Li, Jerry (Kit) 2018 English Thesis

Title: Moral Didacticism and Transcendence: Elizabeth and Her Bodies in The Faerie Queene : Advisor: Emily Vasiliauskas Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Released Beyond Williams: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No

Moral Didacticism and Transcendence: Elizabeth and Her

Bodies in The Faerie Queene

By

Jerry Li (Kit)

Dr. Emily Vasiliauskas, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the

Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors

In English

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williamstown, Massachusetts

April 16, 2018

1,Li Table of Contents

Contents Page No.

Title Page…………………………………………………………………………1

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………2

Dedication………………………………………………………………………...3

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….4

Chapter 1: Beyond the Daemonic: Allegorizing the Divine……………………...5

Chapter 2: Unraveling Chastity’s System of Maintenance……………………….17

Chapter 3: The Instrumentalization of Erotic Love……………………………….28

Chapter 4: The Gestured Gesture…………………………………………………40

2,Li Dedication

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a

man whom I can really love.”

-Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, 1811)

I dedicate this work to my inspiring and caring husband that I have yet to meet.

3,Li Acknowledgements

This work resembles a milestone for an individual who was precarious about pursuing English beyond its use as a mode of communication. What was once limited to daily expressions and colloquial conversations became a defining quality of my academic passions and pursuits. To that end, I am extremely grateful for the English Department at Williams College. To those who have facilitated my continued growth, particularly in the academic sphere, to a point where I am able to note its merge with the personal and live a better life from it--despite the many daunting fears that couple such-- I hope the ambiguous flux that accompanies this sentence can gesture towards my absolute gratitude. To that end, I am ever so thankful for having you in my life Prof. Emily Vasiliauskas. To ensure this work was not a tragedy, or purposely so and thus better overall, I have those who offered to help and those who lent a probing mind to thank. To that end, I am greatly appreciative of Prof. Gage McWeeny, Prof. Chris Pye, Prof. Katie Kent, Mary Kate Guma and the Students of the Honors Colloquium. To my family, my dear mother and sister, I acknowledge you for not communicating with me often enough in hopes of not distracting me, as I rightly assume. To my dear friends Malina Simard-Halm and Sarah Marks, I thank you for your emotional support despite your absence. And to the Merciful Lord, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet with these influential people and have these experiences, rendering this work as possible and myself as me.

4,Li Beyond the Daemonic: Allegorizing the Divine

It initially seemed to me that it was a blessing that Edmund Spenser, in his letter to Sir

Walter Raleigh, provided a how-to-read guide for the The Faerie Queene.1 Spenser, insofar as he ​ ​ seeks through his poem to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline,” commits himself to a project of change. The poem demonstrates this commitment in two ways: character development in the narrative, with the three knights of Book I, II and III becoming, over the course of their adventures, the virtues they stand for, and the presentation of these characters as sites of learning that facilitate a reader’s reconcilement of Christian selfhood.

While Spenser proposes that learning happens via the observation of a character’s development, the letter to Raleigh highlights the tension between allegory and ideas of developmental progress. Spenser writes in his letter that a “palmer bearing an infant with bloody hands” seeks the help of Gloriana to overcome an enchantress called Acrasia.2 She subsequently appoints Sir Guyon, the knight of Temperance, to perform this task. However, in the narrative of

Book II, Sir Guyon is already on his set mission before he and the palmer meet the bloody-handed baby, apparently for the first time. To read Spenser’s incompatible timelines as meaningful, it is as if Temperance warrants no event to begin its struggle with disinhibition,

Acrasia. Thus, how do you make something happen--let alone make someone change--in an allegory? Jeff Dolven echoes this question, arguing that it is possible that allegorical agents

1 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Raleigh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. Spenser’s letter to Sir Walter Raleigh expounds his didactic intention for The Faerie Queene. He explicitly ​ ​ states that it is a “continued allegory, or dark conceit” with a explicit purpose to champion virtues necessary to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” The letter provides a crucial foundation for my analysis, it notes Spenser’s reliance on the allegory, the ideas of change that accompany his allegorical reflection of virtues via Knights and his intention to also flatter Queen Elizabeth. 2 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Raleigh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. 5,Li “cannot learn, or even cannot change”.3 For Dolven, allegorical agents may be “artifacts and prisoners” of what they represent, an allegorical character’s progression and deviation being part and parcel of what the allegory has always already determined, rather than a sign of transformation.4

Spenser’s anxious commitment to change highlights the assumed stagnancy and questionable immunity of the characters of “grace”. In Book I, Una and Gloriana seem to be

“complete” from the beginning; while Redcrosse undertakes a journey to become Holiness, Una begins as a representation of the English Church and as Truth, and Gloriana is a representation of

“the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene,” Queen Elizabeth I.5

Tensions, however, arise as we note how Una allegorically represents Truth and the English

Church in a female body. Una’s representation of Truth and the English Church is defined by oneness--there is one English Church and One Truth, both merged via Una’s allegorical task.

She, however, like many allegorical characters tasked with representing abstract ideals, is gendered female, forcing her to carry the burden of female sexuality in a post-edenic time and thus, nature’s influence on “grace”.6 The weight associated with a fictional character, Una, and the gravity of her gender and sexuality, casts a shadow across Elizabeth’s supposed distance

3 Dolven, Jeff Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 138. ​ ​ ​ 4 Dolven, 138. ​ 5 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Ralegh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. 6 McManus, Caroline. “The ‘Carefull Nourse’: Female Piety in Spenser's Legend of Holiness.” Huntington Library ​ ​ Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, 1997, JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3817786. 382-405. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ A post-edenic reality refers to God’s curse on Women, to be child-bearers and have an innately illicit sexuality, and its effect on a woman's life via various societal conventions. The term “edenic” refers to a time before man’s expulsion from Eden, where sexuality was not something to be avoided, controlled and/or purified. Sexuality was unquestionable and automatically innocent and good. Adam and Eve became ashamed of their nakedness and sexual natures after they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen. 3:7). The Hebrew verb “to know” is a euphemism for sexual activity. I also use the term Edenic in an extended sense to refer to the locale of Divinity that is untouched by the order of nature, that which distinguishes the Edenic from the post-edenic. 6,Li from her own gender and sexuality, her self-fashioning as divinely sanctioned chastity, particularly as she is non-fictional and non-allegorical. Thus, while Elizabeth is publicly viewed as not fully entering the order of nature, in part due to her devotion to being virginal and chaste, how is she different to Una and how is her invulnerability, such as to the influences that Una is vulnerable to, reflected in a literary world?7 How does the prosopopoeia of Una and Queen

Elizabeth’s divinity, via a direct and embodied representation in an allegory, differ and affect their respective capacities to change and to incarnate their corresponding virtues.

The relationship between Una and Gloriana seems worthy of consideration on the level of plot at a precise moment of narrative achievement- Redcrosse defeats the dragon and becomes

Holiness and Una and Gloriana end up in a strange kind of competition, in which Redcrosse’s marriage to Una is simultaneously accomplished and replaced with a commitment to his queen.

He nought forgot, how he whilome had sworne, In case he could that monstrous beast destroy, Vnto his Faerie Queene backe to returne: The which he shortly did, and Una left to mourne. (I. XII. 41.6-41.9)

Virginal chastity, part and parcel of Queen Elizabeth’s representation of grace, functions as a key distinction between Queen Elizabeth’s fate and that of Una, which is defined heavily by post-edenic realities--Una is destined to be married. Queen Elizabeth’s control of the knights and thus her control over Una’s fate, suggests that she is a distanced yet “head” of the church and/or ruler with divine capabilities and prerogatives. Thus, Spenser’s supposed presentation of a reconciled Christian selfhood at the end of Book I becomes complicated as we ponder the other

7 Elizabeth I. "The Farewell Speech." English Parliament, UK. 30 Nov, 1601. Internet Modern History Sourcebook. ​ Web. 14 Oct. 2017. Elizabeth’s farewell speech implicitly addresses the constant pressure by the English Parliament on her lack of a husband and refusal to name her successor. This speech exhibits her self-positioning as a product of God’s doing-- to be beyond the societal and theological conventions, conventions which in the period were crucially naturalized, , that women should marry and bear children. 7,Li variations: not only nature’s struggle with grace and its potentially fruitful outcome but also grace beyond the order of nature and nature's influence on grace.8

Una’s gendering carries the weight of the cursed reality of women following Adam and

Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, “your urge shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you,” and that of Spenser’s cultural milieu.9 Caroline McManus notes Una’s fitting representation of the “sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century arguments that godly women should nurture their children both physically, by breast-feeding, and metaphorically, by catechizing and teaching”.10 Una’s post-edenic fate is evident via her destiny to be married to

Redcrosse, and is particularly stressed when it is revealed that her parents are Adam and Eve.

Thus, while Una has many empowering moments, such as her crucial influence on Redcrosse, she does not infringe on “male spiritual prerogatives or seek power in her own rights,” as she devotes herself exclusively to her captive parents and her “child-husband knight”.11 Una’s facilitating role is stoked by the carefully constructed context where she is devoid of her father and presented with a child knight, further reinforcing a theological convention of Spenser’s time;

William Gouge explains that a woman may assume authority “when her husband is absent, or negligent and careless, and will not himselfe doe them [us]; or it may be, is not able to doe them”.12 Redcrosse’s process of allegorical becoming lets Una have temporary authority.

8 Woodhouse, A. S. P. “Nature and Grace in the Faerie Queene.” ELH, vol. 16, no. 3, 1949, pp. 194–228. JSTOR, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2871731. ​ ​ As Woodhouse presents a framework to understand grace and nature, this question highlights the possibility of grace functioning without a direct relation to nature and possibly nature’s influence on what grace can do/seem to do in the natural world. 9 McManus, 382-405. ​ The New JPS Translation Bible, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society. 1985. 7. 10 McManus, 382. ​ 11 McManus, 401. ​ 12 Qtd. in McManus, 388. ​ 8,Li Una’s confinement within the gendered social roles of women during Spenser’s time extends to her virginity, which is constantly under the pressure of sexuality. This is a defining characteristic of nature’s influence; Una’s virginity is defined by the post-edenic context, where virginity is understood to be temporary and its loss is sanctioned for procreation--differing from the edenic notion of an automatic sexuality unquestioned and virginity as a non-sexual condition

13 This focus on sexuality and motherhood is reaffirmed by Una and Redcrosse’s first adventure-- they confront Error, a blatantly gendered illustration of women as mothers and in authoritative positions.

Her huge long taile her den all ouerspred, Yet was in knots and many boughtes vpwound, Pointed with mortall sting. Of her there bred A thousand yong ones, which she dayly fed, Sucking vpon her poisonous dugs, eachone… Into her mouth they crept. (I. I. 15.2-15.9)

Error, a half-snake half-woman--a physical blend of Eve and the snake--feeds her thousand babies by letting them suck tiny “dugs” on her tail. The overt reflection of female breasts, reproductive capabilities and breast-feeding, contrasts starkly with the Marian undertones of

Una’s first description, “under a vele, that wimpled was full low...a milke white lambe she lad”(I.I. 4.4-4.9). The sinister elements of overt sexuality become blatant as Error wraps her tail, with thousands of nipples, around Redcrosse and proceeds to strangle him. As Redcrosse

13 Mann, Barbara E. “The Garden.” Space and Place in Jewish Studies, Rutgers University Press, 2012, pp. 26–37. ​ ​ ​ JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hj9mp.7. ​ ​ ​ The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998. While marriage is noted by St. Paul to be one of the sacraments of Christ in 1 Corinthians, he notes that celibacy is sanctioned but reserved for those with/able to have a wholehearted dedication to God (1 Corinthians 7:9). To be chaste is to be constantly reminded of Christ, free from the anxieties of the unmarried and married man. Virginity as a non-sexual condition is the naturalization of chastity: to cast what is a constant struggle, and hence a constant reminder of Christ, as an inborn state-- such as Elizabeth’s chastity. 9,Li haplessly struggles, Una, the counter representation of Error’s sexuality, encourages Redcrosse to strangle her,

“Strangle her, else she sure will strangle thee.” ...Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw A floud of poyson horrible and blacke, Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw, Which stunk so vildly, that it forst him slacke… Her vomit full of bookes and papers was. (I. I. 19.4-20.6)

Strangulation and the inclusion of “bookes and papers” in Error’s vomit presents a medium in which Error has had influence--the increasing female participation in intellectual spheres and the damaging products of such “empowerment”.14 Una’s advice, as a voice for not only the Church but also for women, reaffirms the theological conventions surrounding a woman’s particular and limited empowerment both within a household and beyond. Further, strikingly, Error is devoid of a man despite representing overt sexuality and motherhood. Milton, in his allegorical portrait of

Sin, which borrows heavily from Spenser’s Error, stresses Sin’s parthenogenesis and her reproductive capabilities, giving birth to death, intertwining female sexuality with the reality Sin faces as being the embodiment of the fall--the post-eden.15 Error represents the grotesque fundamental realities of the post-edenic, with Una’s supposed difference from and opposition to

Error offering an alternative.

Error’s prosopopoeia illuminates the societal conventions that inform the gendering of virtues; her overt reflection of the post-edenic realities for women highlights how Una, despite seeming vastly different, similarly faces this reality as she is gendered female. Andrew Escobedo labels Una and Error’s method, and product, of representation as daemonic personification,

14 Hadfield, Andrew. “Edmund Spenser: a Life.” Edmund Spenser: a Life, Oxford University Press, 2014. 256. ​ ​ ​ 15 King, John N., et al. “Milton’s Cave of Error: A Rewriting of Spenserian Satire.” Worldmaking Spenser: ​ ​ Explorations in the Early Modern Age, University Press of Kentucky, 2000, pp. 148. JSTOR, ​ ​ ​ www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130j1nw.13. 10,Li arguing that this is inherent in literary representation of the abstract, “Like the daemon, personification signals our intuition of the primitive energies inside us by which we exert our wills over against the external landscape and by which we remain susceptible to that landscape’s influences”.16 Una functions as the English Church and as Truth in a manner that considers how both are vulnerable to and thus adapt to their context’s influences. Escobedo helps us by noting that the capacity to change results from “transactionalism, its internal commitment to external forces,” and the prosopopoeia function enables a concept to perform actions “that share no characteristic with that concept”; Truth “changes” as it encourages Holiness to strangle Error, strangulation being not a characteristic of Truth and only serving as a way for the allegory to point towards a distanced idea to which Truth is not related.17 Thus, change, due to landscape influences, and the seemingly inconsistent actions of allegorical agents, mirrors grace’s daemonic interaction. Allegorized grace mirrors a Daemon’s role, “the envoys and interpreters that ply between heaven and earth, flying upward with our worship and our prayers, and descending with the heavenly answers and commandments”.18

A definition of grace in literature as daemonic, grace mirroring the intermediary role of

Daemons between Gods and men, fittingly translates to the English Church--a known intermediary between God and men, vulnerable to historical change and constituted by it. Truth, however, continues to oscillate between satisfying edenic and post-edenic realities, struggling against Escobedo’s portrayal of a reconciled order of grace and nature.19 Una, strangely, can be

16 Escobedo, Andrew, Volition’s Face, Personification and the Will in Renaissance Literature. Indiana. University ​ ​ ​ of Notre Dame Press. 2017. 26. 17 Escobedo, 27,35-37. ​ 18 Escobedo, 16-26. ​ 19 Escobedo, 16-26. ​ 11,Li both subsumed by the English Church and be susceptible to misprision by men. Her vulnerability, and thus the landscape’s influence on Una, challenges the set divine justifications of the English Church. Further, a key contention to note in our foray into understanding

Spenserian allegorical change, Queen Elizabeth I, and her exemplification as the virgin queen, remains to influence Truth and challenge the daemonic model of interaction, between God and

Men. She halts Una’s marriage, by virtue of her control over Redcrosse, and thus, her virginal chastity is positioned to be in tension with Una’s--representing the existence of the edenic in a post-edenic landscape.

As we ponder Gloriana as a figure of Queen Elizabeth I, particularly her position seemingly beyond nature but under God, the possibility for the edenic to be personified would seem to be reaffirmed by the events in the House of Holiness--where the Patron of Holiness prepares Redcrosse for his final identity-forging and identity-affirming battle. Redcrosse is helped by Caelia, heavenly, “whose onely ioy was to relieue the needes Of wretched soules,” and her three daughters, Fidelia, faithful, Speranza, hope, and Charissa, beloved. Allegorical constraints on the abstract continue as the narrative takes note that Faithful and Hope are virgins engaged to be married and Charissa has many children by her husband,“Was lincked, and by him had many pledges dere”(I.X.4.8-4.9). After Redcrosse learns about God, Sin and Virtue from

Fidelia, becoming depressed and needing Patience, Penance, Remorse and Repentance to “heal him,” and then learns from Hope, Beloved and Mercy, he enters his final stage of learning with

Contemplation, an old irritable man. He views the city of God and this physical experience completes his narrative journey towards Holiness:

Escobedo details the relation between nature and grace along the lines of Daemonism. Grace represents the Divine, that which task Daemons with what should be sent and taught in nature. Daemons take what they are tasked with and tailor their “messages” according to what is possible in nature. 12,Li Cannot describe, nor wit of man can tell; Too high a ditty for my simple song; The Citie of the great king hight it well, Wherein eternal peace and happiness doth dwell… For this great Citie that does far surpas, And this bright Angels towre quite dims that towre of glas. (I. X. 55.6-58.9).

Redcrosse completes this transitional phase via not a lesson from Contemplation but by viewing a vision of true divinity, an indefinable city with inexplicable beings of “eternal peace and happiness”. The inclusion of a side compliment to Cleopolis, the “fairest citie” of Gloriana, reaffirms the distance between even the Faerie Queene and the Divine. Redcrosse’s access, his viewership, however, of the heavenly Jerusalem reflects an allegorical limit that ironically expresses the indescribable but experiential influence of the Divine. This is reinforced when

Redcrosse experiences holiness in Contemplation’s tower and does not turn to Una (and, therefore, to the English Church) with a greater sense of commitment:

O let me not (quoth he) then turne againe Backe to the world, whose ioyes so fruitless are; But let me here for aye in peace remaine, Or streight way on that last long voyage fare, That nothing may my present hope empare. That may not be (said he) ne maist thou yit Forgo that royall maides bequeathed care. (I. X. 63.1-63.7).

Redcrosse does not want to return to the world where he belongs, hoping to remain in physical sight of the land of Jerusalem. His dedication to Una, and thus to the task Gloriana has given him, echoes the limits of experiencing joys and hopes in that world, rendering his presence in view of the Divine as an elevated and separate psychological and geographical experience.

Ironically, as Redcrosse, the knight of Holiness, only becomes Holiness after he enters the House of Holiness and views the Divine, his immediate experience of the Divine and post-exposure state of mind reflects the Divine’s ability to be allegorically embodied. Redcrosse

13,Li views the Divine and desires to remain and be dedicated exclusively to that which is not constrained by the natural order. The Divine is made accessible via an allegorical reference to a distanced, yet defining, idea of what the edenic is. The allegory is bifurcated, able to not only metaphorize, but also to gesture/refer. Divinity, allegorically represented both as Jerusalem and as edenic, is accessed by Redcrosse’s distanced experience. This distinction is informed by our immediate presentation with another explicit embodiment of the edenic--the Tree of Life.

As Redcrosse enters the final stages of his adventure with Una, confronting the Dragon that imprisons her parents, Adam and Eve, he falls into a ditch and is healed by the Tree of Life’s waters.

And downe he fell, with dread of shame sore terrifide. There grew a goodly tree him faire beside... For happie life to all, which thereon fed, And life eke euerlasting did befall... The tree of life, the crime of our first fathers fall... And deadly woundes could heale and reare againe. (I. XI. 45.9-48.7)

The Tree of Life provides safety and replenishes Redcrosse. The distanced experience of the

Tree of Life, which can be experienced only via its trickling healing waters, enforces man’s fallen reality. The physical embodiment, however, of the Tree of Life in a post-edenic context, reinforces the similar dynamic of access to and representation of Jerusalem; the house of

Holiness is built at a site that enables a view of Jerusalem and the Tree of Life is grounded in a set location with access to it granted only at a distance. The order of nature, geographic location, arranges itself to permit access to the Divine. Further, the association of water with access is reaffirmed by its common derivation from Homer, “who declares that the river Oceanus is both the source of the earth’s rivers, lakes, and springs and the father of the gods and of all things”.20

20 Quint, David. Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source. Conn. Yale University ​ ​ ​ Press, 1983. 34. 14,Li Thus, physical location, defined via distanced experiential descriptions--to view from afar and to engage in a distanced form of interaction--seemingly allows the existence of the edenic, such as the Tree of Life, in the post-eden world. This capacity renders the site of these moments of

“trickling” and access as beyond the order of nature as the daemonic model of interaction is tailored--the Divine does not enter the allegory on the figurative/hermeneutic level, it dictates nature and does not change to suit the natural order. Thus, allegorizing the Divine via gesturing offers the possibility for allegorized characters of the Divine to be invulnerable to the natural order and yet connected to it.

Adam and Eve’s encouragement of Una and Redcrosse’s marriage, a blatant merger of their fallen reality with Truth and the English Church, is the epitomical expression of Una’s tension with Gloriana--her virginal chastity and control over Redcrosse defining her oppositional and detached nature from the fallen reality. However, her constancy and relation to the order of nature echoes the House of Holiness and the waters of the Tree of Life; Redcrosse has to travel

“Backe to returne to that great Faerie Queene,” who notably never speaks, appearing as not a personified character--she isn’t attributed a face--but an amorphous domain. As a observed entity, Gloriana in our minds is informed not by prosopopeia but via experiential descriptions that remain partially embedded within the characters the poem does make available to us; we are provided with no explicit detail regarding a character’s direct interaction with Gloriana but note how she is the propulsion of the narrative of change--tasking the knights with their respective adventures. Thus, similar to heavenly Jerusalem, the Faerie Queene functions as a distantly interacted with and described physicalized space. Further, similar to how the Tree of Life’s waters echoes the possibility for the edenic to be in the post-edenic, a sense of Gloriana as a

15,Li physicalized space, rather than as a character, along with her narrative influence, permits the exhibition of Queen Elizabeth, noted as the virgin and chaste Queen, to be the transitional point between the edenic and the post-edenic.

The explicit representations of Eden, and the accompanying invulnerable and dictatorial relationship Eden has to nature and grace in the post-edenic, extends allegorical possibility in

The Faerie Queene beyond daemonic representation; instead of a reconciling Grace, to bridge ​ the Divine to nature, the Divine is able to trickle into the allegory continuously. For Elizabeth, gender and sexuality are mediated by her recasting as a spatial allegorical reference to the

Edenic. The Edenic notion of an unquestioned automatic sexuality and its relation to an automatic and non-sexual virginity, has an invulnerable space to be allegorized and, similar to the House of Holiness and the Tree of Life’s waters, the Divine dictates nature--she is ordained and functions as the propulsion behind the adventures of her knights. Gloriana’s ironically absent presence, despite her influence, informs Spenser’s allegory, often thought to turn everything into meaning; Spenser did not just signify and/or embody but, as a “purer” allegory, literalized the experiential limits that define and characterize the Divine.

16,Li Unraveling Chastity’s System of Maintenance

We left Book I with an understanding that Una’s susceptibility to societal conventions that governed what a woman’s role should be, and Gloriana’s existence as a spatial allegorical reference to the Edenic, in part addressed the concerns of Renaissance men about feminine power. Book II takes up this fear of feminine power, particularly female sexuality, as its central concern; Sir Guyon, the knight of temperance, is set on a mission to destroy the Bower of Bliss, a locale of concupiscence, where Acrasia disarms, seduces, and ultimately unmans a series of beautiful young men. Acrasia and her followers threaten men as they appear to usurp male prerogatives and sexual roles--where female sexual agency renders men passive or works without them. Thus, scholars like Sonya Freeman Loftis argue that the destruction of the Bower represents the Renaissance man’s stance on “female homoeroticism and sexual autonomy”.21

Loftis justifies her characterization of the Bower as homoerotic by noting explicit instances of female-female relations and more subtle inversions, like sexual passivity and androgyny, which render male-female embraces as female-female. Verdant, for instance, while a man, is described thus:

A sweet Regard, and amiable Grace, Mixed with manly Sternness did appear, Yet sleeping, in his well-proportion’d Face, And on his tender Lips the downy Hair Did now but Freshly spring, and silken Blossoms bear. (II, XII, 79.5-79.9).

His “manly Sternness” is lost at the turn of the sentence, “Yet.” Verdant, lulled into slumber by

Acrasia’s pleasures, becomes stagnant and is re-gendered as he becomes nothing more than a immobile sexual feminine aesthetic pretty boy. One other notoriously homoerotic scene involves

21Loftis, Sonya Freeman. “Reconstructing the Bower of Bliss: Homoerotic Myth-Making in The Faerie Queene.” Renaissance Papers 2012, edited by Andrew Shifflett and Edward Gieskes, Boydell and Brewer, 2013. JSTOR, ​ ​ ​ www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt4cg5vk.3. 5. ​ 17,Li two bathing Nymphs. In the middle of the Bower of Bliss, Guyon discovers a fountain decorated with “shapes of naked boys”.22 Within the Fountain’s waters,

Two naked Damsels he therein espy’d Which therein bathing, seemed to contend, And wrestly watonly, ne car’d to hide Their dainty Parts from view of any which them ey’d. (II, XII, 63.6-63.9).

The scene is laden with female homoeroticism--two naked nymphs are wrestling and freely exposing their “dainty Parts”--and reflects female sexual autonomy as the nymphs care not for modesty nor for the threat of male voyeurism. Guyon’s discomfort and subsequent destructive fury thus echoes the anxieties of Renaissance men; Renaissance men were threatened by homoeroticism’s extension from the “adolescent” stage of development to adulthood, allowing women to remove themselves from the marriage economy and to dally in an “immature stage of sexual development”.23 And this dallying is crucially what negatively affects Mordant; Amavia is pregnant and Mordant avoids his adult responsibility by engaging with the women in the Bower.

Thus, the Bower, as a clear representation of the anxieties of Renaissance men, is defined by this appeal to another image of female power, Acrasia.

The Bower’s immorality serves as a reflection of Acrasia’s position as a sexually autonomous maternal figure. C.S. Lewis characterizes the Bower as “the whole sexual nature in disease,” of “male prurience and female provocation”; the Bower is where all sexual activity, instead of being reserved securely for reproduction, threatens civility via an unsanctioned form of erotic excess.24 Guyon’s destruction of the Bower, which serves as the narrative ending of

Book II and, thus, his final transitional moment to the virtue of Temperance, seems to reinforce

22Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. London, Penguin Group, 1978. 376. 23Loftis, 5. 24Greenblatt, Stephen. “Renaissance Self-Fashioning From More to Shakespeare.” London, The University of Chicago Press, 2005. 170. 18,Li Lewis’ stance. The knight of temperance destroys a site where men are intemperately paralyzed by illicit female sexuality. The threat represented by the Bower, however, lives on in the aftermath of this destruction. Acrasia does not die and illicit sexuality trickles into Book III, the

Book of Chastity. Acrasia’s survival, therefore, positions chastity as strangely narratively dependent on Acrasia; Book III champions chastity as a conscious choice, erotic temptation is an ever-present and natural threat--our inclinations for the erotic are cast as a natural impulse and this constancy via the form of an “innate” desire is represented by Acrasia’s continued existence.

Further, there are apparent similarities between Acrasia and Gloriana: both reject the marriage economy and exert their sexual autonomy. The simultaneous existence of both Gloriana and

Acrasia, and the former’s similarity to and reliance on the latter, suggests that their relationship, particularly in the natural order, is codependent. Not only does Sir Guyon, a knight of Gloriana, fail to destroy Acrasia, but also Elizabeth’s chastity seems narratively reliant on its foil, erotic temptation. Thus, how does Gloriana retain her authority and invulnerability when interacting with the natural order when Acrasia and her creation, an artful Bower, directly challenge

Gloriana’s embodiment of chastity?25

Guyon’s failure to destroy Acrasia seems to be evidence of Gloriana’s dependence on and vulnerability to Acrasia. How and why he fails is a worthy avenue of exploration as his

“failure” isn’t unanimously accepted by Spenser scholars and is not consistent with Spenser’s narrative of progression. Wendy Beth Hyman is representative of scholars who characterize

25Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Raleigh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. The definition of invulnerability is informed by both Part 1 of my specialization and the context behind Spenser’s publication; writing for Queen Elizabeth, particularly for patronage, Spenser would most likely not have published a work that placed Queen Elizabeth’s divinity/relation to the divine-- via her chastity-- in question.

19,Li Guyon’s destructive fury as a failure of temperance, due to his “unilateral epic action”.26 Hyman highlights Guyon’s climactic violence and disregard of “the promised immortality” of the Bower to conclude that Guyon “razes..any claim he had on Temperance”.27 For Hyman, Guyon’s vulnerability to the Bower’s illicitness clouds his judgement. Joseph Campana defines vulnerability differently as he claims that Spenser responds to a Reformation practice of viewing

“pain and compassion...as idolatrous because they activate or energize a material body that should , instead, demonstrate submission”.28 Spenser’s interest in temperance is to champion “the capacity to be vulnerable to experience,” acknowledging how individuals are “embedded in and open to experiences and structures far larger than themselves”.29 Campana reads the destruction of the Bower as a response to the Reformation practice of defining vulnerability as an immoral and “effeminate failure to assume the mantle of proper masculinity”.30 The destruction offers a

Spenserian sense of “lived corporeal experience,” an act reflecting a laborious struggle against temptation and a reaction that is a “necessary part of virtue”.31 Guyon’s destructive fury is the activation of the sensuous vulnerability of laboring bodies, an alternative to pleasure’s anaesthetization. Thus, Guyon’s vulnerability to the Bower of Bliss is a reflection of a liberating

“masculine lassitude” that mirrors a heroic male body's vulnerability to experience and the necessity of experience to permit the exercising of human agency.32 ​ ​

26Hyman, Wendy Beth. “Seizing Flowers in Spenser's Bower and Garden.” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 37, ​ ​ no. 2, 2007. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24463736. 194. ​ ​ ​ ​ 27Hyman, 194. 28Campana, Joseph. The Pain of Reformation: Spenser, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Masculinity. New York: ​ ​ Fordham University Press, 2012. 34. 29Campana, 37. 30Campana,131. 31Campana, 131. 32Campana, 153. 20,Li Both Hyman and Campana inform our understanding of the paradox of vulnerability, a precept that suggests that Guyon’s failure to destroy Acrasia once and for all serves didactic functions. Temperance is not only the first non-theological virtue, as it is reliant on vulnerability and the constant exercise of human agency, but also a mirror of the “ethical discriminations in pursuit of the divine in man”.33 The Bower of Bliss must be destroyed not because it serves as a pressing threat but rather because it reflects a resistance via a constant exercise of power. It thus ​ ​ echoes Freudian repression, “the complex is not simply repressed, it is literally smashed to pieces by the shock of threatened castration”; Guyon’s destructive act invites an experience of the

“ontogeny of our culture’s violent resistance to a sensuous release”.34 Vulnerability, an inherent weakness of Man’s fallen reality, functions simultaneously as a possible instigator of agency.

Thus Guyon, instead of succumbing to paralyzing erotic temptation, exercises human agency and action that aligns with that of the liberated heroic male body. Guyon’s final scene involves not simply failure but rather the ongoing tension between the primal and the ordained that needs to continue for Temperance to be achieved--the ongoing pursuit of the Divine. This is consistent with Redcrosse’s journey in Book I; he can not stay with contemplation after becoming Holiness.

He must continue his journey, subjecting himself to a structure of sacred violence, in which he serves as God’s instrument, and to more trials and tribulations.

This understanding of Guyon’s male vulnerability seems to be in tension with Acrasia’s sexual autonomy, and all that she creates in the Bower, suggesting that the agentive and sanctioned vulnerability for men does not apply to women, or at least to these women. The bathing Nymphs represent an overtly sexualized and seemingly harmless scene; all we are

33Greenblatt, 174. 34Greenblatt, 175. 21,Li viewing are two beautiful women bathing and wrestling with each other. Their power over

Guyon’s gaze, however, and their subsequent entertainment of male voyeurism demonstrates a problematic lack of vulnerability to male heroics--while they are putting on a show for him, they don’t need him. If women are to be content without men, what is the purpose of being a male hero? For women, similar to the sanctioning of the “right” kind of violence from men, there is an implicit sense of a championed “right” acceptance of their biblical curse--to be ruled by men and to be sexual beings. But unlike male vulnerability, which is cast as a natural impulse that sanctions the exertion of power, female vulnerability seems to require an active choice to be dominated.35 To have female vulnerability is to accept an inherent sexual inferiority and be subsequently ruled by men via the constant threat that accompanies female sexuality. The Bower is problematic because female sexuality, while still under a constant male threat, is cast as powerful, taking advantage of male vulnerability to erotic temptation and rejecting male domination. The magnitude of this threat is emphasized via the highly stylized scene--the fountain is decorated with half-naked boys, the two beautiful nymphs are showering at its center,surrounded by flowers in bloom. This dynamic is notably problematic within the biblical framework of the post-edenic and Renaissance societal conventions which highlight how the distinctively physical and artful nature of the Bower provides a landscape for female dominance.

The paradox of female vulnerability defines the physicality of the Bower of Bliss.

Spenser describes the Bower of Bliss as a place of eternal static spring, defined by not Mother

35 Milton, J. (1850). The poetical works of John Milton: Paradise lost and paradise regained. B. Tauchnitz. ​ ​ ​ This is consistent with Milton’s description of Eve’s immediate actions following her creation; she finds a reflection of herself, mirrored in the pond, fascinating and easier to love than Adam, in whose image she is made. As she is pulled away from the pond by God and told of her intended mate and duty, she flees and is chased by Adam who makes a plea. The abruptness of Eve’s immediate humility, noting that “beauty is excell’d by manly grace” (IV. 490) and acceptance of Adam’s plea appears calculated; she says what she thinks will appease her man. 22,Li Nature but Mother Art’s ever present floral pride. This excessive, unnatural naturalness, is attended by illicit sexuality, fitting with the rampant sex that occurs throughout the garden.

A large and spacious Plain, on every side Stowed with pleasure, whose fair grassy Ground Mantled with green, and goodly beautify’d With all the Ornaments of Flora’s Pride, Wherewith her Mother Art, as half in scorn Of niggard Nature, like a pompous Bride Did deck her, and too lavishly adorn, When forth from Virgin Bower she comes in th’ early morne... Or Eden, if that ought with Eden mote compare. (II, XII, 50.2-52.9).

While detailed as a place of beauty, nature at its epitomical level of fruition, the garden also brings together “natural” beauty with unfavourable societal precepts on women, “Mother Art, as half in scorn/ Of niggard Nature, like a pompous Bride.” This convergence informs the beauty, that which is assumed when we think of nature, by strikingly reminding us that it is not only of a post-edenic nature--where a woman is fated to be subject to illicit sexuality--but also a societal percept of the detailed beauty--ornaments are made, and someone adorns the adorned and determines what is “too lavishly adorn.” This ironic mentioning of Eden as a comparable Garden suggests that the Bower is a raw but marred post-edenic Garden of Eden. The beauty of the

Bower becomes marred via comparisons, “like a pompous Bride,” and suffers under the male gaze. Without this, the Bower is a place where women are in authoritative positions--powerful in their capacity to render men hapless--and men, though idle, are ravished by being lavished by the illicit sexuality of women. The importance of vulnerability for men, as highlighted by Joshua

Scodel, is realized and reflected by the women in the Bower; true virtue requires that “pain and pleasure be experienced counterintuitively (pain as pleasure and pleasure as pain)”.36 Women are pained by their illicit sexuality but here experience their sexuality with pleasure. Even this

36Qtd. in Campana, 132. 23,Li pleasure, however, turns out to be pain as they are under a constant and naturalized male threat--such as the likes of Guyon.

The narrative presentation of the Bower as a possible raw Garden of post-eden implicitly assumes art and nature’s collaboration. Campana articulates this collaboration as the “mutual beautification of art and nature”; Spenser’s allegorical method of art beautifies nature’s gifts. The addition of art, for Campana, does not “affirm the inescapable moral power of ideology as the principle of truth toward which art forever yearns”.37 Art is purposed with attaining truth, serving as a medium for action to solve the inherent tensions in the natural order--art bringing nature to a form of otherwise unattainable perfection. Thus, the detail of the Bower’s excessive floral adornments as “artful, whorish, and parasitic,” is part of the best-case-scenario for Women; the artful Bower reflects the constraints of the natural order on art and thus, also the realm of possibilities.

Spenser’s casting of the Bower as illicit is not lost under Campana’s perception of art. Art in the Bower shifts attention away from dwelling in the conflict of Christian selfhood to striving for “perfection” in the natural order. This advocating for the unrealizable and the implicit distraction that occurs, however, highlights how art calls attention to its own process of creation.

A place pickt out by choice of best aliue, That natures worke by art can imitate: In which what euer in this worldly state Is sweet, and pleasing vnto liuing sense, Or that may dayntiest fantasie aggrate, Was poured forth with plentifull dispence, And made there to abound with lauish affluence. (II,XII, 42).

37Campana, 139. 24,Li The Bower has a “preternaturally embalmed” nature, it is not a wild paradise, but a “place pickt” and a constructed garden.38 The creation is of a wanton abundance, excessive and yet somehow stagnant, able “dayntiest fantasie [to] aggrate,” contradicting the chronology and “hierarchy of conditions” in nature’s law.39 Art’s striving towards “truth” and “perfection” in the Natural order is a “beautification” that is also laden with excess and moral and philosophical effects of sanctioning imperfection, notably for men.40

While art is tainted by its role to bring natural forms to a form of unattainable perfection, it offers an avenue to understand the purported limits of the natural and social order, as well as what could be. Thus, revisiting my opening question on the connotations of Acrasia’s survival,

Acrasia, the creator of the artful Bower and an embodiment of erotic temptation, as paralyzing to men but without the need for men, reflects how erotic temptation is not directly in tension with chastity. In the Bower, it is a choice for Females to not be chaste--while homoerotic at some points, there is no “need” for homosexual or heterosexual sex. The Bower exists in a state of stagnant spring,

As if it had by Natures cunning hand, Bene choisely picked out from all the rest, And laid forth for ensample of the best: No daintie flowre or herbe, that growes on ground, No arboret with painted blossomes drest…. No tree, whose braunches did not brauely spring; No braunch, whereon a fine bird did not sit: No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetly sing; No song but did containe a louely dit: Trees, braunches, birds, and songs were framed fit. (II,VI,12.3-13.5).

38Hyman,193-195. 39MaClure, Millar. “Nature and Art in the Faerie Queene.” ELH, vol. 28, no. 1, 1961. JSTOR, JSTOR, ​ ​ ​ ​ www.jstor.org/stable/2872124. 16. ​ 40MaClure,10. 25,Li There is no growth, just as there is no decay, the “choisely picked” remains forever in “the best stage.” Thus, the Bower, ironically, isn’t orientated towards reproduction; in this artful constant state of spring there is no need for procreation, so sexual release and exertion is a choice. The problematic nodes of the Bower’s existence in the post-edenic emerge only when male vulnerability comes into play. Mordant’s abandonment of a pregnant Amavia is art’s denial of fertility. Thus, it is not a simple binary between art and nature and art and genesis; within art is a version of the theological rejection of sexual autonomy. Art’s interaction with the natural order ​ ​ produces a form of sexuality that supports intrinsic chastity; art reflexively reveals that it is a theologically sanctioned choice to engage and succumb to a naturalized male threat. Art not only distracts but also reminds one of what is possible/within the limits of reality.

As we note art’s function, a reversal of our previous understanding of Gloriana’s stratified relationship with and reliance on Acrasia takes place. Gloriana entertains male vulnerability and orchestrates control over male temperance via Guyon’s destruction of the

Bower. Acrasia’s Bower and her continued existence is, from Gloriana’s perspective as orchestrator of a cyclical destruction to satisfy men, not a site of erotic temptation but the very grounds of the possibility for chastity to be in the natural order. While ironic that it is Gloriana who orchestrates the destruction, the entertainment of male prerogatives and the narrative triumph of what is part of a repetitive destruction cycle--as Acrasia continues--suggest

Gloriana’s authority over the interplay between male and female vulnerabilities. The survival of

Acrasia occupies the Knights’ heroic and masculine impulses and ensures Gloriana an invulnerability to a possible suggestion that she reaps what Acrasia sows.

26,Li Stephen Greenblatt details a Renaissance man’s concerns over the representations of the

Madonna and saints. Many viewed these representations as deflecting men from “the vigorous pursuit of the good, enticed them into idleness and effeminacy”.41 As a result, many statues of virgins were dismembered. Spenser offers, in place of this discredited aesthetic, the process behind art’s creation. The interplay of vulnerabilities and that of the natural, social and the artful order, casts Gloriana as using the Bower’s function to her liking. We see a figure of Virginity entice men not into idleness but into action.

41Greenblatt, 189. 27,Li The Instrumentalization of Erotic Love

Queen Elizabeth’s iconography of virginal chastity, according to Susan Frye, channeled powerful self-possession in the sixteenth century.42 Frye argues that Elizabeth used her self-representation as a royal virgin, “her most effective strategy,” to evade the control of men, remaining “self-possessed and independent as any women in the social hierarchy of sixteenth-century England could be”.43 This conceptualization of chastity as a kind of total integrity becomes distinctive in the 1570s and 1580s; Elizabeth is “different from all womankind--unique as the phoenix, self-sacrificing as the pelican”.44 As cultural products cast

Elizabeth in this light, Frye argues that Spenser is a central popularizer and enforcer of a recasted chastity, founded on marriage and the normalization of rape.

The basis of Frye’s interpretation is that Spenser re-defines and appropriates the power of

Elizabeth’s chastity; autonomous chastity serves to enforce the meaning of more ordinary forms of chastity, which are based on marriage and direct products of the dominant cultural milieu during Spenser’s time.45 The reader is complicit in his erasure of the rape and violence that conspires with everyday chastity, by assuming that what Spenser markets is a “virtue.”

Conclusively, according to Frye, as the house of Busirane locates the male threat spatially, acting as a masculinist structure of desire, and empowered by the “blood flowing from Amoret’s wound,” Spenser’s narrative echoes the control of masculinist poetics.46 He seemingly struggles

42 Frye, Susan. “Of Chastity and Violence: Elizabeth I and Edmund Spenser in the House of Busirane.” Signs, vol. ​ ​ ​ 20, no. 1, 1994, pp. 49., www.jstor.org/stable/3174927. ​ ​ Susan Frye defined self-possession as the counter both to heterosexual chastity and to male possession of the female body. Queen Elizabeth’s conceptualization of chastity as virginal worked against the predominant views of women as vulnerable, threatened and logically possessed by men; she championed female independence as her form of chastity is autonomous. 43 Frye, Susan. pp. 49–78. ​ 44 Frye, Susan. pp. 49, 53. ​ 45 Frye, Susan. pp. 69. ​ 46 Frye, Susan. pp. 64. ​ 28,Li with retaining chastity as a version of self-governance, while trying to organize it through the allegorical form and an end that is promised but never arrives--Britomart and her marital telos.

Frye’s interpretation was rejected by major literary journals except for the feminist journal Signs.47 While this was the case, Frye troubling the accepted association of Spenser’s The ​ ​ ​ Faerie Queene with a virtuous form of femininity and redeemed love, she aptly highlights how ​ chastity is intertwined with the institution of marriage and is not sovereign; Book III follows a female knight of chastity, Britomart, who pursues a man, Artegall. Her concluding task is to save

Amoret, who represents married Chastity, from Busirane and Cupid, enforcers of erotic love.

This ending episode subjects both Amoret and Britomart to a naturalized male threat of rape and captivity, developing a moral code of female chastity as a male-protected/induced choice to avoid the male assault; Amoret needs to be saved and protected and Britomart embarks on her journey because she is wounded by Cupid’s arrow and is now searching for her man. Thus, how can we locate Queen Elizabeth’s virginal chastity in a narrative that, according to Frye, is a marketed reality that standardizes an ever-present fear of rape in order to orient chastity toward productively deployed sexuality in marriage?

Elizabeth Donno takes a different approach and argues that despite prophetic destiny, a woman has room for judgement--ill or not. Donno highlights the variabilities of erotic experience that relate to love, casting the varied responses to love, and particularly Cupid’s kingdom, as not implicit evaluations on what constitutes “good” or “bad,” “true” or “false,” but the “compelling power manifested in the diversity of response”.48 Cupid’s triumph allows for or even structures a triumph of chastity as those who are chaste “elect” to remain faithful. The narrative for Donno is

47 Frye, Susan. pp. 54. ​ 48 Donno, Elizabeth Story. “The Triumph of Cupid: Spenser's Legend of Chastity.” The Yearbook of English Studies, ​ ​ ​ vol. 4, 1974, pp. 43., www.jstor.org/stable/3506679. 29,Li organized around Cupid’s kingdom, and specifically his arrow, which tasks Britomart with the quest to seek her future mate. Unlike Frye, who characterizes this wounding as a stark example of masculinist control, Donno views it as an introduction of the range of possibilities that relate to love, “some sexually monstrous, some sexual fruitful, and some prophetically destined”.49 The

“false” used to describe the “archer” and the “love” does not characterize Cupid but rather the perspective of the elicited; the “false” comes from Britomart’s refusal to accept love and thus her symptoms of sickness that follow.50 The tapestries in the house of Busirane depict Cupid’s imperious and tyrannical power over all, from pagan deities to ordinary people. The room is lined with these tapestries and at the far end is an idol of Cupid.51 Thus, the triumph of love,

Cupid’s reign, is in accord with “destiny,” but autonomous attainment is contingent on adherence to the right course of action--to avoid erotic love in the form of a seemingly inevitable rape. This naturalization, however, accedes to the co-essentiality of life and love, the very foundation to the triumph of lawful chastity, and according to Frye, a direct product of a male orchestrated moral architecture.

For Frye, agency is clouded by the masculinist control that renders Britomart, her quest, and supposed maturation in the House of Busirane, as indicative of the patriarchal culture’s overbearing proscriptions. Britomart’s very appearance as a knight is a form of male enforced ironic empowerment, as she is not protected but rather facilitated, by being a knight, to find her future husband. The House of Busirane acts as an explicit reminder to Britomart--via tapestries, friezes, statues--that love is bondage. The “joys of heterosexuality” stem from acceptance, a

49 Donno, Elizabeth Story. pp 39. ​ 50 Donno, Elizabeth Story. pp 44. ​ 51 Dolven, Jeff Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp 167 ​ ​ 30,Li accession to ever-present love.52 Britomart’s task and initial negative response to falling in love with Artegall is a subtle reminder of the violence that results from deviation. Thus, is it actually agency one has, if there are clear moral guidelines and resulting side-effects from non-compliance? Where love in whatever form, prophetic, fruitful and/or male defined, is constant and compulsive?

Both Donno and Frye concede to the pervasiveness of love and the vulnerability of all to

Cupid’s kingdom; in reference to the tapestries of the House of Busirane, Donno writes that

Cupid has “a kingdom where all creatures are compelled to obey his law” and Frye writes,“Cupid’s power...dominates the cosmos that the social hierarchy of humankind collapses beneath his power”.53 What both differ on is whether the House of Busirane is a place for maturity, where Britomart learns to accept this pervasiveness to understand the virtue of chastity.

While Frye adamantly argues that this “maturation” is an imposed violence, utilizing Amoret’s rescue and her quick rejuvenation from “rape” to render the sinister side-effects of non-compliance attractively, Donno’s acceptance of a naturalized impulse for love, and the sinister ever-present threat of rape, raises the issue of whether this simply is a given context and given issue for all to face; is limited agency still agency and best depicted via a form of convention? And what is the purported “convention”?

Spenser, according to Frye, constructs a narrative for a homogeneous male audience that conventionally relishes the fantasy of a captive queen.54 Spenser naturalizes female chastity in

52 Frye, Susan. pp. 75. ​ 53 Donno, Elizabeth Story. pp 39, Frye, Susan. pp. 63. ​ ​ ​ 54 Frye, Susan. pp. 58. ​ Frye argues that Spenser utilizes the conventions of Humanism and Neoplatonism to construct this narrative. He draws on the coercive element of humanism as well as the implicit violence against women in Neoplatonic instrumentalization of erotic love. 31,Li terms of human reproduction. He is implicated in violence and misogyny, and does not, as is often argued by other mainstream critics, “stand outside the horror”.55 One such instance is

Spenser’s “erasure” of Amoret’s rape.56 As Britomart finds Amoret bound with her heart torn from her and her “riven bowels gored,” the narrator informs the reader that Busirane does so to

“make her him to love” (III. XII. 31.6-38.4). As Britomart saves Amoret and Busirane withdraws his “charms,” Amoret’s “gor’d” bowels transition into a “perfect hole,” and Amoret becomes

“safety full sound...as she were never hurt” (III.XII.38.6-7). The diction reeks of sexual innuendos and Frye succinctly notes that the ease of Amoret’s recovery from being kidnapped, bound and having her heart gouged out/metaphorically raped downplays the trauma she experienced. Thus, as rape is seemingly traumatic as a common cold, Spenser, in heralding a form of chastity intertwined with marriage, implicitly roots the virtue of chastity in the erasure of rape--rape maintaining its threat as its sinister nature is, regardless, known. For women, who were the predominant victims of this understanding then, deviation isn’t a choice if the threat of rape, however portrayed by a man, is ever-present.

In casting Spenser as a central popularizer in a time where the idea of companionate marriage was entering the mainstream of English thought, Frye’s distinction between

“convention” and what Spenser’s “counter discourse” actually entails is blurry.57 The naturalization of female chastity in terms of human reproduction isn’t a new phenomenon in late

16th century England. Rather, Amoret’s defense of Busirane as Britomart tries to kill him, which to Frye may signal an imposed female vulnerability that contributes to Spenser’s overall downplay of what rape entails--particularly in attributing empathy to the rapist via the victim--is

55 Frye, Susan. pp. 69. ​ 56 Frye, Susan. pp. 71-73. ​ 57 Frye, Susan. pp. 75 ​ 32,Li a bizarre atypical “physical” occurrence. Regardless of existing gender dynamics, a rapist/murderer that is treated with such kindness is not a common motif within the male fantasy of female captivity; what is raised is the question regarding why Amoret does so.Further, it reflects Amoret’s role in Britomart’s maturation and Britomart’s tacit disengagement with

Cupid’s power and all that she witnesses within the House of Busirane before her episode with

Amoret.

Dolven notes, similarly to Frye, the monstrous and debasing depictions of rape throughout the House of Busirane; he argues, however, that Britomart seems “to recognize nothing of this attunement” as her reaction is devoid of “moralizing and delectation” and responds as follows58:

That wondrous sight Faire Britomart amazd, Ne seeing could her wonder satisfie, But evermore and more upon it gazd, The whiles the passing brightnes her fraile sences dazd. (III. XI.49.6-9) ​ ​ Britomart has no obvious reaction and her incomprehension translates to how she saves Amoret.

Despite viewing tapestries depicting the power of erotic love over Gods, Cupid’s reign and his procession, she remains detached from the threat of erotic love and proceeds to try and kill an embodiment of such, Busirane.

Amoret’s defense of Busirane, the metaphoric representation of a sinister character within the kingdom of love, mirrors love’s co-essentiality with life.59 As Britomart is about to kill

Busirane, “next stroke him should haue slaine,” Amoret “Dernly unto her called to abstain,” not only because Busirane is the only one who can “recure [her] againe” but also as she later expresses to Britomart, “Your virtue self her own reward shall breed, / Even immortal praise, and

58 Dolven, Jeff. pp 170. 59 Donno, Elizabeth Story. pp 47. ​ 33,Li glory wide” (III. XII. 34.4,39.5-6). Amoret teaches Britomart that un-sanctioned love, the ​ ​ animalistic passion of Busirane, must not be destroyed but in fact subdued. Chastity’s triumph is contingent on acceding to the existence of a fear, allowing one to “elect” to remain faithful.

Donno’s perception of the co-essentiality of love and life depends on chaste married love’s need for natural affection. Thus, within love itself is contained rape’s compulsion.

What is conventional in Spenser’s narrative, as concluded by both Donno and Frye, is not only the pervasiveness of love but also the marketing of chastity, as intertwined with marriage, as a virtue. Spenser's counter discourse can still ironically enforce the status quo precept of lawful chastity. However, what is unconventional is Amoret’s agency, specifically her response to Busirane, which cannot be viewed as an extension of her passivity.

As domineering and lavish the house of Busirane is, Amoret remains chaste; while her blood is appropriated to be the ink of the “figuring straunge characters” of Busirane’s decor, and her heart remains outside of her, “seeming transfixed with a cruell dart,” Amoret remains strong,

Ah, who can love the worker of her smart? A thousand charms he formerly did prove, Yet thousand Charms could not her steadfast heart remove. (III. XII. 31.7-9)

The narrator’s quantification, “Yet thousand charmes,” in the context of a house that is a reminder that even the Gods are subject to Cupid’s kingdom, reinforces what Donno details as the impenetrability of erotic choices (III. XII. 31.8). Amoret will eventually be changed. But ​ ​ behind the diction “steadfast” is agency; how impenetrable is the erotic if one’s own passions can clash with the very representation of compulsion. Amoret does defeat Busirane, and as we later see, has the option to kill him. If what is not killed, Cupid’s influence, is narratively

34,Li depicted as able to be killed, how co-essential are life and love? Both Britomart and Amoret are narratively depicted to have the option to kill Busirane and withstand Cupid.

As Britomart sees Busirane torturing Amoret’s bound body, the narrative account shifts to Busirane’s preparatory actions, where his immediate reaction is to stab Britomart in the same place where he tortures Amoret’s heart.

Not caring his long labors to deface And, fiercely running to that lady true… The wicked weapon rashly he did wrest, and, turning to herself his fell intent, Unwares it struck into her snowy chest, That little drops empurpled her fair breast. Exceeding wroth therewith the virgin grew. (III. XII. 32.3-33.6) ​ ​ Busirane’s immediate response is to stab Britomart. His preoccupation and willingness to lose all his work, “not caring his long labors,” and the similarity between Amoret’s wound and the area of focus, for Busirane, on Britomart’s body, her “fair breast,” suggest that Britomart’s appeal aligns with that of Amoret’s (III. XII. 33.5). Their similarity, particularly their embodiment of chastity, becomes poignant as the narration highlights Busirane’s attempt to capture Britomart, in a similar manner to Amoret’s bondage. As Britomart mightily “smote” Busirane, and has the capability to kill him, “He fell half dead; next stroke him should have slaine,” this moment, when contextualized in terms of Britomart and Amoret’s similarity, becomes intriguing (III. XII. 34.2).

Two representations of chastity are present at that moment. One form of chastity is aiding another. Britomart’s representation of chastity would have killed Busirane had Amoret not intruded. While Donno casts this interaction as emphasizing the co-essentiality of love and life, the specificity of Amoret’s chastity emerges as a complicating factor.

35,Li The possible differences between Amoret and Britomart’s chastity emerge from their drastically different landscapes of growth and their responses to love; Amoret is associated with pure love and was raised alongside Cupid in the Garden of Adonis, while Britomart is struck by love’s tyranny and learns of her destiny via Merlin’s mirror. For instance, in the House of

Busirane, Cupid comes to Amoret and takes off his blindfold to reap the full rewards of viewing love in a pure form, in a form he was also raised amongst.

His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind. That his proud spoil of that same dolorous Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind; Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind. (III. XII. 22.6-9) ​ His “proud spoil” is of the “same dolorous,” reminding the reader that both Cupid and Amoret come from the same place (III. XII. 22.7). Cupid’s effect, however, on his own educational landscape emerges from his remark that Amoret is “his proud spoil” (III. XII. 22.7). He positions ​ ​ himself above Amoret, as having determined her “perfect kind” (III. XII. 22.8). Amoret gives ​ ​ him a form of joy that differs from his common experience via her “perfect” upbringing, reinforcing the pervasiveness of love’s tyranny in other forms. This education and definition of perfection defines how the Garden of Adonis functions:

Right in the middest of that Paradise, There stood a stately Mount… And in the thickest couert of that shade… There wont faire Venus often to enjoy Her deare Adonis ioyous company… When euer that she will Possesseth him, and of his sweetnesse takes her fill. (II. VI. 43.1-46.9).

As time periodically wears down the Garden, Venus’ womanhood sustains constant fruition. The patroness of generation takes her pleasure of Adonis, who is injured and perpetually confined.60 ​ ​

60 Tonkin, Humphrey. "Spenser's Garden of Adonis and Britomart's Quest." PMLA, vol. 88, no. 3, May ​ ​ ​ 1973, pp. 412. 36,Li Rape is sanctioned to support the fertility of nature and thus the co-essentiality of life and love.

Amoret leaves the Garden of Adonis knowing of a survival precept of procreation and an understanding that a relationship with a man can be pleasurable.

Love initially sickens Britomart; she exhibits the symptoms of a great debilitating disease rather than the joys of a prophetically destined relationship. She is first struck by love after she sees Merlin’s mirror in her father’s closet and “imperious love hath highest set his throne, and tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts” (III.II.23.2-3). While the grandeur and kingdom of love is narratively made explicit, Britomart’s contrary outlook is evident via free indirect discourse,

For she was pure from blame of sinful blot, Yet wist her life at last must link in that same knot... Sad, solemn, sour, and full of fancies frail. (III.II.23.8-24) ​ Britomart’s belief, “she was pure from blame of sinful blot,” reveals her perception of love as corrupting and her fate as not being intertwined with a man (III.II.23.8). Her conflict, after being awakened to her destiny, “Yet wist her life at last must link in that same knot”, ushers in confusing emotions that reflect her free will and judgement (III.II.23.8-24). Unlike Amoret, she is not receptive to her destiny, “all abashed, and her pure ivory / Into a clear carnation sudden dyed” (III.III.20.3). She only learns the self-inflicted nature of her symptoms after Merlin ​ ​ expresses

The straight course of heavenly destiny, Led with eternal providence, that has Guided thy glance, to bring his will to pass. (III.III.24.3-5)

Afterwards, Britomart embarks on her mission to seek Artegall, mirroring her acceptance of her fate. Her actions, however, compared to Amoret’s are explicitly faulted for her aggression and blindness to what having pure love entails--such as the necessity of the metaphoric passion

Busirane represents.

37,Li Britomart is tasked to represent the virtue of chastity for readers; yet her version of chastity involves unawareness and cruelty--evidenced by her cathartic fight with Marinell. The fragility of love’s kingdom, and the co-essentiality of love and life, is revealed when we note the narrative’s reliance on Amoret, and her supposed representation of “given” principles of life, to sustain an acceptance of love in its scope and entirety. Fundamentally, as Britomart depicts in the second where she is able to destroy Busirane, a product of what should be indestructible or at least necessary for the triumph of chastity and thus love, love’s necessity and pervasiveness ​ ​ becomes situational and fragile. The co-essentiality of life and love is contingent on a life that is desired through love.

The fragility of Cupid’s kingdom emerges as a self-sustaining figure of pure love navigates a moment of threat--to avoid the challenging of the given principles of love. Amoret’s form of chastity reflects an educational environment that asserts that life is only possible via cyclical fertility. Britomart’s form of chastity stems from a disbelief in existing norms and an acknowledgement that something else is possible. She could have killed Busirane as she is a woman defined by an autonomous past self that affects her present degree of awareness. While

Frye can cast Britomart’s eventual compliance as Spenser’s perpetuation of a woman’s duty, she is not a testament to the impending doom for all women but rather a key figure in the exposure of the self-sustaining network behind conventional precepts of love. Her initial failure to understand is also a failure to be deterred, “an exemption from the persuasive machinery that is working,” and a suggestion of an alternative.61 The house of Busirane acts as a place of maturity for the reader, unraveling the systems behind the very transition of Queen Elizabeth’s original form of

61 Dolven, Jeff. pp. 170. 38,Li chastity to the lawful chastity championed in society after. This exposure, of the fragility of the co-essentiality of love and life, characterizes the recasting of Elizabeth’s self-representation, as a royal virgin, to be unique and unattainable.

An exposure of these self-sustaining networks intrigues us to ponder whether chastity can triumph without Cupid’s triumph. And Donno’s conclusion, that the triumph of love in noble form--as consistent with heavenly destiny--depends on one’s judgement to take the right course of action, overlooks how chastity reaps its own rewards. Amoret was raised in the Garden of

Adonis and accepts her destiny to continue a form of life via fertility. For her, the virtue of chastity is tied with lineage and production. Understanding “lawful chastity” in this light does not challenge the possibility of a life beyond the “confines” of love. Even as Britomart is affected by love, she is capable of falling out of/being indifferent to love--particularly as

Amoret’s backstory played an impactful role during the crucial moment in the House of

Busirane. Her unawareness and subsequent education does not directly correlate with ours as we, as readers, are informed by how Britomart is informed. Thus, we are able to see possibility. A space for virginal chastity is crafted via an exposure of the very systems that exceptionalized and re-defined Queen Elizabeth’s chastity, suggesting that there is, in fact, the potential for life after/without love.

39,Li

The Gestured Gesture

The Act of Six Articles, titled “An act for abolishing diversity in opinions,” classified clerical marriage after July 12, 1539 as a felony. The penal statute followed Henry VIII’s effort to quell discussion of contentious issues. Regardless, clerical celibacy and monasticism continued to be debated and hotly contested topics. Even as the law was repealed at the first parliament of Edward VI, the precarious foundation of this development was clear from the half-hearted language of the statue: “clerical marriage was not a positive good; it was simply better than clerical fornification”.62 Mary’s first parliament contributed to the uncertainty as she repealed the statutory authorization of clerical marriage. It was during Queen Elizabeth’s reign that a clear and unambiguous statement of the legality of clerical marriage and celibacy was finally made. The injunction 29 of the Royal Visitation of 1559 explicitly affirmed the lawfulness of clerical marriage. By 1563, monasticism and celibacy were figments of the past as clerical marriage was a secure feature of Elizabeth’s church--gaining a foundation in statutory law by 1571. Thus, by 1590, when virginity had become non-normative, “Virginity is sexy ​ ​ again” in The Faerie Queene, in the words of David Wilson-Okamura. ​ ​ The focal point of The Faerie Queene is a chaste queen, Queen Elizabeth, who functions ​ ​ as both the instigator of the narrative--she sets the knights in motion--and subject of the allegory via various surrogates. Just on the themes of celibacy and virginity, we have Una, Lucifera,

Britomart, Amoret, Chrysogenne, Diana, Florimell, Belphoebe and Gloriana. Some are capable of immaculate conception, several are chaste for life, while others are virgins till marriage. The

62 Carlson, Eric Josef. “Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, ​ ​ ​ 1992. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/175875. 5. ​ ​ ​ ​ 40,Li trials and tribulations of this long list of Spenser’s virgins served fundamentally two allegorical tasks: moral didacticism, the teaching of sexual integrity and concern, and transcendence, whereby virginity serves as a form of bodily integrity that points to holiness beyond the world.

As while virginity was losing ground in the Reformation, no longer sacramental or compulsory but rather a singular gift of God, virginity in The Faerie Queene is a site of moralizing that ​ ​ attempts to bridge a literal tale and its moral, and the real and the ideal.63

Virginity exposes an innate allegorical issue, particularly acute in this didactic allegorical romance, as the chaotic freedom of the allegorical world, the combination of semi-bodies, fairies,

Britons, and low and high allegory, defined by its transcendental meaning, is intended to teach.

As Gordon Teskey puts it, a schism between the allegory and us is predicated on an otherness, yet the discourse, the search for significance, is facilitated by meaning “cast in the form of a ritual initiation in which higher but still expressible truths lead to the inexpressible presence of absolute truth”.64 Virginity served to clarify not only what these expressible truths are but also to broach the larger question of what that entails for the men reading in order to become gentlemen, for Elizabeth, a chaste queen during the reformation, and for us.

There is an immediate struggle to understand how these representations interact to produce an “expressible truth”, virginity functioning for Spenser’s virgins in two different ways: chaste for life or until marriage. Further, a plaguing question is why Elizabeth needs so many representations in the first place? And why Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, and thus the most direct representation of Queen Elizabeth, is an elusive heroine who occupies a middling stage between the divine and the natural, and is less a character than a force that sets the narrative in motion.

63 Teskey, Gordon. “Allegory and Violence.” Cornell University Press. 1996. 2,5,7. ​ ​ 64 Teskey, Gordon. “Allegory and Violence.” Cornell University Press. 1996. 3. ​ ​ 41,Li As the search for expressible truths seems predicated on an unambiguous determining of the “other,” moments of rebellion, violent contradiction and the delineation of the bounds of the immoral and the moral are significant.65 And we have clear instances of such: Error, her book-vomiting and grotesque pseudo-motherhood responsibilities, functions as a gesture to the instructions on the conventions to be noted and the interpretations to be done. We are able to note the morals expounded by this scene, while being in a different world, as despite the chaotic interplay of the characters and the virtues present-- Error, Truth and Holiness--when Una and

Redcrosse interact with Error, a gesture is made towards an absolute truth that we can distill into an accessible moral. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know the direct implications of Holiness strangling Error with Truth cheering him on. There is a distinction between the signifier and the signified.

Wilson-Okamura approaches the issue of understanding Elizabeth’s variant representations by returning to Spenser’s letter to Raleigh.66 Spenser’s letter tellingly divides

Elizabeth into two people, “she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall queene or empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautiful lady”.67 The Faerie Queene is the former and Belphoebe is the latter, “this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphoebe”.68

Descriptions of Belphoebe’s virtue and beauty, however, remain non-sexual according to

Wilson-Okamura; a telling moment is in Book 2.

The saluage beastes in her victorious play, Knit with a golden bauldricke, which forelay Athwart her snowy brest, and did diuide

65 Teskey, Gordon. pp. 5. 66 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. “Belphoebe and Gloriana.” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 39, no. 1, 2009. ​ ​ ​ JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24463745. 67. ​ ​ ​ 67 Spenser, Edmund. "Letter to Raleigh." Received by Walter Raleigh, 23 Jan. 1589. A Letter of the ​ Authors, Longman, London, Appendix I. Letter. 68 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. pp. 67. 42,Li Her daintie paps; which like young fruit in May Now little gan to swell, and being tide, Through her thin weed their places only signifide. (II. III. 29.4-29.9).

Spenser’s self-censoring is highlighted by his restrained descriptions of Belphoebe’s beauty: ​ ​ Belphoebe’s breasts are compared to unripe fruit. And we learn that she has no children, no family and no husband to answer to. Wilson-Okamura credits this as Elizabeth’s daydream, “a fantasy that the poet performs in which the monarch is invited to imagine herself, not arguing about money in the Privy Council or reading reports in the palace, but forever on holiday, hunting in the forest”.69

Belphoebe’s version of virginity is marked as fantastical, unreal, in part sequestered from the didactic project of the poem--she doesn’t make a difference to the main narrative, at least initially, and remains confined to her forest. Wilson-Okamura’s analysis characterizes Belphoebe as not a didactical figure but rather a powerful idea, ultimately supporting the characterization that Spenser truly extols only married love.70 But as while Spenser can be credited with giving ​ Queen Elizabeth’s “private, invisible self” a sense of independence and autonomy, what is afforded to Belphoebe does not only function as a possible fantasy for Elizabeth, but also as a stark reminder of her actual position. Even as Spenser seeks to write a poem about perpetual virginity in a sufficiently positive light, and is not interested in virginity as part of the didactic apparatus of the poem, Wilson-Okamura’s characterization of Belphoebe’s confinement and the

“fantasy” it offers for Elizabeth strips both of their sexuality and imposes the same constraints that rendered Elizabeth’s reign contentious during the Reformation--that in order to be a monarch she needs to either marry or have no sexuality. Rather, virginity and sexuality exist in

69 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. pp. 56. 70 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. pp. 61-63. 43,Li tandem, even in dialectic; Belphoebe, despite the subdued nodes of sexuality in her descriptions, has a sexuality, and it is intertwined with her capability.

Like two faire marble pillours they were seene, Which doe the temple of the Gods support, Whom all the people decke with girlands greene, And honour in their festiuall resort; Those same with stately grace, and princely port She taught to tread, when she herself would grace. (II, III. 28.1-28.6)

While the description of Belphoebe’s strength, sourced from her thighs, render her statuesque, monumental, almost a work of architecture, the underlying descriptions are of her fair thighs.

Aspects of motherhood seep into the description as she teaches people how to walk. Both of these qualities are a source of admiration, and sanctioned, as Belphoebe is donned with nature by an approving community and by the Divine. Her confinement is also clear as her huntress role casts her as a creature of the forest, as almost naturally/primally chaste. She is subject to the constraints of the allegory, to how things are expressed and to the eyes of the reader. Her devotion to her community echoes what Wilson-Okamura sees as how England decided to understand Elizabeth, “as the celibate who disencumbers herself in order to uphold God’s

Church and gather His nation”.71

A characterization of Elizabeth’s two bodies as a royal queen and a virtuous lady correlates with the legal notion of the king’s two bodies. There is the private body of Belphoebe,

“a mortal, fallible instance of immortal, infallible monarchy,” and there is Gloriana, the sacred, immortal body politic.72 Belphoebe is not exempt from error. Celibacy, in her case, functions as something that confers independence in private life but upholds God’s temple in public. David

Lee Miller interprets the poem’s two bodies similarly along the lines of the king’s two bodies but

71 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. pp. 63. 72 Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. pp.68. 44,Li differs in his sense of the separability of identities. Miller argues that the incarnation of empire, the anticipated marital union of Arthur and Gloriana, is the central “figure” of Spenser’s Faerie

Queene, abetting the glorification of the body politic in Elizabeth.73

The quests propelling the narratives begin and end at Gloriana’s court because “all adventures belong to the sovereign”.74 For Miller, the union of Gloriana and Arthur serves as the central figure as it is the image of sovereignty. Arthur serves as a “combined figure for the dynasty...spouse-to-be of the personified realm...the royal house through whom divine power flowed into country and people”.75 Their marriage is between two textual modes: authority and contingency, power and responsiveness. Miller’s interpretation seeks a perfect union, echoing his conclusion that Spenser seeks to fashion gentlemen via an integration of a private self with an

“encyclopedia of the culture’s symbolic matrices, from literary genres to chronicle histories, from legal fictions to theological doctrines”.76

Both Miller and Wilson-Okamura highlight Gloriana’s propelling influence in The Faerie ​ ​ ​ Queene; Miller notes how Gloriana is behind the Knights’ adventures and Wilson-Okamura ​ notes Gloriana’s role as the uncriticizable sovereign, as she doesn’t appear. Both of these qualities reinforce a previously discussed conclusion, Gloriana’s occupation of a intermediary space. Kenneth Borris posits Gloriana’s interpolation between Elizabeth and the divine, pointing

“symbolically upwards as well as down, toward the Ideas and divinity as well as temporal governance”.77 As Gloriana seems to occupy the space between the temporal and the external,

73 Miller, David Lee. “Spenser's Poetics: The Poem's Two Bodies.” PMLA, vol. 101, no. 2, 1986. JSTOR, JSTOR, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ www.jstor.org/stable/462402. 171. ​ 74 Miller, David Lee. pp. 171. 75 Miller, David Lee. pp. 171. 76 Miller, David Lee. pp. 171. 77 Borris, Kenneth. “Visionary Spenser and the Poetics of Early Modern Platonism.” Oxford University Press, 2017. ​ ​ 190. 45,Li she also functions within a space that Elizabeth too occupies. Gloriana renders herself as the ideal form of the poem--there is no need ultimately for Arthur and the union that is promised but that never arrives; Gloriana functions as the body politic, similar to Elizabeth’s position, launching the trajectory of the narrative and also reflecting the relationship between the divine and the temporal.

Gloriana’s quasi-divinity is reflected in her function as both the orchestrator and impetus of the allegory, and thus her involvement in the poetic fashioning of the characters and the consequent ethical fashioning of the reader. Explicit examples include her decision to send

Redcrosse to liberate Adam and Eve from a dragon. While Una and Redcrosse appear as literal mortal beings, their adventures address both of their spiritual capabilities and access to divinity, as exemplified by Redcrosse’s vision of Jerusalem. Gloriana’s absence contributes to her elevated status as she appears invulnerable to the constraints and conventions of the allegorical world, that even Truth and the English Church experience. What ironically pulls her status down towards the temporal is her beauty and virtue, stark reminders of her status as an idealized monarch.

Descriptions of Gloriana that permit a distance that differs from indescribable descriptions of the divine reflect the possibility of judgement and access. Similar to Belphoebe’s

“enclosure,” Gloriana’s confinement as an absent presence does not render her fully inaccessible.

What’s at stake in not being fully inaccessible but intermediary, comes through in the preface, where Gloriana is tasked with enlightening the reader towards the absolute truth, authorizing an epic about virtues.78

And with them eke, o Goddesse heauenly bright,

78 Borris, Kenneth. pp. 199. 46,Li Mirrour of grace and Majestie divine, Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine, Shed thy faire beames into my feeble eyne, And raise my thoughts too humble and too vile, To thinke of that true glorious type of thine, The argument of mine afflicted stile: The which to heare, vouchsafe, o dearest dred a-while. (I, I. 4.1-4.9)

The language of epic invocation is used to highlight her virtue and beauty. She is “Majestie divine, / Great Lady of the greatest Isle”. She seems to play a clear didactic role, tasked with

“raising” thoughts. The “too humble and too vile” nature of these thoughts, however, “to thinke of that true glorious type of thine,” is a turn to the unattainable--the struggle of obtaining a grander/higher truth. While Gloriana appears as a “Majestie divine,” she is a “mirrour of grace”; she is only a reflection. Spenser’s anxious effort to protect Gloriana is via an approach that seems similar to Belphoebe’s containment; this anxiety is managed, in part, by positing Gloriana as the very conditions of visibility, implicitly introducing the nature of how Gloriana interacts.

The imagistic logic works via the figure of the mirror, she is not only a reflection, but also the conditions of seeing and the seen--the conditions of visibility itself. She is described as light, a matrix to see anything else, a light that creates the environment and makes the world available to us.

As a form of idealized beauty, virtue and sovereignty, Gloriana sets a journey in motion for the search for significance: a narrative where the knowledge of her appears as the illuminating purpose/meaningful end of that journey. She is all encompassing of the virtues extolled via her involvement. There is, however, a plaguing flux to the narratives at play. Despite

Gloriana’s enabling depiction, and Spenser’s inventions, the allegorical world remains

47,Li continually confusing and chaotic because the effort to protect Gloriana is constitutively unstable.

The stakes of the search for significance in the allegory of a remote feminine ideal, who is at once the origin, center and vanishing point, is high. She gestures but is herself a gesture--

Gloriana being an embodiment of a relationship between nature and grace, and the ideal and the real. Thus, Daniel Vitkus argues that her union with Arthur is suggested to be the central goal of

Spenser’s prophetic poem, the “promised end that religious and historical allegories merge”;

Vitkus argues along these lines as a nod to Spenser’s preoccupation with the royal marriage and the production of heirs.79 And indeed Arthur offers us access to Gloriana as he describes

Gloriana’s physical attributes and his impending marriage, and the feast that was planned to follow. Her physical presence and indeed her nature is thereby introduced into the poem. But as

Mary Ellen Lamb argues, the lack highlighted here is precisely what afforded Spenser a safe distance and ability to allegorize Elizabeth. Lamb’s analysis implies that Gloriana’s presence, as both hidden and a principle of narration, structured a male subject’s feelings, correlating to

Elizabeth’s inspiration of cultural issues/nightmares--pressured to marry and produce heirs while being a Queen of two bodies.80

Lamb incorporates into her analysis of The Faerie Queene the tradition of fairy tales, ​ ​ “ballads of mortals pining for their fairy brides or lovers lie behind Arthur’s unceasing desire to find the fairy queen”.81 She emphasizes Arthur’s storyline and also Gloriana’s dominance as

79 Vitkus, Daniel. “The Unfulfilled Form of ‘The Faerie Queene’: Spenser's Frustrated Fore-Conceit.” Renaissance ​ ​ and Reformation / Renaissance Et Réforme, vol. 35, no. 2, 2012. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43446492. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 90. 80 Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age” The University Press of ​ Kentucky. 2000. ​ 81 Lamb, Mary Ellen. pp. 82. 48,Li conventions of contemporary fairylore. Gloriana represents female dominance of childhood, functioning as a transitory phase through which questing males should pass and grow and yet where they can get stuck through “the power of mothers and nurses to thwart or to indulge their young charge’ desires”.82 She remains an absent presence, “like the women of childhood,” the narrative favouring the motivated knights. As Lamb details, however, within this traditional framework, Arthur’s desire for Gloriana appears unhealthy: “erotic desires for fairies seldom end well. Perpetually dissatisfied, mortal lovers pine and die,” and Gloriana becomes more than just a transitory phase. If a plaguing influence, Gloriana and her absent presence echoes her unattainability and control. Her “lack” is enabling because it teases as if it were a lack that won’t always be a lack.

As our understanding of Gloriana oscillates, from her seemingly productive absence to her confinement to absence, to an understanding of her identity as a gesture, Spenser’s anxieties seem to be increasingly clear. Writing for not only a poem’s two bodies, the poetic narrative and the allegorical construct, but also for the Queen’s two bodies, and for the gentlemen and for the

Queen and for us, any means of presenting Elizabeth seem insufficient. The innate fluxes and contradictions in her reign and reception are mediated by a lurking anxiety over her, the space she occupies, and the sequences of events that have yet to come. Thus, a fractured Elizabeth is produced in the allegory with her most direct representation also being a mediated and stifled expression.

Me seemed, by my side a royall Mayd Her daintie limbes full softly down did lay: So faire a creature yet saw neuer sunny day.

Most goodly glee and louely blandishment She to me made, and bad me loue her deare,

82 Lamb, Mary Ellen. pp. 88. 49,Li For dearely sure her loue was to me bent, As when iust time expired should appeare. ​ ​ But whether dreames delude, or true it were, Was neuer hart so rauisht with delight, Ne liuing man like words did euer heare, As she to me deliuered all that night; And as her parting said, She Queene of Faeries hight. (I. IX. 13.7-14.9)

Arthur is moved by a surreal visual and sensual experience of Gloriana. Yet, reminiscent of the undefinable being defined by its undefinability, Gloriana’s words could not be described, “Ne liuing man like words did euer heare”. Our reliance on the male voice to describe Gloriana is both representative of her power not to appear but also the constraints placed on her to be both beyond but subject to the allegory. Her position and depiction rings as productive as it reflects not only the innate tensions of Elizabeth’s position but also the rifts of allegorical representation.

Gloriana is sequestered and in the dark, never out on a sunny day.

Arthur’s erotic dream is a point of access albeit with a lack. The erotic dream is inspiring for him, contrasting with Redcrosse’ swift disgust and action following his dream of Una, “And halfe enraged at her shameless guise, / He thought haue slaine her in his fierce despight”. The lack stems from Gloriana’s agency as she, though poetically sequestered, renders herself only accessible to him via a dream--as if she has chosen to come to him. Una manages something similar, via her purpose as Truth and the English Church, virginity seemingly secondary and overshadowed by her representation and accessed, eventually, only through a dream. As we have several bodies of virginity, we can begin to see the protective measures; the occupation of an intermediary space and while virginity seems secondary for many it is, overall, a focal point. The integrity of virginity is retained by an access defined by lack and the virtue of virginity is defined by an access that has a lack. The dialectic relationship is fruitful and productive. There seems to be no harm, no loss, no damage. While allegory strives to point away from itself, because of

50,Li language, quasi human bodies, narrative excess, narrative confusion, this effort is revealed. This return and intermediary reflective access to the allegory is not only the bridge, transcending and rendering the teaching of the virtue of virginity possible, but also the very lesson gestured to.

51,Li