Spenser, The Faerie Queene

(4 Credits)

This course will focus on Spenser's epic romance The Faerie Queene in its wider literary context, including short selections from Ovid, Ariosto, Tasso, and Cervantes. Attention will be paid to the theory of allegory and to the visual tradition of representing myth, epic and allegory, including paintings by Botticelli, Poussin and others. We will rethink the convergences and divergences of epic, myth, allegory and romance as they help to shape questions of gender, nation, ideology and ethics.