Temperate Conquests: Spenser and the Spanish New World

by David Read

Temperate Conquests examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene within the context of England's international relations and colonial expansion during the Elizabethan period. It is a significant reconsideration of Book 2, which is often regarded as one of the least topical and thus least engaging books of The Faerie Qfteene. David Read argues that Sir Guyon's quest in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene serves as a vehicle for Spenser to imagine a model of English colonial activity in the New World. Yet Spenser's effort in this direction faces serious obstacles, since the primary sixteenth-century model for New World colonialism, Spain, has to be presented as the ideological and moral antithesis of England. Book 2 captures Spenser's struggle to express England's expansionist aspirations while distinguishing imperial England from imperial Spain. This book responds to the recent wave of work emphasizing Spenser's tenure in Ireland as defining his interest with English colonialism. Temperate Conquests contains much that will interest students and scholars of Edmund Spenser, Renaissance studies, and European colonialism.

164 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2000