Pulchritudo vincit?: Emblematic Reversals in Spenser’s House of Busirane

Abstract

In the House of Busirane, Spenser effects a series of emblematic reversals involving two disparate paradigms of love, figured respectively in Cupid and Amoret. Cupid’s triumph over Amoret and her subsequent binding by Busirane echo the commonplace potentissimus affectus, amor. However, this image reverses cupido cruciatus, the traditional emblem of Cupid bound, stripped of his weapons, and subjected to the very torments he inflicts upon lovers. In Amoret’s case, aggressive Eros is not tempered; here, Amoret, figuring reciprocal love, endures erotic “maisterie.” Britomart’s emancipation of Amoret represents pulchritudo vincit, which, in the 1590 narrative, leads to Amoret and Scudamour’s hermaphroditic embrace and provisional symbolic closure. In cancelling this emblem of mutual love in the 1596 Faerie Queette, Spenser figuratively rebinds Amoret in order to “unbind” his narrative. So doing, Spenser counters the moral commonplaces underpinning his mythopoetics of love, pursuing in its stead a poetics of di...