension to this
episode's suspended -- and (in the case of Guyon) potentially
suspended -- instruments, both lyric and virile, one that involves not
just
the episode's narrative progression but a specific form of lyric
tradition adumbrated within it. Cybele, the Magna Mater of
imperial Rome, is one of The Faerie Queene's most ubiquitous
figures for the presiding patroness of 'Troynovaunt' and hence for
Elizabeth, the poem's allegorically shadowed queen, who was repeatedly
represented (and self-represented) as the great 'Mother,' and even the
nursing mother, of her subjects. Virgil's Roman version of the Magna
Mater carefully removes the more oriental and threatening female
aspects of her cult -- including the castration of Attis and her subject
males. But Spenser's allusions to Cybele include this more ambivalent
complex, Cybele's 'franticke rites' (I.vi.15) as well as her maternal
embodiment of order and civilization" (Parker 59).
volume 2, issue 2
SN 193
