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"STRANGE SIMILES": THE FAERIE OUEENE AND RENAISSANCE NATURAL HISTORY (Spine title: The Faerie Queene and Renaissance Natural History) (Thesis format: Monograph) by Sean Gordon Henry Graduate Programme in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Sean Gordon Henry 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-50232-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-50232-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners Dr. Peter Auksi Dr. John Leonard Co-Supervisor Dr. Judith Owens Dr. James Purkis Dr. Anthony Percival-Smith Dr. Paul Werstine The thesis by Sean Gordon Henry entitled: "Strange Similes": The Faerie Queene and Renaissance Natural History is accepted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date Chair of the Thesis Examination Board ii ABSTRACT AND KEYWORDS Animals appear in every canto of every book of The Faerie Queene. This dissertation seeks to accentuate the strangeness of Spenser's animals as well as to counter it. By placing Spenser's epic in dialogue with early modern natural history, with which it shares a constant didacticism, I argue that the strangeness of his animals must first be recognized and then remedied by learning what was "meant" by those animals in the culture Spenser inhabited and helped make. Chapter One proposes ways in which Spenser, inhabiting a particular cultural time, place, and position, could have learned natural history as part of his formal education. Chapter Two argues for the centrality of exemplary symbolism in the presiding attitudes towards animals held during Spenser's lifetime and how the practices and products of natural history embody these attitudes. Chapters Three and Four engage directly with two representative animals from Spenser's poem, the lion and the crocodile, showing that animals are not merely imaginative conveniences but instead are complex, culturally encoded signifiers. The thesis also includes an appended compendium of all the animals of The Faerie Queene. Keywords: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Amoretti, Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberds Tale, Visions of the Worlds Vanitie, animals in literature, natural history, history of natural history, emblematics, symbolism, animals, Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, The Historie of Serpents, John Maplet, A Greene Forest, Stephen Batman, Batman uppon Bartholome, humanism, education, Renaissance science, lions, crocodiles. iii Si promissa facit sapientem barba, quid obstat Barbatus possit quin caper esse Plato? [If a long beard makes a philosopher, what's stopping a bearded goat from being a Plato?] - Sir Thomas More, "Epigram 138" (68) In that country the animals have the faces of people - Margaret Atwood, "The Animals in that Country" (1-2) iv For my Dad, Eric Henry, Jr. (1942-97) v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my profound appreciation to Lisa M. Zeitz for her intellectual and pedagogical generosity in agreeing to supervise my work in its initial stages, in spite of my working in an area outside of her usual scope of research and teaching. Her enthusiasm, care, and perceptiveness, combined with her humour and wisdom, continue to provide a model to me of what it is to be a scholar, educator, and friend. I owe my thanks to Peter Auksi for seeing the dissertation to its conclusion with a seemingly endless store of patience and encouragement. I also thank James Purkis for his discerning reading of the thesis as second reader, and Kelly Quinn for her early involvement in the project. My thanks go to the staff of the D. B. Weldon Library and the Allyn and Betty Taylor Science Library of the University of Western Ontario. The staff of the Weldon Library in particular cheerfully teased me for my daily visits, indefatigably sought out books from other collections for me, and more than once offered kind words at the right moment. My thanks are due to Patricia Aske, Librarian of Pembroke College, Cambridge, for her assistance in establishing certain details about sixteenth-century book holdings. I wish to thank c b newham for permission to reproduce his photograph of the Bratoft Armada painting both in this thesis and in an article derived from parts of Chapter Four about to appear in Spenser Studies 23.1 am grateful to the editors of Spenser Studies, Anne Lake Prescott, William A. Oram, and Thomas P. Roche, Jr., for their comments and suggestions; Anne Prescott has continued to be a generous and witty source of expertise and encouragement. I extend my thanks also to the community of Spenser scholars for the welcome, advice, and information they have given me, particularly F. W. Brownlow, A. C. Hamilton, Carol V. Kaske, Roger Kuin, Marianne Micros, James Nohrnberg, Judith Owens, and Donald Stump. I continue to owe a debt of gratitude to the humane and civilized George Clark of Queen's University. At Western, I have been fortunate to have received the advice, assistance, and friendly support of David Bentley, Jim Doelman, Brock Eayrs, M. J. Kidnie, Vivian Lavers, John Leonard, Mario Longtin, Teresa MacDonald, Anne McFarland, Beth Mcintosh, Richard Moll, Laura Nother, Russell Poole, Peggy Roffey, Peter Thorns, Leanne Trask, Jane Toswell, Paul Werstine, Oliver Whitehead, and the late vi Pat Dibsdale. I am grateful to the students of the former English 224.1 thank the members of Shakespeare Club for far too much fun; let the pancake bell ring ever. For their friendship and camaraderie, I wish to thank Mike Buma, Robin Crozier, David Drysdale, Cheryl Dudgeon, Leif Einarson, Michael Kightley, Kelly McGuire, Amy Mitchell, Andrew Moore, Sarah Pesce, Selma Purac, Karis Shearer, Conrad van Dyk, and Mike Woods. I must mention other friends in gratitude as well: Doug Beardsley, Lin Beardsley, Kristin Braunstein, Fr. Ralph Braunstein, Peggy Cartnal, Alva Cobbett, Fr. Keith Kirkwood, Mary McGibbon, Sonja Sinclair, and Canon Stanley Sinclair. My gratitude goes to Dick Simpson and Lana Simpson, as well as to Shane Birley, Corry Bogart, Andrew Dixon, Sarah Dixon, Jeff Kain, Kyle Goard, Kim Goddard, Christina Holmes, Melanie Johnstone, Shannon Mitchell, Tim Mitchell, Ian Moyer, Jennifer Moyer, Brendan O'Neill, Del Templeton, and Jason Templeton. I am grateful to all these friends for reminding me again and again of what really is important. My apologies go to the extended Fraser family for disappearing for nearly two years. I thank them for their patience and promise them that they did not dream that Kaya married someone. I cannot offer enough thanks to my godfather and friend, the Rt. Rev. Peter Wilkinson. To my mother, Elizabeth Henry, I am ever grateful with love for her constant support, perspective, and friendship. I hope she will not mind being mentioned in the same breath as three of our dogs, Towser, Hunter, and Duffy. Our lives with these animals have been a constant exercise in exemplary natural history. For my wife, Kaya Fraser: my thanks. To strike a note both academic and natural historical, in the immortal words of Groucho Marx, as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff idling along in a canoe in Horse Feathers (1932), Take a pair of rabbits who get stuck on each other and begin to woo, And pretty soon you'll find a million more rabbits who say I love you! When a lion gets feeling frisky and begins to roar, There's another lion who knows just what he's roaring for! Everything that ever grew-- The goose and the gander and the gosling too; The duck upon the water when he feels that way too says— You get the idea,