Mapping The Faerie Queene

Quest Structures and the World of the Poem

Wayne Erickson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780815316589
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135812751
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book analyzes the Faerie Queene's setting, examining Spenser's quest structures and his ideas about epic, romance, and history. Critics almost invariably treat Spenser's Faeryland as coextensive with the world of the poem, but this is not the case; rather, Faeryland is part of an epic cosmos reaching from heaven and the abode of the classical deities to demonic underground realms. Spenser situates Faeryland within a specific spatial and temporal terrestrial geography in which locations outside Faeryland represent various heroic settings in political history. The politico-historical world built around Faeryland is ripe for analysis by contemporary historicist critics. Spenser uses political geography, in conjunction with the time-inclusive medium of Faeryland, to coordinate several transhistorical quests that create a pattern of temporal mediations among sixth-century British, 16th-century English, and biblical and prophetic versions of history. He juxtaposes chronicle history, empirical historiography, and cultural myth while manipulating genre to create a world capable of accommodating his grand romantic epic design. In mapping the world of The Faerie Queene, the book provides a widened context for Spenser's quest structures, a significant contribution to the study of the poem's relation to history, and a new perspective from which to view Spenser's debts to classical epic, Italian romantic epic, and his native medieval inheritance. Index.Bibliography.

Index

Abelard, Peter, 46–47

Abrams, Meyer, 82 n.11

Achilles, 20, 22, 34 n.4, 46

Acrasia, 15 n.10, 85 n.31, 96, 125

Adam, 53 n.9, 67, 69

Adam (and Eve), king (and queen) of Eden lands, 68–69, 77, 85 n.34, 96, 120–121

Aeneas, 4, 6, 7, 22, 44–46, 53 nn.9 and 12, 88, 95, 108, 114 n.30, 116 n.42

Aeneid. See Virgil

Aesculapius, 66

Africa, 69

Agamemnon, 53 n.11

Agape, 66

Agramante, 42

Albany. See Pictland

Alberti, Leone Battista, 82 n.10

Alcina, 43

Allen, Don Cameron, 54 n.13

Alma (and castle of), 5, 64, 66, 71, 75

Alpers, Paul, 12

Amazons, land of. See Radigund

America. See India

Amoret, 67, 102

Anchises, 7

Anderson, Judith H., 56 n.20

Angela, 71, 110

Angelica, 43

Antiquitie of Faerie lond, 92–93, 113 n.18

Apollo, 5, 66

Archimago, 65, 77, 120–121

Argonautica, 36 n.14

Ariosto, Lodovico, 4, 7, 11, 19, 21–22, 23, 30, 33, 34 n.5, 41–45, 51 nn.1, 3, and 4, 52 n.7, 79–80, 108–109, 116 n.42, 117 n.47

Aristotle (Poetics), 21–23, 35 n.12

Arlo hill, 68

Armada, 79

Artegall, 6, 29, 50, 53 n.9, 55 n.18, 69–70, 71–73, 75, 79, 87–88, 95–112, 117 n.48, 119–123, 125, 126

Arthos, John, 51 n.1

Arthur, 4, 6, 7, 13, 19, 24–30, 37 n.22, 38 n.28, 42, 48–50, 55 n.18, 61, 69, 71–73, 75, 79, 87–88, 90, 93, 95, 99–100, 105–112, 117 nn.45 and 46, 119–120, 123–126, 128

As...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Mapping Multiplicity
• I. Epic and History
• II. Epic and Romance
• III. The Epic World of The Faerie Queene
• IV. Britain and the Epic Quests
• Epilogue: Stranded in Faeryland
• Bibliography
• Index