Edmund Spenser‘s Dazzling Quest for Virtue in The Faerie Queene

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Edmund Spenser‘s Dazzling Quest for Virtue in The Faerie Queene

"Voyeur: one who habitually seeks sexual stimulation by visual means" (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). According to Baby's Record, as a child my favorite stories included Daniel in the Lions' Den, Jonah and the Whale, Elisha and the 40 Children Eaten by the Bears, The Three Little Pigs, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Before sex came violence, tamed by a mother's lap and blessed by the inspired Word. Voyeurism may well be "the relation . . . of every reader to every novel, of every spectator to every painting, play and film" (Paglia 191); as an "innocent" child, I had already allowed my "untamed pagan eye" to feast fully upon the delightful spectacle of human beings disappearing into the ravenous jaws of nature. To paraphrase Paglia I was at a tender age already "deeply implicated" (191).

But perhaps sexuality has never been my strong suit. I must admit that I, unlike Paglia, saw The Faerie Queene above all as an allegory of "the Christian struggling heroically against many evils . . separated ...

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