Abstract
ABSTRACTMuiopotmos, or the Fate of the Butterflie, one of the “smale Poemes” in Edmund Spenser’s Complaints (1591), is an epic-styled insect fable indebted to the aetiological tradition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Its enigmatic subject has encouraged allegorical interpretation along topical, moral or aesthetic lines. Drawing on previous readings of the poem as a Sidneian speaking picture, this essay analyses Spenser’s concern with smallness by looking at similar uses of this idea in the work on insects by Elizabethan naturalist Thomas Muffet and in the treatise on the miniature by painter Thomas Hilliard. Attention to the English mistranslation of the original Greek title, the lexicon and imagery describing the protagonist, and the mythological tales interwoven in the narrative enables a reading of Spenser’s poem as a vindication of the transformative powers of poetry and of the potential of small artefacts to address issues such as the moral and aesthetic functions of art.
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