"Another game in vew": the representation of the poet in The Faerie Queene

Abstract

Many recent critics of The Faerie Queene have established an artificial distinction between the narrator of The Faerie Queene and Spenser, one which posits an olympian detachment of the author from the work, and of both from the historical circumstances in which the work was written. An analysis of the poem reveals the limited sense in which a distinction between the narrator and the implied author may be drawn, and shows how the incompleteness of the work and some of its structural and thematic tensions are due to its changing significance as a political project undertaken by Spenser.