We rejoined our friends at the end of the tournament, when the narrator, with uncharacteristic generosity, recounts for us who won on each day, before turning to see which woman will win Cestus (the belt of chastity). Why this ordering of knights and plot?—to civilise the brutality of the fighting that came before? Does poetry (rhyme, stanzas) display a civilising impulse?
In an inversion of the Iliad, when a beauty contest causes a war, fighting now gives way to the pageant. What means of valuing beauty does the poem hold out? We seem to be seeking the ‘fayrest’ lady (ix), but ‘diverse wits affected divers beene’ (xi): as we’ve often seen in Book IV, some think one thing, some think another. However, this system of free thought is upset by the False Florimell, ‘The sight of whom once seene did all the rest dismay’ (xiii). Not only does she outshine the others but makes them seem ‘base and contemptible’ (xiv), a radical shift.
FF fails to keep the girdle on. Does the poem extends sympathy to her in the shame and blame she feels? She has only recently been created: does she understand the misogynistic economy she has entered? Does she know why she is desired and desirable? Does she have interiority? The knights elect to give her the girdle anyway (xx): they value chastity (though how exactly is FF unchaste?—she lost the girdle when chased) less than beauty. She opts to go with Braggadochio: is this a happy ending? What, we wondered, does all this have to do with friendship? What kind of intimacy would be possible with False Florimell? [EKL]