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Renaissance patriarchy maintained very clear distinctions between what was appropriately "masculine" and "feminine." Modern feminist criticism and research have tried to dispel some of the old illusions, and so they offer a fresh approach to evaluating the personal and social implications of gender in the Renaissance. Such perspectives can be specifically applied for enhanced appreciation of Spenser's Faerie Queene, after an initial assessment of Renaissance patriarchy itself. / The Faerie Queene, we find, questions many important conventions of gender roles in Renaissance patriarchal society. Spenser crosses the familiar boundaries of appropriate or accepted female social status and options, and situates both males and females in roles which seemingly challenge the existing conventions by advancing the possibility of a new perspective. Spenser examines femininity from a specifically feminine point of view and invites a broadened understanding of the feminine. He portrays many different aspects of femininity and his titular heroine, Britomart, approximates the modern androgyne. The poem suggests a variety of alternative gender roles for both females and males, and also uses symbolic aspects of gender, so that characters ultimately cease to be gender-specific in their significance. That too tends to soften distinctions between males and females, by allegorically representing the self in such a way that it is seen to have both masculine and feminine aspects. / Spenser's attempt to broaden his readers' understanding and valuation of the feminine and his suggestions of alternative roles for both genders, helped open the door to new freedom and equality for women by inviting redefinition or revision of culturally received notions of gender and its personal and social implications.

This analysis attempts to establish that the Faerie Queene is a poem written on the basis of the two main ideals of Renaissance criticism, teaching and delighting. It begins by showing that Elizabethan critics state the primary importance of the two ideals, but never explain how they used them as practical guides for writing poetry. Even Spenser himself, though he wrote a long preface to the Faerie Queene, never explains how he intended to teach and delight in the poem. Furthermore, no critics since the Elizabethan have demonstrated adequately how Spenser applied the ideals. To answer this question, the analysis seeks specific answers throughout the Faerie Queene. Yet all such evidence cannot add up to a complete solution of the poem, for in its thousands of lines it accomplishes many purposes and lends itself to many analyses. Nevertheless the two ideals of teaching and delighting represent one important approach which offers one basis for understanding the poem. The analysis divides the poem into two levels, narrative and allegorical, and approaches first through the simpler narrative. The discussion begins with Canto One Book One and demonstrates that Spenser unfolds a story which ordinary readers can follow with efficiency and interest. He sets it in a deliberately artificial world which allows incidents and persons to be both natural and unreal; He reveals its main conflict with a sufficiently brisk pace, and weaves that conflict firmly through the interaction of character and event. With this simple story-telling level Spenser therefore attempts to retain the attention of ordinary readers to his poem, and hereby reveals his conception of delighting to lie mainly in interesting his readers, in motivating them to read on. The analysis also shows that he begins his teaching within the narrative level through such obviously important instruments as his main characters, who teach because of the kinds of persons they are and the kinds of conflicts in which they become involved. The analysis turns then to the allegory, and since this is a more complex level, attempts first to offer a simple definition of allegory. From this base, the argument shows in detail how Spenser painstakingly develops an allegorical incident. He inserts it carefully within a story sequence; he foreshadows its coming; at exactly the right moment he arranges a marked, symbolic shift from the narrative world into the allegorical and, lastly, he guides his reader into the scene by a series of intricate clues. In such ways Spenser therefore organizes the mechanics of allegory so his reader can follow him efficiently and, at the same time, so designs his clues that he motivates the reader to want to pursue his meanings throughout the entire scene. Hence on the allegorical level, too, the poet's conception of delighting lies in capturing reader interest and here, too, he is able to use the very essence of his pleasure to accomplish his teaching. But the allegory teaches and delights more subtly, and thereby retains the attention of even the most advanced reader. To illustrate this most subtle level fully, the analysis will discuss both humorous and serious allegorical scenes. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Book One of The Faerie Queene is a neatly patterned, moral allegory based on a series of tests of Red Cross Knight's Holiness. Holiness is treated as a virtue compounded of faith, hope, and charity, and the tests are organized according to this triple division. Intimately associated with the triple division of Holiness is the psychological scheme by which moral behaviour, and hence character, is represented in the legend. Each of the parts of Holiness is associated with a portion of the soul which is divided according to the Neoplatonic, tripartite conception. Faith is associated with intellection, hope with reason, and charity with appetite. The tests of the knight's faith, hope, and charity are tests of the moral character of the intellectual, rational, and appetitive soul, and in sum the trial of Holiness is a trial of the knight's soul. The knight faces two series of tests, each comprised of tests of faith, hope, and charity. The knight fails the first set of tests, chiefly as a result of his innocence and his inability to bridle the appetites of the flesh. In the second set, having been perfected in Holiness in the House of Holiness, he succeeds. In the first set of tests of the knight's Holiness, he faces, in order, a test of faith, a test of charity, and a test of hope. The tests, however, are not distinctly separate, as each is a test of the knight's Holiness with a focus on one of its three parts. In the second set of tests, the knight faces, in order, a test of charity, a test of hope, and a test of faith. The order of the first series of tests is based on the order of generation and is emblemized in the antagonists of the three parts of Holiness, the brothers Sans foy, Sans loy, and Sans joy. The knight's initially imperfect Holiness is tried according to the order in which these gross imperfections of faith, charity, and hope were created by their satanic father. In the second set of tests, the perfected knight is tried according to the order of perfection of the three parts of Holiness. The relationship between the flesh and reason figures prominently in the legend, with Prince Arthur as the chief representative of reason and Orgoglio the chief representative of the flesh. As well, there is a hierarchy of figures representing various states of control of fleshly appetite, and ranked from beast to rational man. The figures in the hierarchy are all associated with Una, and the set of relationships involved serves the moral allegory by presenting various states of charity. Rather than using the method of choosing parts of the text to illustrate general conclusions about the nature of Book One, I have chosen the method of sequential, textual analysis. I have tried to be as careful as possible in my schematization of the legend, noting where my scheme separates tests which, in the legend, are overlapped. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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My thesis is comprised of two articles, titled "Interpreting Britomart's Encounters with Art: The Cyclic Nature of Ekphrasis in Spenser's Faerie Queene III," and "Picture This, Imagine That: Teaching Visual Literacy in the Disciplines." The purpose of my first article is to argue that Edmund Spenser uses ekphrasis in his epic poem The Faerie Queene to draw comparisons between the regenerative natures of both art and life. I support my argument by examining three ekphrastic instances experienced by Britomart, the central knight figure of Book III of the poem: a magic mirror forged by Merlin, a tapestry telling the story of Venus and Adonis, and a statue of Hermaphrodite recollected by the narrator. Through close reading and the assistance of Murrary Krieger's ekphrastic principle of "stillness," I support that all three visual art objects underline and associate with the themes of cyclic regeneration in Britomart's quest, and ultimately reveal Britomart to be an exemplary reader of art for readers to emulate. The purpose of my second article is to develop an economically, technologically, and theoretically accessible framework for teaching visual literacy in the disciplines. To accomplish my goal, I extrapolate from Classical rhetoric's pedagogic use of ekphrasis as the first systematized method for teaching visual conceptualization, and adapt and extend it to suit the present needs of students in the 21st-Century classroom. To communicate the urgency of the need for students to enrich proficiency at visual literacy, I provide a literature review that narrates the growing need expressed by visual literacy scholars, composition theorists, visualization theorists and specialists, and the library community for an overarching visual literacy framework that provides scaffolding and common language for students. To demonstrate the framework's usability, I apply it to three disciplinary visuals: a World War 1-era poster by the American Red Cross, a museum installation exhibit for communicating marine science to the public, and the Alpha Helix model created by Linus Pauling. I also offer suggestions for classroom practices and activities for using the framework across K-12 through university-level teaching. / Graduation date: 2013

This dissertation focuses on how a series of major characters in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (Prince Arthur, Britomart, Duessa, Artegall, and those characters that figure forth the poet's sovereign, Elizabeth I) enhance a reader's appreciation of the epic's complex topical allegory and its moral implications. By closely interpreting the respective functions and narratives of these characters, and additionally examining some of Spenser's main techniques of character development, I propose that the above figures both articulate and underscore central aspects of the poet's politically encomiastic and critical agendas. These specific techniques of character development include composition, fragmentation, and metamorphosis (both positive, as in the case of Britomart, as well as pejorative, such as in the case of the wicked enchantress Duessa). By thus investigating the topical import of The Faerie Queene 's allegory, I further demonstrate both how the epic's major characters illustrate contemporary Elizabethan moral and political ideals and, in certain cases, exemplify serious perceived threats to those ideals. The dissertation also indicates that the poet consistently and cautiously treads a fine line between allegorically depicting controversial historical issues and events (towards which at least some Elizabethans were ambivalent), and praising Elizabeth and her successful governing abilities. This crucial tension, reflected in the epic's diverse plots, invests the topical aspects of the poem with much of their complexity. Yet, given that Spenser's main aims included portraying his queen as a model monarch, while simultaneously enhancing concepts of English nationhood, his criticisms of her government and policies remain tentative. Loyalty to the Tudor sovereign and to the predominant Protestant faith in England are fundamental to the epic, for the poet assumes they provide his audience with an essential foundation for personal moral "self-fashioning." Eclectica

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