Spenser's Dialogic Voice in Book 1 of The Faerie Queene

Abstract

Book 1 of The Faerie Queene marks the beginning of Spenser's distinctly Protestant epic in English. Key episodes such as Redcrosse Knight's adventures in the Wandering Wood, his dialogue with Fradubio, the bleeding, speaking tree, and his temptation by Despair allude to literary works by a wide range of Spenser's classical, medieval, and Renaissance predecessors. Yet he distinguishes his poem from theirs by emphasizing the Protestant idea that only grace provides his Everyman figure Redcrosse with escape from entrapment within his own sinful nature. Although critics have certainly discussed the poet's intertextual allusions in these episodes of book 1, few have done so in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin's term dialogism, or fully discussed the extent to which these episodes are polyvocal. I Spenser's polyvocality would seem to diminish his originality, but his dialogic voice actually satisfies his laureate ambitions by situating him in relation to literary authorities and by making him an authority in his own right.2 Mirroring Redcrosse Knight, who becomes wrapt in Errours endlesse traine in the Wandering Wood, Spenser, at the outset of The Faerie Queene, is himself caught in a maze of literary allusions.3 The sheer number of these allusions threatens him with anonymity and the loss of voice. Yet he avoids these perils by Jennifer C. Vaught is an assistant professor of English at Northern Michigan University. This essay is part of a book-length project entitled Alternative Masculinities in the Renaissance: Spenser, Shakespeare, and Their Contemporaries. She is also editing a collection of essays, Grief and Gender, 700-1700, with Lynne Dickson Bruckner and has published an essay on Shakespeare in the inaugural volume of Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky