VIOLENT MASCULINITIES OF THE FAERIE QUEENE VIOLENT MASCULINITIES OF THE FAERIE QUEENE

ii Utilizing the strategies of feminist criticism, this study seeks to define masculinity and the issues confronting it as presented in Books III and IV of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. The thesis analyzes the means by which Spenser’s poem challenges conventional notions of violence as inherent to masculinity. This includes examining the tropological use of rape to represent masculine lust as animalistic, as seen in the various male pursuers and aggressors of Florimell and Amoret, and the metaphorical conceptualization of love as a violent conquest as a means of contributing to homosocial status elevation.Thus this study contributes to the understanding of the didacticism of Spenser’s allegory concerning the fashioning of a proper gentleman. iii Acknowledgements: I would like to thank three special women for the completion of this thesis. The first of which is my mother, Betty Hyden, who has read, proofread and reread every word I have ever written. My undergraduate professor, Sylvia Hunt, deserves special mentio