1. Spensers Busirane, artistry, and writing: is the evil magician a figure for the author or love-poet? If so, what does this tell us about Spenser’s theory of fiction? Consult the Letter of the Authors. From what sources does the magician derive his powers? What are his goals and methods? What might Spenser have in mind by comparing poetic to magical power? (Remember, Faustus did the same thing.)
2. Eyes, looking, spying, voyeurism, lust, mirrors, veils: trace some elements of this complex of visual acts and images for sight and concealment, and select a key stanza or two for close reading.
3. Monsters: what are they, or what do they represent in Book III? Where do they get their real and metaphorical power? Why and how are they threatening? How are they disarmed, killed, or conquered? What are they doing in Faerie Land?
4. Ravishing maidens: chaste and chased damsels: what is the relationship of chastity to being chased in the case of Florimell? Theorize away, but be sure you root your views in careful interpretation of episodes, images, and the language of Spenser’s Book of Chastity.
5. Choose any place in Book III for rigorous analysis: the Castle Joyeous, the Garden of Adonis, the House of Busirane, the Witch’s hut, Proteus’ ocean. What values and what interpretive model of reality or ideology does your “place” represent, or, as is so often the case, actively or even coercively espouse? What acts of persuasion does the artificer embed in tapestries, architecture, landscaping, or the lack of “goodly edified” constructions? What vocabulary emerges as especially revealing of the seductive effects of artifice? What is the effect of embedding artifice into the very structure of a building?
6. Choose any rhetorical description (e.g., Malecasta’s tapestry, Busirane’s masque) of artwork to analyze. What effects does the artwork have on the viewer? What is the relationship of the language to the artwork and to the experience of reading or interpreting? What sorts of things can happen to a reader?
7. Choose one or two similes to analyze and help open up an analysis of a larger concern of the text. What is the similes relation to the surrounding text? Are its images repeated elsewhere, and if so, how and why? Obvious choices include rose or bestial imagery, although similes describing a pastoral scene or a scene of labor would also be interesting.
8. Analyze the imagery of light and lightness in Malecastas castle in III.i. How does the imagery simultaneously moralize and complicate the process of hard-and-fast moralization?
9. In what ways does Spenser present a theory (or multiple theories) of sexuality? How does Spenser present the relationship of erotic passions to politics? Alternately, you might consider the relationship of erotic passions to language, from speech in general to artfully arranged language and poetic genres. What do language games tell us about love?
