“Emergent Discourses of Difference in Spenser's Faerie Queene" argues that Spenser's project of fashioning "a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" is in fact a project to define both an English literary and national identity. Yet his idea of faerie which expresses this Englishness is based upon the perception of difference as dangerous and monstrous. While Spenser's faerie is romanticized and politicized, the nature of its threat to the Christian hero is expressed in emerging discourses of anxiety concerning racial, sexual, and class differences, discourses which continue to inform English/British identity well into the age of empire. Although the medieval romance which influenced Spenser presents faerie as an aristocratic ideal, Spenser also borrows from an older, more popular conception of faerie as inherently dangerous, perhaps even predatory. Spenser's use of popular faerie folklore may be read as either an "imperial" appropriation or an instance of the shaping power of popular culture to influence the hegemonic discourse of Elizabethan courtliness, gentility, and the power of the (female) monarch. Spenser's depiction of the lower classes is more complex than the ubiquitous "many-headed monster" so commonly represented by his contemporaries. In turn, Spenser's use of folklore provides an interpretative lens with which to view Spenser's depiction of Elizabeth Tudor as the Faerie Queene, suggesting that the female body and female sexuality present a source of danger both to the titular heroes of the work and to the idealized Christian hero, Arthur. I contend that Spenser's depiction of Elizabeth as Gloriana is not as complementary as it seems. Further, Edmund Spenser was writing at a time of an emergent discourse of race difference applied to Africans and Native Americans, a discourse which manifests itself in Spenser's work as a racialization of the Irish and the "paynim" enemies that challenge his heroes. The Faerie Queene demonstrates Spenser's anxiety for the corruptive effects of the uncivilized and "unworthy," the non-white/non-English, and the non-Protestant Other, including the female witch. Both the inhabitants of faerie and the Faerie Queene herself represent the anxieties at the source of what Spenser defines as English.

Thesis advisor: Mary T. Crane / Thesis advisor: Caroline Bicks / <italic>Disappearing Acts</italic> interrogates the concept of Petrarchism and the role of the Petrarchan mistress in early modern England. Critics from the early modern period onward have viewed Petrarchism as limiting to women, arguing that it obstructs female agency. This view stems from a long history of trying to establish the parameters of Petrarchism itself, a body of literature whose inchoate nature makes it difficult to define. <italic>Disappearing Acts</italic> takes as its starting point the instability of Petrarchism, embracing the ways in which it functions as a discourse without boundaries, whose outlines are further blurred by its engagement with other genres, forms, and contexts. Examining the intersections between Petrarchism and other early modern discourses&mdash;religious, political, theatrical, humanist, romantic&mdash;illuminates the varied ways in which the role of the mistress is deployed in early modern literature and suggests that, as a term, the &ldquo;Petrarchan mistress&rdquo; loses the coherence that critics often impose on it. Rarely ever entirely there or entirely missing, the figure of the mistress instead signifies an unstable, liminal role that results in far more complex representations of women. This project emphasizes the complexities of the Petrarchan mistress and examines this figure as a performative role that is negotiated rather than simply inhabited as a prison. Each chapter traces the intersections between Petrarchism and another early modern discourse in England. Chapter One examines the overlap between Reformist language and Petrarchan language, particularly in the &ldquo;absent presence&rdquo; of the Eucharist and the female beloved. I argue that the elusive persona of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew is produced by the conjunction of Petrarchan and Reformist discourses. Chapter Two interrogates the relationship between the theory of the king&rsquo;s two bodies and the concept of the Petrarchan female double, pairing Edmund Spenser&rsquo;s <italic>Faerie Queene</italic> with the writings of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. I suggest that female queens of the sixteenth century both secured and imperiled their authenticity by comparing themselves to a false version. Chapter Three examines the relationship between Petrarchism and the figure of the ghost in early modern England. I consider Shakespeare&rsquo;s <italic>The Winter&rsquo;s Tale</italic> in relation to the female complaint, a popular genre appended to sonnet sequences in which a ghost complains about her fate, and I argue that Shakespeare&rsquo;s evocation of ghostliness enables Hermione to return from her immobilized position to perform a Pertrarchan role in which she can speak her own desires. Chapter Four reexamines Mary Wroth&rsquo;s character, Pamphilia, as two different characters produced by two different genres: one by the prose romance <italic>The Countess of Montgomery&rsquo;s Urania</italic> and one by the sonnet sequence <italic>Pamphilia to Amphilanthus</italic>. While the Pamphilia of the sonnets proclaims her constancy, the Pamphilia of the romance exposes the tensions produced by the varied historical uses of the term in discourses from martyrology to stoicism. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

This thesis analyses Edmund Spenser&rsquo / s Fowre Hymnes in light of the holistic Renaissance world view and poet&rsquo / s collection of various tradition of ideas. Spenser&rsquo / s treatment of love is explored as the cosmic principle of harmony. Universal order is examined with an emphasis on the position of man in the ontological hierarchy. Thus, this thesis investigates Spenser&rsquo / s own suggestions to imitate macrocosmic harmony and order in the microcosmic level.

Inaug. diss.--Berlin. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 480-510). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This dissertation argues that the modern concept of literary character was an unintended consequence of Renaissance moral poetics. The evolution of "character" as a term of literary analysis, from the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in sixteenth-century Italy to the establishment of modern English usage in the late seventeenth century, is the focus of the first half of my work. Aristotle invented a theory of mimetic realism whereby the representation of types of character renders transparent the moral ideology operative in a culture. By placing types into a plot revealing how they do or do not conduce to human flourishing, the Aristotelian poet engages in ideological critique. As I claim, Renaissance humanists revived the form of the Aristotelian character type yet looked to the ethics of Christian Neo-Platonism or Neo-Stoicism to ground any ideological critique. The result was an array of eclectic accounts of poetic character's relation to the political subject. Through close examinations of three authors in the second half of my work, I elucidate the internal tensions and creative opportunities posed by such accounts. Michel de Montaigne's statements concerning the representation of moral character in the Essais test various criticisms and partial recuperations of Stoic-Aristotelian epideixis. I argue that Montaigne eventually attaches to the humanist image of the inspired poet, because poetic inspiration provides a model of heuristic utterance that avoids the aggression of political factions in France. In a chapter devoted to Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, I argue that the Neo-Platonic metaphysics taken for granted by Spenser in the "Letter to Raleigh" implies a more comprehensive hermeneutics of allegorical character than either the "Letter" or existing scholarship acknowledges. Interpreting Spenser's representations of the "morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised" through the lens of this hermeneutics brings us closer to the experience of Spenser's contemporaries reading his poem. In my final chapter, I study William Shakespeare's thoughtful deployment of a Ciceronian model of exemplarity. I argue that in the character of Henry V, Shakespeare unmasks the ideology of patriotism and historical triumphalism shared by Cicero and the Tudor regime.

No description available.

The first three cantos of the Book of Courtesy discover to us the realm of social relations, where, as in the sphere of Justice, a strict system of gradation operates. lndeed, Spenser, in the early part of Book VI, sustains much of the atmosphere of the "stonie" age of Book V, and Calidore's initial adventures illustrate the abuses to which a hierarchical order of society lends itself in the fallen world. The poet's artistic exploration of these abuses traces their origins to the mean and malicious impulses of the human mind, which are, in a larger context, manifestations of the cosmic evil that disrupts the quests of all the hero-knights of The Faerie Queene. [...]

This study examines the sixteenth-century English Reformation background of Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book 3. Recovering this material is not simply a matter of opening a Bible, for various groups in the period, both Catholic and Reformer, interpreted its passages differently. The Book's four primary female characters, Belphoebe, Florimell, Britomart and Amoret, embody different aspects of the virtue, and these come into sharper focus in the light of this background. After a general survey of previous discussions of this topic, Chapter 1 examines the virgin Belphoebe and attitudes about celibacy and virginity current in sixteenth-century England, finding that neither Catholic nor Reformer disparaged this state, although in practice they differed dramatically. Chapter 2, considering the plight of Florimell, shows how her actions demonstrate that her chastity is, as these Reformation writers urge, a matter of the mind and soul, the springs from which virtue and its opposites flow. Her quality derives from such inner conviction. Next, Chapter 3, looking at Britomart, shows that Reformation writers generally do not speak of human love, even in marriage, in a way that comes close to Spenser's poem. However, when they deal with spiritual love, the love the soul is to have for God, they describe it in terms which sound very like those of passionate romantic love. The final chapter brings the insights of the preceding essay to bear on the closing cantos and Amoret's distress. Seen against this background, while she may appear helpless, her mind, like Florimell's, is constant and firm; she remains chaste. Indeed, she prefers imprisonment and even death, to surrendering to her captor. Like both Belphoebe and Britomart, what underlies her behaviour is her prior love for her beloved, which is the basis of her chastity, just as the Reformation writers understand it. The perspective on Spenser's poem provided by this Reformation material gives rise to new insights into the text

Exile is, as Edward Said so eloquently put it, “the perilous territory of not-belonging.” Exiled peoples operate on the margins of their native culture: part of it, but excluded from it permanently or temporarily. Broadly speaking, my project explores the impact of exile on English literature of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. English exiles appear frequently in literary studies of the period, but little attention has thus far been focused on the effect of exile itself on late medieval and early modern authors. Historical studies on exile have been more prevalent and engaging. My project builds on this work and contributes new and groundbreaking investigations into the literary reflections of these important topics, mapping the influence of exile on trans-Reformation English literature. My dissertation identifies and defines a new, critical lens focusing on later medieval and early modern literature. I call this lens the “mind of exile,” a cognitive phenomenon that influences textual structure, and metaphorical usage, as well as shapes individual and national identities. It contributes new theories regarding the development of polemic as a genre and their contribution to the development of the “nation-state” idea that occurred in the sixteenth century. It identifies a new genre I call polemic chronicle, which adopts and deploys the conventions of chronicle in order to declare a personal and/or national identity. Lastly, it contributes new scholarship to Spenser studies by building on established scholarship exploring the hybrid identity of Edmund Spenser. To these studies, I add fresh critical readings of A View of the State of Ireland and Colin Clouts Comes Home Againe. Both texts represent, I argue, proto-colonial literature influenced by Spenser’s mind of exile that explore England’s new position at the end of the sixteenth century as a burgeoning imperial power.