Current Search: Faerie queene. (x)
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Title
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"Foolish men that prayse gin eke t'envy": armes, armor, and eroticism in Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
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Author
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Desimone, Noah Ryan
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Abstract/Description
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In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, scenes of armament and disarmament allegorize the way that idealized and degenerate forms of masculinity are forged. Armor, in Spenser, is less a physical than a psychological shield. Donned at the wrong time, the knights become cruel, untrustworthy, and apathetic. Removed at inappropriate junctures, they descend into lust, avarice, and gluttony. Spenser's epic models the self-fashioning by which gentleman could come to embody the harmony of Venus and...
Show moreIn Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, scenes of armament and disarmament allegorize the way that idealized and degenerate forms of masculinity are forged. Armor, in Spenser, is less a physical than a psychological shield. Donned at the wrong time, the knights become cruel, untrustworthy, and apathetic. Removed at inappropriate junctures, they descend into lust, avarice, and gluttony. Spenser's epic models the self-fashioning by which gentleman could come to embody the harmony of Venus and Mars. Empedocles' principle of love and war--the idea that eros and strife must come together for the generation of life to occur--is central to Spenser's idea of exemplary masculinity as well as to his political and artistic vision of harmony. The epic models a paradigm of courtly masculinity that places a premium on intense emotional relationships between men, even as it divorces eros from the realms of martial honor and patriarchalism. Since Spenser's vision of self-fashioned masculinity depends upon his understanding of court culture and the woman presiding over it, I conclude my thesis by looking at the epic's critique of Elizabeth I's use of romantic tropes and erotic pageantry
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Identifier
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1296388542, WFE0000781
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Format
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Document (PDF)