“Pricking on the plaine”: Romance and Recursive Regeneration in The Faerie Queene, Book 1

Abstract:Scholars have spent considerable time grappling with the erratic sequence of events that comprise Redcrosse’s regeneration or spiritual rebirth in book 1 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. While they have recognized the ecumenical dynamics of the knight’s spiritual progression, they have not accounted for the way in which his rebirth includes pitfalls and setbacks that disrupt its order. This article turns to early modern Protestant regeneration treatises—religious works that center on the topic of rebirth— to find a discourse that characterizes regeneration as an uneven process, which includes false starts and stops along the way to salvation. Reading through the lens of that discourse, we can see how Redcrosse’s peripatetic pricking through Faeryland depicts a recursive rebirth punctuated by episodes of false regeneration that erroneously start and stop his spiritual growth. Ultimately, Spenser demonstrates romance’s compatibility with Protestant allegory by using the circuitous narrative structure of the knight’s quest to metaphorize the recursive nature of rebirth. Indeed, the haphazard movement of the knight “pricking on the plaine” deftly allegorizes the backsliding, digression, and delay associated with regeneration.