Gender

Abstract

In his “Letter to Ralegh,” Spenser famously proclaims the goal of The Faerie Queene to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline”; and, indeed, The Faerie Queene’s Virgilian opening line, “Lo I the man” (Proem I.i.1), identifies the voice of Spenser’s epic as explicitly masculine. The poem’s overarching epic purpose is to narrate the impending imperial marriage of Arthur and Gloriana and their joining forces to triumph over the “Paynim King.” But four lines later, the poet also proclaims his Ariostan intention to narrate “Knights and Ladies gentle deeds.” It is Spenser’s Ariostan voice, not always happily accommodating “Ladies gentle deeds” within his epic goal of fashioning knights in “gentle discipline,” that inserts the wedge of “gender trouble” into The Faerie Queene. Notoriously at odds with epic purposiveness are the aimless meanderings of romance narrative that entangle knights within the standard romance apparatus of abductions, seductions, strange castle customs, erotic dreams, demonic spells, and so on—labyrinthine impediments to epic closure often coded as “female.” When the paths of “Knights and Ladies” intersect with increasing frequency in The Faerie Queene’s so-called “romance middle,” Spenser’s epic begins its indefinite delay of Arthur and Gloriana’s imperial marriage.KeywordsGender StudyFeminist CriticismFeminist StudyBook VersusMale DesireThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.