I chose to glosse the Garden of Adonis episode in the Faerie Queene from a philosophical angle. This is because my target audience is me, that is to say, the English major at the University of Kentucky. All English majors are required to take courses in related subjects in order to fulfill all of the requirements for their field. One of these possible related subjects that students could possibly take is philosophy. Spenser was familiar with philosophy, and it is reasonable to think that for a student to be able to more fully grasp his philosophical references that they need to be annotated and summarized in the glosse of the text.

The Garden of Adonis is laden with ancient philosophical textual references. For this reason, I was going to glosse only the Aristotelian references, but when I embarked upon that quest, I realized that I could not make reference to Aristotle without making a reference to Plato. Plato is recognized as the not only the father of philosophy, but the father of the theory of forms, which is what is being referred to so strongly in the Garden of Adonis (Book III, Canto VI). For this exercise, I will glosse stanzas 35-38 for its references to the theory of forms with a few, but still philosophical diversions.

First, however, I would like to explain the theory of forms for it is too big to summarize in the body of the glosse. Please do not mistake this summarization as an interpretation. Just as it is possible for a person to give an unbiased account of events in a movie, I am able to briefly explain a theory without making an interpretation.

Perhaps the best way to explain the theory of forms is to use an example of its application. This example comes from Phaedo, which is famous for philosophically proving the immortality of the soul. Forms are not given a specific description or definition by Plato, but they can be illustrated. Basically, everything in existence has a form that follows simply from what it is; for example a soul has the form of a soul and that is why it is a soul, a cup has the form of a cup and that is why it is a cup, a beautiful person has the form of beauty and that is why that person is beautiful, etc. The theory of forms was used to explain causality, or the “Why” of things. It also asserts that one form can not admit its opposite and still continue to individually exist. That is pretty simple; if one thing were to become its opposite, then it would cease to exist. For example, three dogs, which exhibit the form of unevenness in their odd number three, can not be two dogs and exhibit the form of evenness with out ceasing to be three dogs- one of the dogs would have to metaphorically die. It seems, however, that one can not just use the theory of forms to explain causality completely. This is hard to explain, so I’m going to let Plato speak for himself here because it is this assertion that is used to prove the immortality of the soul: “…the name of the form is eternally applicable not only to the form itself, but also something else, which is not the form but possesses its distinguishing characteristic.” This idea is used to bring the idea that for a person to be alive, what must come with life is the soul: “Whenever soul takes possession of the body, it always brings life with it.” Because these two are completely connected and one form can not admit its opposite without ceasing to be, the soul connected to life, can not admit death, “So the soul is immortal.” Just as the form of oddness does not cease to exist in the absence of three dogs, the form soul does not cease to exist in the absence of life. Forms here, for Plato are eternal. (Plato, 87)

Aristotle in his Metaphysics, confronts the theory of forms and rejects it. Aristotle’s ideas about the nature of things that exist are much more empirical. Aristotle sees existence through substance and matter as he relates in Categories. Substance “- that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily, and most of all- is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject.” Aristotle’s example is the individual man, but illustrating an opposite might make this easier to understand. Knowledge is something that is both said of a subject and in a subject: “Knowledge is in a subject, the soul, and is also said of a subject, knowledge-of-grammar.” (Aristotle, 248) In Posterior Analytics, Aristotle points out that these substances change and must necessarily do so in order for change to occur; Plato would not admit change from one thing into another to explain causality- it all goes back to the theory of forms. However, not only do changes form from opposites where “one of which represents the form and the other the privation”, but there is also a third thing which exists that does the changing: matter. (Pojman, 246)

Aristotle looks at form as the nature of a thing, “for a thing is more properly said to be what it is when it exists in actuality than when it exists potentially.” His example is a bed made out of wood. The nature of the wood is not a bed, for that is its potential existence. And conversely, the bed’s nature is not a bed, but wood because “if the bed sprouted, not a bed but wood would come up.” The wood is the matter from which the bed arises and it also the nature of the bed, or the form. (Aristotle, 256)