‘How might I see / The thing, that might not be, and yet was donne?’ (I. vi.39) Seeing, Believing, and Anti-Catholicism in Book One of Spenser's Faerie Queene

Abstract

In this study I investigate Spenser's anti-Catholic writing in relation to the Protestant politics of early modern England, looking at several crises in public affairs in the late sixteenth century and examining changing constructions of Catholicism—how these are reflected in the imagery and rhetoric of anti-Catholic writing. My reading of Book One illustrates with a wide range of cultural reference exactly what the resonance of Spenser's characterization and description would have conveyed to a Protestant audience and demonstrates the extent of hostility directed by Protestant theology to Catholicism. Throughout, there is a focus on interpreting the complexities of Spenser's allegory and setting it within the late Elizabethan religious and political climate. As suggested by the title, there is a specific emphasis on how Catholic characters manipulate the faculty of sight, using illusion, duplicity, and pretence and I link Spenser's interest in the dichotomy between the appearance and reality of his Catholic characters to his criticism of the Catholic Mass and Catholic doctrine. I ultimately suggest that Spenser requires his audience to learn with the Protestant Redcrosse knight that one must penetrate beyond the visual mask of Catholicism and delve deeper in order to recover the ‘hidden truth'.