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Grille’s Moral Dialogue: Spenser and Plutarch

Guyon and the Palmer do not have much time for the opinions of Grille, the recalcitrant pig who complains at being released from Acrasia’s enchantment. But Grille has literary antecedents (in Plutarch, Montaigne, Erasmus, Gelli and others) who add to his impact on the reader’s experience. Spenser does not give an explicit role to the tradition in which Grille’s predecessors’ views–ironically or otherwise—have some validity. Nevertheless it has a role, partly because Spenser’s character resonates with tradition, and partly because the silencing of Grille might actually heighten interest in what he has to say. The story is a microcosm of The Faerie Queene in more than one way. It shows the rich and complex interaction between the poem and its contexts. It also shows the tense interaction between the central threads of meaning in the allegory and the other possibilities that the poem evokes.