Spectacular Staring: Spenser with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Abstract

In the following essay, I read The Faerie Queene alongside disability theorist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Staring: How We Look. There is much to stare at in The Faerie Queene, but here I pay attention to scenes of spectacular bodily violence. I draw a connection between the poem’s fascination with bodily violence and the growing field of anatomy in late sixteenth-century England, which used staring to gather and create knowledge. Using examples from Books I, II, and III, I explore different kinds of staring at spectacular violence in The Faerie Queene to uncover the poem’s ethics of staring.