Abstract
This chapter explores the fountains of Book 1 of The Faerie Queene as they relate to three influences, in which concerns with sources and genre tend to overlap. The first (and largest) is religious writing. This includes the Bible but also other religious writings that could have been among Edmund Spenser's influences. If Errour is seen as a parodic fountain, as the chapter shortly suggests, then Redcrosse journeys from the antithesis of the fountain in canto 1 to the true fountain, the Well of Life, in canto 11. He meets his downfall beside the fountain with Duessa in canto 7, while the narrative is shaped by a number of other ‘watery’ features along the way. Both landscape and quest are palimpsestic and intertextual, with structures and motifs drawn from many interpenetrating sources and traditions. Negotiating them therefore solicits a unifying interpretative strategy; reading Redcrosse's journey through its fountains helps to access and understand it.
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