Willing shape-shifters: The loathly lady from Irish Sovranty to Spenser's Duessa

grantor: University of TorontoI explicate the nexus of cultural ideas embodied in the loathly lady motif, whose narratives are concerned with national and personal identity. Her shape-shifting flesh signals the contestation of will inherent in kingship, nationhood, and heterosexual relations. I begin with the Irish Sovranty figure, Chaucer and Gower's loathly ladies, Dame Ragnell, Thomas of Erceldoune's fairy queen, and several balladic heroines: medieval versions which endorse active female sexuality and make male subjugation to it a kingly ideal. The two loci of the tales, the forest and court, are diametrically opposite spheres brought into play with each other through the two main characters of the tales, the beastly bride and the hunter hunted. These enact an courtship ritual invoking an imbroglio of concerns, including anxiety about food and sex, fear of assimilation, suspicion of human beastliness; the signification of feminine flesh, the relation of word to flesh, of genre to gender; initiation into maturity, social hierarchy, and the power ratio underpinning heterosexuality. The paradoxes of the beastly bride and the hunter hunted are coupled; the slippage of inversion allows a loosening of gender roles. The female body of the loathly lady incorporates anxiety and desire inherent in competition, with the union of opposites providing redemptive closure. I then show how Spenser makes an opposite use of the same motif. Duessa, his loathly lady, is sternly disempowered, her active sexuality is punished, her adept performance of the role of romance lady is disavowed. The trial and execution of her is used to urge Elizabeth toward harsher treatment of the Irish. Spenser addresses the issues which the medieval loathly lady configures, but his different inflexion measures his assessment of these. Yet like the medieval models, where the loathly lady is a king-maker like the Irish bard, and where Chaucer's and Gower's hags reflect authorial intention, Duessa, too, provides a paradigm of Spenser's performance. Her multiplicity mirrors his poetic strategy, while her energy is displaced onto Mutability and reconciled by Nature, in alignment with the happy endings of the medieval tales.Ph.D