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Articles

Bimberg, Christiane. “Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene: Lost World Literature and Flourishing Critical Paradigm.” Izvestiya Juszhnogo Federalnogo Universiteta. Filologicheskiye Nauki. Rostov-on-Don. No. 1 (2009): 38-56. Abstract by Christiane Bimberg.

The Faerie Queene’s current paradoxical position is that of a canonical, yet simultaneously marginalized work of literature. The discrepancy between the lack of a general readership of the epic poem and its continuing and widening critical reception is all too obvious. The essay offers a critical re-reading of Spenser’s epic in the light of new trends of scholarship and criticism, especially the attempt to overcome the traditional dichotomy of poetry vs. politics. The author sees Spenser’s position as characterized by considerable tensions between utopia and history, ideal and reality, humanism and real politics. The essay concludes with the author’s outlining Spenser’s current value for research and teaching and an outlook on the prospects of his criticism.

 

Broaddus, James. “Spenser's Redcrosse Knight and the Order of Salvation,” Studies in Philology 108 [2011]: 572-604. Abstract by James Broaddus.

This essay provides an alternative to the 1960’s fall and restoration readings of the adventures of the Redcrosse Knight, readings in which Redcrosse begins with a genuine but weak faith, suffers a fall when he abandons Una (the True Faith and/or the True Church) at Archimago's hermitage, and is eventually restored to and strengthened in his faith in the house of Holinesse. In this essay, those adventures are read an expression of the order of salvation, which was codified by the Church of England in 1563 as Article 17 of the Thirty-nine Articles:

Wherefore, they [the elect] . . . be called according to God's purpose by His Spirit working in due season; they through grace obey the calling; they be justified freely; they be made sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ; they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God's mercy they attain to everlasting felicity.

The Redcrosse Knight, the future Saint George (1.10.61), begins as an elect but unsaved pre-Reformation Catholic, one who came to the faery court as a “clownishe younge man” (Letter to Raleigh) on a quest for worldly fame. That quest collapses with Redcrosse’s defeat and incarceration by Orgoglio; but Arthur rescues Redcrosse from the dungeon and Una rescues him from Despayre and brings him to the house of Holinesse. There he is called and justified, repents, and begins the slow and uneven process of sanctification which is to be completed, as Calvin quotes Augustine (Institutes, 3.3.13), with the “perfection of burial.”

 

Broaddus, James. A Galenic Reading of the Redcrosse Knight’s “goodly court” of Fidessa/Duessa. Studies in Philology 109 [2012]: 192-198. Abstract by James Broaddus.

Redcrosse’s “goodly court” of Fidessa/Duessa, “Pourd out in loosnesse on the grassy grownd,” is typically perceived as a moral failure. However, when Galen and his followers provide the perspective, the “goodly court” becomes also a sexual failure brought about when the “crudled cold” that “gan assayle” Redcrosse’s “corage” (sexual vigor and inclination) depletes the vital spirits in his blood and semen. That Redcrosse’s moral failure is, in addition, a sexual failure better serves to implement Despayre’s efforts to bring Redcrosse to despair by making his “goodly court” even more an occasion of male shame than would the subsequent stripping of Fidessa/Duessa by itself; but, by helping Despayre, the sexual failure also helps implement God’s plan for one of his elect. Armed with the complex of Redcrosse’s failures, Despayre is able to dismay the Knight so completely that he passively accepts Una’s guidance and comes to the house of Holinesse where, when his adventures are read as an expression of the order of salvation, he is called and justified, repents, and begins his sanctification.

 

Iammarino, Denna. “’From that day forth I cast in carefull mynd / To seeke her out with labor, and long tyne’: Spenser, Augustine, and the Places of Living Language,” Renascence 65.1 (Fall 2012): 39-61. Abstract by Denna Iammarino.

By depicting various poetic incarnations of Elizabeth—in the persons of Una, Britomart, and Gloriana—Spenser attempts to remedy his anxiety over justly representing her chastity (The Faerie Queene, Proem 3.i.9, 3.ii.1). In doing so, he offers his reader multiple opportunities to see his ideal of Virtue enacted and, ultimately, to begin to understand its more abstract nature. Spenser’s encouragement to use the seen to seek unseen meaning parallels what this study terms the “living language” of Augustine’s process of signification. Further drawing on Augustine’s conception of memory, this article extends Spenser’s discussions of the seen/unseen onto Arthur’s dream of Gloriana (I.ix.13-15).  In this episode, Gloriana is an unseen ideal, yet one that leaves tangible evidence of existence (her imprint in the grass). The seen evidence of an unseen ideal motivates Arthur to continue his quest for her—his quest for the ideal. Arthur’s re-collection of the event (his re-telling to Una) animates his memory of Gloriana into a reality. For the reader, Arthur models how to use past knowledge and experience to seek the unseen and make use of it for edification. Thus, memory becomes a pivotal nexus between the reader and those unseen places of possible meaning to which living language can grant access.

 

Kläger, Florian. “’Historical Dialogues‘: Zur Rolle des Dialogs bei der Konstruktion und Konfrontation historisch gewachsener Kollektive im elisabethanischen Irlanddiskurs.“ Zwischen Politik und Wissen: Archäologie und Genealogie frühneuzeitlicher Vergangenheitskonstruktionen, ed. Franz Bezner and Kirsten Mahlke. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011. 131-59. Abstract by Florian Kläger.

Published as part of the proceedings from a 2006 Heidelberg conference on early modern constructions of history, the essay examines Spenser’s Vewe in the context of other Elizabethan writings on Ireland in dialogue form, inquiring after that genre’s specific forms and functions in the construction of collective identities. It assesses these texts with regard to their construction of conversations between representatives of collectives from Ireland and England with special attention to the historiographical dimension of their approaches to solving the crown’s Irish problem. Authors discussed include Richard Stanihurst, Richard Beacon, Spenser, and ‘H. C.’, the author of the Dialogue of Silvynne and Peregrynne. The texts suggest that conversation between some players in the conflict is possible and desirable. They present constructions of the past through the dramatic, immediate form of the dialogue, highlighting the importance of understanding the past for the present and of the methodological lessons of historiography for contemporary politics. Subjects formed by and informed about history are shown in conversation about Elizabethan Ireland, excluding those collectives whom the authors deem objects of conversation only, rather than subjects with whom to engage in dialogue. The distance between Ireland and England is presented as a space that dialogue can and must bridge to avoid its threatening occupation by slander from those who should not participate in the discourse on Ireland at all.

42.2.32

Cite as:

"Articles," Spenser Review 42.2.32 (Winter 2013). Accessed March 28th, 2024.
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