Articles published on Faerie Queene
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- Research Article
- 10.9734/arjass/2025/v23i12852
- Dec 29, 2025
- Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences
- Ekmel Emrah Hakman
This article examines how castles function as central allegorical structures in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, shaping both the narrative progress of quests and the moral “fashioning of a gentleman.” Its purpose is to demonstrate that castles are not decorative romance backdrops but architecturally concentrated sites where virtues, vices, and ideological conflicts are staged and resolved across the six completed books. Methodologically, the study employs close textual analysis and formalist analysis of key castle episodes as Lucifera’s House of Pride and Orgoglio’s fortress (Book I); Medina’s and Alma’s castles (Book II); Castle Joyous and Malbecco’s castle (Book III); Corflambo’s stronghold and the fortified Island/Temple of Venus (Book IV); Pollente and Munera’s castle, Geryoneo’s usurped city-castle, and related sites of justice (Book V); and the castles of Briana, Turpine, Aldus, and Belgard (Book VI)—in dialogue with relevant Spenserian criticism. The analysis argues that these structures consistently externalise inner states and ethical configurations through a system of binary oppositions: House of Pride and Orgoglio’s dungeon versus the restorative House of Holiness; the temperate castles of Medina and Alma versus Acrasia’s Bower of Bliss; Castle Joyous and Malbecco’s stronghold versus the Garden of Adonis; and, in later books, unjust fortresses of extortion, tyranny, and discourtesy versus more muted images of right rule, justice, and courtesy such as Mercilla’s court and Castle Belgard. The study finds a clear shift from predominantly spiritual and erotic architectures in the early books to legal, political, and social architectures of justice and courtesy in the later ones. The article concludes that Spenser adapts the medieval castle-building tradition into a fully allegorical poetics: his “sandcastles” become durable pedagogical spaces where spiritual, moral, and civic virtues are materially tested, corrupted, or reformed.
- Research Article
- 10.1080/10848770.2025.2595746
- Dec 7, 2025
- The European Legacy
- Yazdan Mahmoudi
ABSTRACT This article examines the representations of Persia by comparing and contrasting them in four early modern epics: Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Camões’s The Lusiads, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. It argues that although ancient Persia serves as a symbol of imperial grandeur, decline, or Otherness, its image is neither one-dimensional nor monolithic, and serves other ideological agendas. Spenser recasts Persia as a moral allegory of pride and luxury; Camões rewrites it in a Christianized genealogy of empires that culminates in Portugal; Tasso conceives Persia as part of an eschatological landscape of spiritual warfare; and Milton subsumes ancient Persia in a providential geography of fallen empires ruled by infernal powers. The sheer variety of these deployments of Persia reflects early modern Europe’s shifting imperial desires and reveals how classical and Islamic pasts were redeployed to legitimize, interrogate, or complicate emerging European identities. As part of the broader debate about postcolonial theory, this article demonstrates that Persia was used in these early modern epics as a literary trope that enabled writers to engage with, no less than to comment upon, Europe’s imperial imaginaries.
- Research Article
- 10.1111/lic3.70032
- Oct 28, 2025
- Literature Compass
- Youngjin Chung
ABSTRACT This essay examines the pedagogical challenges and opportunities of teaching Edmund Spenser's “Book of Chastity” from The Faerie Queene (1590/1596) to South Korean undergraduate women in the post‐#MeToo era. Set against the backdrop of student protests against campus sexual misconduct, the study explores how an early modern English poem portraying non‐consensual relationships is received in a contemporary, all‐female academic setting. Through a case study of an upper‐level course on women and literature, the research investigates students' responses to Spenser's allegory, focusing on its treatment of female agency and consent within the prevailing rape culture. The essay highlights the complexities of bridging early modern literature with current discussions on gender and consent, examining students' critical engagement with a male‐authored canon addressing chastity and consent. By exploring these pedagogical experiences, the study contributes to the ongoing dialog about teaching historically significant and yet potentially problematic texts in a modern, culturally specific context, while remaining sensitive to evolving perspectives on gender, consent, and literary interpretation in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
- Research Article
- 10.12745/et.28.1.5726
- Jun 10, 2025
- Early Theatre
- Mary Villeponteaux
This essay explores the connection between The Winter’s Tale and The Faerie Queene, arguing that Shakespeare’s debt to Spenser is signalled by a previously unrecognized adaptation of the baby-and-bear episode from Book 6. Recognizing how Shakespeare both echoes and revises The Faerie Queene elucidates how The Winter’s Tale undermines the idea of essential identity and challenges social hierarchies. Echoes of The Faerie Queene in Shakespeare’s play and textual evidence that the same actor doubled the roles of Antigonus and Autolycus heighten Shakespeare’s criticism of the court and valorization of the power of art.
- Research Article
- 10.1093/res/hgaf034
- May 12, 2025
- Review of English Studies
- Patrick Cheney
Abstract In Upon Appleton House, Marvell imitates Spenser’s Faerie Queene to turn a country house poem of political retirement into a mini-national epic. Marvell invents his model of epic retirement as a form of leadership at a challenging time in England’s history. For Marvell’s employer, Thomas Fairfax, had resigned his command of the Parliamentary forces during the Second Civil War, devoting himself to managing his Nun Appleton estate. During Marvell’s residence at Nun Appleton, he turns his poetry of retirement into an epic enterprise through an imitatio of Spenser that is more deep-seated than criticism allows. Rather than writing an epic along the lines of The Faerie Queene, Marvell composes Upon Appleton House as an English Renaissance epic in the lyric key of a country house poem. To accomplish this generic feat, he innovatively presents retirement as an epic action. Spenser is instrumental to Marvell’s meditation upon an epic poetry of retirement that places a country-house garden at its centre.
- Research Article
- 10.1093/english/efaf002
- Apr 12, 2025
- English: Journal of the English Association
- Xiuchun Zhang
Abstract This article explores the paradise myth in A. S. Byatt’s ‘Morpho Eugenia’. While William Adamson’s journey from Bredely Hall to the Amazon parallels Satan’s ascent from Hell to Paradise in Paradise Lost, Seth’s adventure echoes Odysseus’s trip to the kingdom of the dead in The Odyssey, Aeneas’s descent into the Underworld in The Aeneid and Guyon’s journey to Hades’ dark realm in The Faerie Queene. Byatt integrates Miltonic motifs with Homeric, Virgilian, and Spenserian patterns, embedding the body–mind conflict within the paradise myth’s framework. The interplay between the lower and upper levels and Hell and Paradise underscore Byatt’s central theme: while marriage ensnares her artists and scientists, work liberates them.
- Research Article
- 10.2218/plurality.10050
- Feb 26, 2025
- Plurality
- Rose Devine
This article interrogates the role of women in Marie de France’s Lanval by examining how female figures function as symbolic witnesses and repositories of desire within the feudal court. Drawing on theoretical frameworks advanced by Julia Kristeva, the study argues that medieval literature constructs women as the Other, whose absence of personhood provides a space for the projection of male desire, lending itself to the pursuit of honour and spiritual ascendance. Through a detailed analysis of the dual portrayals of the fairy queen and the feudal queen, the article demonstrates how these figures, though superficially subversive, ultimately reinforce the gendered hierarchies of courtly love. The narrative techniques employed in Lanval—from lexical choices and character juxtapositions to the symbolic settings of the forest and court—reveal a deep reliance on the female form to validate the male quest for refinement and societal worth. By contrasting the two characters, the article underscores how women are reduced to ‘objects of exchange’, serving primarily to witness and substantiate male progress (Kristeva, 1981, p. 50). In doing so, it highlights the inherent tension between the subversive potential of Lanval and its structural adherence to patriarchal values, offering insight into the complex interplay of desire, power, and gender in medieval narratives.
- Research Article
- 10.1086/733373
- Jan 1, 2025
- Spenser Studies
- John E Curran
Constancy, Tristram, and the “Parcell” of <i>The Faerie Queene</i> Book VII
- Research Article
- 10.1353/yes.00013
- Jan 1, 2025
- The Yearbook of English Studies
- Richard Helgerson
Abstract: Originally published in volume 21 of the Yearbook of English Studies (1991), this essay considers the relationship between Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581) and Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590), and the ways in which the former can be an aid to interpretation of the latter. It looks at the meaning of the form of Spenser’s epic, and what the choice of the genre of chivalric romance entails for a political interpretation of the poem.
- Research Article
- 10.1353/sel.2025.a952059
- Jan 1, 2025
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Richard Danson Brown
Abstract: This article reexamines Spenser's representation of anger through the neglected canto in which Tristram rescues a nameless lady from abuse by a nameless knight. It explores the poetic forms and recurring narrative motifs which underpin the Tristram episode, and argues that, in The Faerie Queene , the representation of anger entails critical use of the complaint mode. It shows Spenser's critical response to Lipsius's Neostoic De Constantia , a dialogue which opposes complaint as a psychological maneuver and as a rhetorical practice. The article suggests that Spenser's poetic styles are key to the interpretation of the poem's broader allegorical engagement with Courtesy.
- Research Article
- 10.1163/23526963-05001001
- Dec 12, 2024
- Explorations in Renaissance Culture
- Vincent Mennella
Abstract Because the Faerie Queene of a borderless empire allies herself with Arthur in a battle against the Paynim King on “Bryton fieldes with Sarazin blood bedyde,” Spenser inverts the relationship between Christendom and the borderless Saracen world of Italian epic-romance. Some critics consider Spenser’s itinerant Saracens representative of the threat to Protestant England posed by the See of Rome and Ottoman Empire, but The Faerie Queene also allegorizes the threat Protestant England and the Ottoman Empire posed to the See of Rome. Instead of an epic conflict between two rival empires, Spenser’s Saracens symbolize persistent threats of rebellion and corruption among diverse peoples coexisting within one empire. If Spenser is rightly called the English Virgil, then he deserves this honor because Protestant England’s vexed relationship with Rome inspires him to thwart readers’ expectations for classical imitations of epic conflict between Christendom and the Saracen world established by Ariosto and Tasso.
- Research Article
- 10.58726/langlit-154-173
- Dec 1, 2024
- The VII International Scientific Conference
- Tadevos Tadevosyan + 1 more
Key words: bard, Vladimir Lermontov, Henry Lyon Oldie, Fairy Queen, Mikhail Lermontov, prophet, fantasy novel, Russian literature, Sergei Lukyanenko, Thomas Learmont, Scotland, Elfland The article analyzes the paradigm of the Celtic legend about Thomas the Rhymer and the Fairy Queen, which is reflected in the works of modern Russian literature. The main topic of the article is the fantasy novels by Sergei Lukyanenko “The Last Watch” (2006) and Henry Lyon Oldie (pseudonym of Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky) “Harpy” (2008), as well as the philosophical and esoteric treatise by Vladimir Lermontov “Manifesto. Formula of the future. New Path to the New World” (2019). The plot of this legend is indirectly intertwined with the life and work of the great Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. His life is imbued with many secrets and mysteries that have become the basis for the formation of various fantastic and conspiracy theories. According to legend, Mikhail Lermontov was a descendant of the famous Scottish bard and soothsayer Thomas Learmont (Rhymer). In his youth, Thomas captivated the Fairy Queen with his songs and playing the harp, and as a result she took him to her magical land. There he received a prophetic gift from her and a few years later returned to his homeland. One day she sent white deer for him, who forever escorted Thomas the Rhymer to the Land of the Elves.
- Research Article
- 10.1017/s1478570624000253
- Sep 1, 2024
- Eighteenth Century Music
- Christopher Suckling
In the Clark Library at the University of California Los Angeles, there is a 1691 copy of the printed playbook for Dryden's An Evening's Love: or, The Mock-Astrologer (London: Henry Herringman), which was used as a promptbook in revivals of the play at Drury Lane between 1705 and 1717 (Edward A. Langhans, Eighteenth[-]Century British and Irish Promptbooks: A Descriptive Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1987), 44–45). Amongst other alterations in it, songs are excised and musical flourishes are added (a digitized version is available at https://archive.org/details/dryden_mock_astr_clarklib; see, for example, page 20). It is a comforting object that – when reassessing the recordings made in 2019 by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort of Purcell's dramatick operas King Arthur (Winged Lion SIGCD 589, 2019) and The Fairy Queen (Winged Lion SIGCD 615, 2020), for which I performed as a bass violinist and prepared the editions – reassures me that our processes were well grounded.
- Research Article
- 10.1525/rep.2024.167.4.97
- Aug 1, 2024
- Representations
- J K Barret
This essay uses Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1596) and George Wither’s A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635) to investigate the contingencies that fictions can harbor and the ethical demands of the cocreative reading practices they host. Wither’s Collection includes an innovative “lotterie” game that involves twenty-four poems that do not correspond to any emblem. I trace the uninstantiated possibilities enabled by the inclusion of these “blank chances” in light of early modern poetry’s developing interest in contingency.
- Research Article
- 10.1353/abr.2024.a937792
- Jun 1, 2024
- American Book Review
Faerie Queene Reads Best Fast
- Research Article
- 10.5204/mcj.3025
- Mar 12, 2024
- M/C Journal
- Jo Coghlan
The British Royals in Australia
- Research Article
1
- 10.1353/pgn.2024.a935333
- Jan 1, 2024
- Parergon
- John E Curran
Abstract: This article focuses on the treatment of occasion through the even-numbered books of 'The Faerie Queene', a pattern which constitutes part of the poem's incorporation of logic into moral thinking. Spenser's 'pleasing Analysis' of virtue ethics has two senses of 'Methode', the analytic and the cryptic. Whereas for the humans logic is integrated into how they exercise virtue and advance their own and our understanding of it, the virtues patronised by faerie knights, Temperance, Friendship, and Courtesy, while they use logic, are surreptitiously revealed to depend on circular reasoning. For these more tautological virtues, the cryptical method allows for inversion and redundancy geared both to exalt virtue and to gloss over conceptual limitations in received traditions of virtue ethics. Occasion marks a specific means to observe this hidden circularity.
- Research Article
- 10.4000/13juq
- Jan 1, 2024
- Études Épistémè
- Andrew Hiscock
This article focuses on selected narratives of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene with particular attention to the contexts of illness, healing and convalescence. Discussion explores how Spenser establishes a clear narrative rhythm in his epic poem so that his various protagonists seek refuges for medical and therapeutic intervention at regular points in each of the designated “books” of the work. Of particular interest here are the ways in which Spenser reinterprets Catholic discourses of spiritual failure and healing for a Protestant audience in sixteenth-century England.
- Research Article
- 10.1086/728302
- Jan 1, 2024
- Spenser Studies
- Richard Danson Brown
Spenser with Bruegel: Authority and Punishment in<i>The Faerie Queene</i>, Book V
- Research Article
- 10.5325/ninecentstud.35.0075
- Nov 3, 2023
- Nineteenth Century Studies
- Laura White
Abstract One of the more remarkable satires of English society and thought of the 1880s came in the guise of a fairy story, That Very Mab (1885), in which the eponymous fairy queen is driven out of Samoa by imperialists and on her return to England finds it overrun by evolutionists and the proponents of modern material progress. Written by the satirist and popular Punch contributor May Kendall, That Very Mab excoriates Victorian England by satirizing its passion for explanatory frameworks, including scientific materialism, philistinism, nihilism, novel metaphysics, evolutionary progress, and imperialism, all subjects that Kendall also attacked in her comic verse (published between 1885 and 1894). Kendall has recently received critical attention for her satiric poems about evolutionary science, materialism, and modern disenchantment. While That Very Mab’s satiric concerns in many ways dovetail with those of these poems, the wider scope of its fantastic narrative allows Kendall to enact a more sustained assault on the concept of empire and its justifications from evolutionary anthropology. Highly skeptical of teleologies that promote a belief in the evolutionary progress of humankind, her fairy fantasy links evolutionary anthropology to the dishonest blandishments, corruption, and violence of imperial adventures.