The Faerie Queene (1596)

Abstract

There is no denying that much of the 1596 Faerie Queene—for the purposes of this essay, Books IV, V, and VI—is hard going. Book IV, the Book of Friendship, leads readers through a tangled retelling and elaboration of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale and Knight’s Tale, through increasingly violent and ugly erotic episodes reflecting upon the dangers to which life in any polity exposes the individual; through disquieting attacks on age and aged characters; through precursor texts fascinated with death (Lucretius’ gorgeous philosophical poem De rerum natura and Statius’ epic the Thebaid) before it eases readers into the mythic richness of the Temple of Venus, the abundance of the Marriage of Rivers, or the charm of the sea-epyllion of Marinell and Florimell’s union in the aquatic realm of the sea gods (cantos x–xii). Book V, the Book of Justice, notoriously repels readers with its violent, unsubtle protagonist Artegall, his iron henchman Talus, and their exhausting, morally dubious efforts to enforce justice and liberate innocent peoples from sadistic tyrants through military action. Book VI, the Book of Courtesy, has often seemed to readers a guilty pleasure, retreating from the harsh realities of realpolitik into folktale motifs, pastoral truancies, and over-simple solutions to the problems of establishing community.