snappy answers to Guyon’s stupid questions refer to a systemic, abstracted economic power – the ability to control markets and the circulation of commodities and money. Mammon himself is the spirit of primitive accumulation, the maker and breaker of kings, but he is at the same time the spirit of the global economy, generating and regulating the flow of precious metal:
God of the world and worldlings I me call,
Great Mammon, greatest god below the skye,
That of my plenty poure out unto all,
And unto none my graces do envye:
Riches, renowme, and principality,
Honour, estate, and all this worldes good,
For which men swinck and sweat incessantly,
Fro me do flow into an ample flood,
And in the hollow earth have their eternall brood.
(2.7.7)
This stanza hints at the older myth about gold as something essential and sacred, a divine element with healing powers – the gold that was the goal of the alchemists’ holy experiments, a sign of plenty and divine bounty, given to those whom God favors. But the Cave of Mammon also represents gold as something unnatural. This is the other myth about obtaining gold, a metal that was said to generate in the womb of Mother Earth until miners extract it by violating and raping the earth.21 As Guyon puts it, “then gan a cursed hand the quiet wombe/Of his great Grandmother with steele to wound,/And the hid treasures in her sacred tombe,/with Sacriledge to dig” (2.7.17). When gold or other metals are not only mined but also coined and imprinted with the images of kings and queens, those sacred objects, stolen from the earth’s “sacred tombe,” are then made available to be worshipped as idols. Coining thus allows for mass idolatry and makes an idol of the monarch. Mammon’s gold is both “natural” commodity and social money, essential thing and arbitrary holder of value, feudal lucre and fungible capital. The positive signification of gold is no longer viable in Mammon’s money factory, and yet the new economic system will not allow the old aristocratic patronage system and its cultural codes to go on functioning. Thus arises Guyon’s dilemma: he cannot accept the corruptive gift of gold, but to see and know, and yet refrain, is to remain outside of the new global system of exchange that is so irresistibly attractive to courtiers, merchants and monarchs alike.
It is not merely curiositas, or even a conquistador-like colonial desire for gold that seems to motivate Guyon’s descent into the cave. Instead, it is a need to know how it is possible that such a hoard of gold can exist in one place, defying the forces of economic desire and exchange. Once Guyon descends into the cave, he observes but succeeds in resisting the temptation to touch or remove any of Mammon’s wealth. Having refused to accept any gold, Guyon returns to the surface of the earth and immediately collapses. This physical collapse suggests that the noble effort to remain free of Mammon’s taint will render the venturing hero powerless – or, at least, will leave him exhausted and dependent on the aid of others. Participation in the global economy is necessary in order to sustain heroic vigor and movement, and it is only the arbitrary arrival of Guyon’s guardian angel that saves him.
It is ironic that at the end of Canto seven the knight of Temperance can find no moderate course of action in the cave. He simply refuses to partake: he cannot adapt temperately to an unnatural existence in the underworld, where dead matter is worshipped, and as a result he faints away, loses consciousness. It takes the guardian angel, the Palmer, and Arthur together to protect Guyon until he revives. The rest of Book Two deals with the body and its senses, which must be ruled by reason. The threats and temptations faced by Guyon later, in the Bower of Bliss, have to do with physical pleasure and desire, and the violent repression of those temptations comes much easier to him – his refusal of temptation in the bower empowers his violent force, rather than sapping it. Guyon succeeds in destroying the Bower of Bliss, and his victory there over the sorceress Acrasia is complete. By contrast, after Guyon leaves the cave, Mammon remains unmolested to carry on his global reign.
In the Cave of Mammon episode, Spenser struggles to contain contradictory meanings. Why should Guyon’s virtuous, successful resistance of temptation lead to an allegorical “fall” – to his collapse and paralysis? In order to understand the allegorical significance of this mixed message, we might turn not to the theological explanations offered by earlier commentators like Paul Alpers, Frank Kermode, and Harry Berger but to the opposing concepts of local thing and global system that I have been discussing in this essay. Insofar as Guyon’s temptation in canto seven involves the presentation of a series of things or objects (including the objectified Philotime), he passes the test admirably and serves as a model of temperate abstinence. During his three-day tour of the cave, Guyon rejects each offered gift, including the hand of Philotime, and refuses to become one of “Mammon’s dearlings.” And yet his stuttered refusal – “Me list not (said the Elfin knight) receave/Thing offred, till I know it well be got” (2.7.19) – is highly problematic because the “vain shewes” that Guyon scorns cannot be so easily separated from the “emprise” that he pursues. Guyon understands and articulates the traditional, proverbial and theological grounds for the rejection of Mammon worship: money is the root of all evil; the desire to accumulate worldly goods is sinful; in the Golden Age there was a premonetary society, later corrupted by the mining of golden coins; and so on. As Berger observes, “He should, with this knowledge, want nothing to do with Mammon” (19). And as Berger argues, Guyon’s curiosity and his willingness to let Mammon be his guide indicate the dangers of exceeding one’s “human finitude” (29). According to Berger, Spenser’s allegory of the cave shows how even a temperate Christian may fall prey to “concupiscence of the eyes” and thus be “tempted to make trial of his excellence by adhering to unnatural conditions, tempted to pleasure his soul by bruising his body” (27). What Berger and the others do not discuss is the unresolved tension between the condemnation of a hunger for gold and an English desire for golden colonies; between a residual feudal code of honor that rejects money as base and corruptive, and a desire to obtain the wealth and power generated by international trade under an emergent capitalist economy; and finally, between a system of aristocratic patronage and the new capitalist system based on credit, debt, and bills of exchange – a system that had no direct need for gold but relied instead upon invisible agreements.
Maureen Quilligan has argued, following Fredric Jameson and Richard Halpern, that Spenser’s romance-epic exhibits a formal, generic hybridity, one that is symptomatic of the overlapping of residual feudalism with emergent capitalism.22 And, in the Mammon episode, she sees a representation of primitive accumulation, especially in Mammon’s discussion of an economy that increasingly makes labor a commodity and money the measure of all things. Mammon chides Guyon,
… doest thou not weet,
That money can thy wantes at will supply?
Sheilds, steeds, and armes, and all things for thee meet
It can purvay in twinckling of an eye;
And crownes and kingdoms to thee multiply.
Doe not I kings create, and throw the crowne
Sometimes to him, that low in dust doth ly?
And him that raignd, into his rowme thrust downe,
And whom I lust, do heape with glory and renowne?
(2.7.11)
Guyon rebuts Mammon’s claim by saying that when money makes kings and gains power, it does so in a “wrongfull” manner (2.7.13). Guyon then goes on to contrast the current era of money-lust with “The antique world” that he says existed before gold and silver were first mined and coveted. Mammon urges Guyon to leave this mythical past behind, and tells him, “Thou that doest live in later times, must wage/Thy workes for wealth, and life for gold engage” (2.7.18). Guyon never really succeeds in refuting Mammon’s claims for the power and efficacy of riches, but the knight of temperance does refuse all of Mammon’s offered gifts. Guyon is quite capable of resisting the physical temptations of food and sleep in the underworld, yet he does not come away from Mammon’s Cave unscathed. Guyon’s debilitating “faint” is an indication