Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Abstract
"When considered in the context of Elizabeth's effort to silence all discussion of incest, Edmund Spenser's courtly epic aiming to cultivate favor with the monarch looks like a disastrous miscalculation, for incest appears throughout The Faerie Queene. Indeed, incest sits at the center (both literally and figuratively) of the Book of Chastity, the very book wherein Spenser encourages Elizabeth 'in mirrours more then one her selfe to see.' In the present essay, I investigate the apparently illogical and impolitic prominence afforded to incest in book three of The Faerie Queene, ultimately arguing that the imperialist logic underpinning the epic is linked to an intense fear of miscegenation that, in turn, privileges endogamous relations as a way of warding off foreign invasion and contamination. For Spenser, incest becomes a positive practice, one that ensures national and individual purity."
Recommended Citation
Lehnhof, Kent. "Incest and Empire in The Faerie Queene," English Literary History 73 (2006): 215-43.
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Johns Hopkins University
Included in
Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in ELH, volume 73, in 2006.