“And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene

Brown, Richard Danson (2018). “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Proceedings of the Virgil Society, 29 pp. 49–74.

URL: http://www.virgilsociety.org.uk/proceedings.htm

Abstract

This article looks at the half lines in Spenser's Faerie Queene, and their intertextual relationship with Virgil's Aeneid. It considers how the Aeneid was translated into English in the sixteenth century, before examining in depth the half lines in The Faerie Queene. I show that there are sound textual reasons for believing that Spenser intended the majority of these half-dozen lines as a deliberate counterpoint to the more uniform appearance of the rest of his poem, and indeed that revisions to the text first published in 1590 show Spenser varying the placement of half lines for their affective impact.

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