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Spenser's Wanton Maidens: Reader Psychology and the Bower of Bliss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Arlene N. Okerlund
Arlene N. Okerlund*
Affiliation:
California State University, San Jose
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Abstract

In creating an evil Bower of Bliss which is imaginatively more appealing than its good counterparts in “The Legend of Temperaunce,” Spenser shapes his poetics to expose the reader's own status regarding the virtue of temperance. The first eleven cantos of Book II presumably provide an education in properly temperate behavior, until the beauty of the Bower suddenly reveals that the reader prefers the seductive attractions of the wanton maidens and the leisurely raptures of Acrasia's bed of roses to the moderation and rationality of Alma's House of Temperance. As the reader responds to the descriptions of Acrasia's garden, he shows how easily he can be seduced by the apparent beauties of earthly bliss—even though he knows the consequences of such intemperate actions. In the Bower of Bliss, the reader discovers that knowledge of evil and declared preferences for abstract virtue offer no protection against temptation. Through his response to the poetry, he finds himself in an embarrassing confrontation with his human nature.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 62 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 “The Façade of Morality,” ELH, 19 (1952), 81–114.

2 “The Bower of Bliss and Armida's Palace,” CL, 6 (1954), 345.

3 Areopagitica, quoted from The Works of John Milton, ed. F. A. Patterson et al., iv (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931), 311.

4 Quoted from The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin Greenlaw et al., ii (Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), 372.

5 The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality in Book II of Spenser's Faerie Queene (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 223.