|
|
Article: Hellish Work in The Faerie Queene.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- January 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Rice University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Anthony Low, in a chapter of The Georgic Revolution entitled "Poet of Work: Spenser and the Courtly Ideal," has elegantly argued that arduous physical labor constitutes a virtue rather than a vice for the knight practitioner of The Faerie Queene, most notably in book 6. [1] Virgil's Aeneid, and especially his Georgics, almost certainly provided Edmund Spenser with memorable models of hard physical labor that could not only refine and dignify the rural or epic laborer but, through the uncoordinated but nevertheless cumulative labor of many persons, create a national destiny as well. [2] Once situated at Kilcolman, Spenser regarded himself as a colonizer like his neighbor ...