Spenser’s Mutabilitie and the Indeterminate Universe

Abstract

In the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie , Spenser allegorically explores the unpredictable and revolutionary implications of the new science through Mutabilitie’s insurrection, which transforms the heavens from a recognized hierarchy into an undifferentiated space of uncertainty and debate. Mutabilitie’s challenge to Jove’s superiority resembles the science of Tycho Brahe and Giordano Bruno, both of whom also contested the hierarchical structure of the traditional world system. Mutabilitie signals that the determinate meaning presupposed in the Aristotelian cosmos and the transcendent aspirations of allegory cannot be sustained in a post-Copernican universe.