The Original Iron Man

  Four hundred years before Tony Stark, there was an “yron man” named Talus created by Edmund Spenser in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene (and unlike everything else that purports to be “epic” out there, it actually is an epic, the longest narrative poem in the English language, full of heroes and monsters and battles and descents to the underworld . . . but I digress).

an early copy of The Faerie Queene, Huntington Library, CA

Talus is nicknamed the “yron [iron] man” in The Faerie Queene (5.1.12.2), and he is actually a sidekick (a squire) to a knight named Artegall, who is the knight of Justice. Talus helps Artegall carry out justice: punishing those who have transgressed and restoring those who have been victims of injustice. Here is how Spenser introduces Talus:

His name was Talus, made of yron mold,

Immoveable, resistless, without end.

Who in his hand an yron flail did hold,

With which he thresht out falsehood, and did truth unfold. (5.1.12)*

While Tony Stark as Iron Man tends to act out of personal revenge (this is emphasized in the latest movie) just as often as he responds from a sense of justice, Talus the Yron Man is concerned solely with justice, which, according to the passage above, is just as much about ferreting out the truth as it is about punishing evildoers.

Talus uses his flail to separate truth from falsehood just as one separates wheat from chaff. Jesus and Pontius Pilate have a discussion about truth in John 18:37-38. Jesus states that he has come into the world “to bear witness to the truth,” to which Pilate responds dismissively, not unlike skeptics of today, “What is truth?” Pilate, who is not interested in the answer here, had no way of knowing that Jesus had given answers to the question in the previous evening’s conversation with his disciples (“I am the way, the truth, and the life” Jn 14:6) and personal prayer (“Your [God’s] word is truth” Jn 17:17).   

The imagery of threshing is undoubtedly alluding to images used for Jesus as Judge in Scripture, meting out God’s justice. See, for instance, Matthew 3:12 or Luke 3:17.)

Maybe like Tony Stark, Talus lacks mercy. The “yron man” sometimes carries out justice too far and his flailing of foes has to be curbed. One such instance occurs after he and the “lady knight” Britomart defeat Radigund, the Queen of the Amazons, freeing the enslaved and emasculated men (which include Britomart’s fiancé), but encountering resistance from the Amazonian citizens. Talus “threshes” the citizens deserving of punishment in “his revenge of spirit” (5.7.36.9). Okay, so maybe Talus is like the other Iron Man—sometimes desire for revenge overpowers a concern for simple justice. Britomart, seeing that revenge has taken over, exercises mercy to make Talus stop. Justice must be tempered by mercy.

Unlike Tony Stark, Talus the “yron man” is not egotistical. He is content to be a sidekick, not the center of attention, a squire, not a knight. And, again unlike the other Iron Man, he’s not the most interesting character in Spenser’s collection of “avengers” within his epic poem. Much more interesting is the warrior maid Britomart, for instance, but I’ll have to save her for another post. . . .  

* I have modernized some of Spenser’s intentionally archaic spelling to make the text more easily readable. The parenthetical citation in Arabic numerals is divided into Book, Canto, Stanza, and Line # of The Faerie Queene.