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Spenser's Complaints volume is a Menippean satire, a form characterized by mixture. Within this mixture of forms and voices, the three beast poems, Virgils Gnat, Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale, and Muiopotmos are unified by shared traditions in Classical Aesopic beast fable and medieval beast poetry. Reading these three poems as a set reveals Spenser's interpretation of the literary history of beast poetry as one of several competing forms of order. The beast poems show ordering schemes of hierarchy, proportion, imitative practice, and dialectic, yet none of these is dominant. Thus, in the overall Menippean mixture that makes up the volume, the beast poems present an additional and less obvious mixture: the kinds of order available to a literary artist. Spenser's Complaints volume was the object of some censorship, and scholars still debate whether he or his printer, William Ponsonby, designed the book. The many kinds of organization demonstrated by the beast poems coalesce to form a theory of contestatory imitation in which the dominant order is disorder itself, represented by the ruin brought about by time's passage. Spenser appropriates both satiric and serious voices in the beast poems. He reflects on his political ambition to achieve the status of poet laureate in a noble, courtly manner, but he snarls like a fox, too, when he considers the ruin of his ambition. / Master of Arts

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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

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1896. / Prefatory note signed: A. S. C. [i.e. Albert S. Cook]

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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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1928. / "Reprinted from ELH, a journal of English literary history, vol. 4, no. 1, March, 1937."

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This thesis endeavors to show how Edmund Spenser used classical mythology, and his variations from it, in his work The Faerie Queene.