Constancy, Tristram, and the “Parcell” of <i>The Faerie Queene</i> Book VII

Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos appeared to their first printer as “parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, Vnder the Legend of Constancie.” This essay imagines a Legend of Constancy, a Book VII that would continue The Faerie Queene’s consistent pattern of differentiating human from faerie virtues, with the former involving virtue more in discursive reasoning. The Cantos have signs of a philosophical digression pertinent to Constancy, a discursive virtue conducive to partitioning (as fidelity, perseverance, and perspective); they also have ligatures to Tristram in Book VI, canto ii, who, as an adaptation of Malory, is superbly qualified as a human Knight of Constancy.