Vexed Relationships with Rome

Abstract Because the Faerie Queene of a borderless empire allies herself with Arthur in a battle against the Paynim King on “Bryton fieldes with Sarazin blood bedyde,” Spenser inverts the relationship between Christendom and the borderless Saracen world of Italian epic-romance. Some critics consider Spenser’s itinerant Saracens representative of the threat to Protestant England posed by the See of Rome and Ottoman Empire, but The Faerie Queene also allegorizes the threat Protestant England and the Ottoman Empire posed to the See of Rome. Instead of an epic conflict between two rival empires, Spenser’s Saracens symbolize persistent threats of rebellion and corruption among diverse peoples coexisting within one empire. If Spenser is rightly called the English Virgil, then he deserves this honor because Protestant England’s vexed relationship with Rome inspires him to thwart readers’ expectations for classical imitations of epic conflict between Christendom and the Saracen world established by Ariosto and Tasso.