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From Troy to Munster: Edmund Spenser’s Active Imitation of Irish, English, and Classical Sources in The Faerie Queene
Levie, Andrew
Levie, Andrew
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Publication Date
2026-07-08
Keywords
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, imitation, intertextuality, Troy, Aeneas, Sangliere, Richard III, Earl of Desmond, Virgil, Camden, chorography, mythmaking, topography, rivers, Dindshenchas, Gaelic Ireland, manuscripts, new philology, Slieve Bloom, Drowes, Erne, Limerick, School of English, Media and Creative Arts
Type
doctoral thesis
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Abstract
This thesis broadens our understanding of the kaleidoscopic range of The Faerie Queene’s allegories and allusions by paying attention to the way in which Spenser imitates overlooked or misunderstood English and Gaelic Irish sources. Particular attention is paid to the broader literary and historical contexts of these sources in order to analyse the ways in which Spenser creatively recasts them to serve new purposes. This process uncovers critiques of ancestral figures, condemnations of political enemies, and shrouded geographical references, but it also addresses a contradiction in scholarship. While scholars are quick to endorse Spenser’s creative recasting of English or classical sources for a new purpose, they are just as quick to label Spenser’s reshaping of Gaelic Irish material as an appropriative act that denigrates or disfigures Gaelic Irish lore. This thesis confronts this tension by demonstrating that Spenser’s imitation of Gaelic Irish sources is not so different to his imitation of texts from other literary spheres. On a critical level, therefore, this thesis argues that Spenser’s imitation of Gaelic Irish texts within his intertextual kaleidoscope suggests a degree of authorial respect akin to that typically reserved for classical, continental, or English sources.
Publisher
University of Galway
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CC-BY-NC-ND