“Soveraigne place”: Spenser with Henri Lefebvre

Abstract

Location is one of the primary determinants of “meaning” in The Faerie Queene, if not the primary determinant. The present essay uses a Lefebvrian lens to illustrate the tensions inherent in Spenser’s attempt to generate spaces intended both to “mirror” and re-“fashion” the various “realms” Queen Elizabeth is invited to “see” in fairyland and to analyze what Lefebvre identifies as the resulting “antagonism” between “a knowledge which serves power and a form of knowing which refuses to acknowledge power.” While such an approach helps to reveal the conflicted nature of Spenserian space and the sort of social “discipline” its production entails, the emergent analogy between the two authors allows us to read Lefebvre’s own, ultimately frustrated, attempt to articulate “a unified theory of space” as a sort of Marxist “allegory” that repeatedly destabilizes its own premises.