Wonder, Artifacts, and the Human in The Faerie Queene

Abstract

This essay attends to Artegall’s and Britomart’s peculiar relationships to wonder in order to argue that Spenser understands the human in part as that creature capable of responding to and learning about artifacts with wonder and curiosity. It focuses on two key encounters with artifacts: Artegall’s viewing of the False Florimell in V.iii, and Britomart’s viewing of the tapestries and the masque of Cupid in the House of Busirane in Ill.xi–xii. Taking up the question of the human by means of wonder illuminates Spenser’s impossible desire for a particular relationship between knowledge and action, one in which action need not be grounded in prior knowledge and knowledge need not be learned at all, but simply known. The conclusion proposes Artegall and Britomart as two models of readerly response to The Faerie Queene.