The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser - Ann E. Imbrie (essay date 1987)
Ann E. Imbrie (essay date 1987)
SOURCE: Imbrie, Ann E. “‘Playing Legerdemaine with the Scripture’: Parodic Sermons in The Faerie Queene.” English Literary Renaissance 17, no. 2 (spring 1987): 142-55.
[In the following essay, Imbrie discusses the characters in The Faerie Queene who emerge as “false preachers,” delivering sermons that represent perversions of biblical rhetoric.]
Guyon's encounter with Mammon, however we judge his success in that episode from Book II of The Faerie Queene, has long been recognized as a parody of Christ's temptation in the wilderness. Patrick Cullen has discovered a similar scriptural parody in Redcrosse's encounter with Despayre in Book I.1 In fact, the poet frequently shows an evil character producing holy witness with a smiling cheek in order to dissuade a hero from moral action. It is not surprising that Spenser's villains will often pervert rhetorical power,...
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