That "other place," that place of perfection, is Book 5, which in fact begins by once again shunting aside Florimell's and Marinell's wedding in favor of Artegall's mission to rescue Irena. Hence Book 5's narrative asserts openly what Book 4's indirections implied: that marriage is not perfection at all, and that it is at best a mere footnote to the glories of the heroic quest. Artegall attends the promised nuptials only as a brief stopover on his way to "his first adventure". The firstness, the originality, of that quest, as well as Artegall's oftenrepeated intent to continue upon that first quest despite minor skirmishes along the way, is a new emphasis for a knight of The Faerie Queene, and one that leads us to examine what is (literally) being prioritized in Book 5: what is the.....
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