The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser - Elizabeth Mazzola (essay date 2000)
Elizabeth Mazzola (essay date 2000)
SOURCE: Mazzola, Elizabeth. “‘O unityng confounding’: Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, and the Matrix of Renaissance Gender.” Exemplaria 12, no. 2 (fall 2000): 385-416.
[In the following essay, Mazzola discusses the portrayals of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart (also known as Mary Queen of Scots) in Spenser's The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's King Lear in terms of gender discourse in Renaissance poetry.]
For almost two decades in the sixteenth century, a specter haunted England. The twisted shape of twin queens, the closely linked bodies of Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary Stuart, aroused a range of fears and hopes, some secret, some openly expressed, and a variety of speculations political, psychological, or biological. To be sure, bodies are as much the stuff of fiction as they are the hard material of history; if their limits and cavities are easily detected or quickly registered...
[The entire page is 12676 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
