Spenser's 'Angry Ioue': Vergilian Allusion in the First Canto of 'The Faerie Queene'

Author / Editor
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.

Title
Spenser's 'Angry Ioue': Vergilian Allusion in the First Canto of 'The Faerie Queene'

Published
Classical and Modern Literature 3.2 (1983): 89-98.

Description
Explores the allusion to Virgil's "Georgics" in "Faerie Queene" 1.1.50-53, arguing that Spenser "desexualizes the Vergilian model by removing [its] generative principle" (90) and thereby re-makes the Classical/Christian topos that underlies Chaucer's opening lines of the GP. In Chaucer, the topos anticipates communal pilgrimage (a Roman Catholic motif); in Spenser, it is prelude to personal battle (a Reformed motif) that defeats Catholic heresy.

Chaucer Subjects
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion