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Brown, Richard Danson
(2025).
URL: https://sel.rice.edu/forthcoming-issues
Abstract
This article re-examines Spenser’s representation of anger through the neglected canto in which Tristram rescues nameless lady from abuse by a nameless knight (VI.ii). It argues that in The Faerie Queene, the representation of anger entails critical use of the complaint mode. The focus in the first part of the essay addresses the poetic forms and recurring narrative motifs which variously explore and problematise the incident of the nameless lady, the abusive knight, and Tristram. The essay argues that this canto shows Spenser’s critical response to Lipsius’s Neostoic De Constantia, a dialogue which opposes complaint as a psychological manoeuvre and as a rhetorical practice. The second part of the essay examines the story of Priscilla and Aladine which is proleptic of elements in the rest of Book VI. Cumulatively, the essay suggests that Spenser’s poetic styles—his repetitions of distinct rhyme clusters and patterns of imagery—are key to the interpretation of the poem’s broader allegorical engagement with Courtesy.
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