“Clowdily Enwrapped in Allegorical Deuices”: The Joys and Perils of Teaching Spenser's Epic

Abstract

My introduction to Edmund Spenser came in my sophomore year in college during a survey class, when my professor announced: “If you’ve read one page of The Faerie Queene, you’ve read more than enough.” Since I had never heard of the epic, let alone read a word of it, I had no reason to doubt this proffered wisdom. That same semester, however, I encountered Spenser again, albeit vicariously, from a very different perspective. A group of my friends were enrolled in the senior honors seminar, which was focused on a single author. To their horror, they discovered that they would be spending the semester working on Spenser’s writings. Why they were appalled, I cannot remember, but I do recall that they spent countless meal hours complaining about the fate they believed awaited them. The professor listened to their objections and offered a compromise, which they accepted: they agreed to read and discuss The Faerie Queene for three weeks. At the end of that time they were free to request a change in topic for the rest of the term. But by the time Spenser’s probationary period was over, they were hooked, and as the semester passed they became more and more obsessed. They wrote and