Metrics
58 File views/ downloads
338 Record Views
Thesis
EDMUND SPENSER'S CRITIQUE OF ELIZABETHAN CHIVALRY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE
University of West Florida
Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida
2018
Abstract
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene is rife with female victims of male aggression. In a poem filled with knights who are literally chomping at the bit to prove their chivalry, the gratuitous violation of women seems out of place. One would think there would be far fewer damsels in distress where there are so many available knights errant. Strangely, these distressed women repeatedly find themselves endangered by the very knights who should be protecting their faithful, chaste bodies. Drawing on studies of Elizabethan chivalry by Richard McCoy, early-modern masculinity by Lisa Celovsky, and feminist readings of Spenser by Susan Frye, I argue that Spenser's gratuitous victimization of women by knights is a parody of the male identity informed by Queen Elizabeth I's specific understanding of chivalry. While promoting the Reformation ideal of companionate marriage, Spenser seeks to expose the chivalric structure of Queen Elizabeth's court as an authoritarian effort to keep men servile. My thesis demonstrates that Spenser's ironic depiction of the chivalric code underscores, in order to critique, the regressive homosociality of the nostalgic chivalry revived in Queen Elizabeth I's court. In Spenser's text, Scudamour's and Britomart's characters exemplify that the chivalric masculinity promoted by Elizabeth is a vehicle for suppressing male power that conflicts with Reformation values.
Details
- Title
- EDMUND SPENSER'S CRITIQUE OF ELIZABETHAN CHIVALRY IN THE FAERIE QUEENE
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Publisher
- University of West Florida
- Format
- text
- Copyright
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
- Identifiers
- 99380090841706600
- Academic Unit
- English
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Arts (MA)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida