The Faerie Queene and Gender Stereotypes Banu Altay College

“The Faeire Queene” is an epic poem written by Edmund Spenser in 16th century – England Renaissance, but set in the Middle Ages because of its being a chivalric romance. Aside from religious allegories, juxtapositions, and contradictions; Spenser mentions the place of gender by giving his reader the stereotypes, meaning set of postulated ideas about specific type of somebody or something which includes race, ethnicity, religion, culture as well as gender, of that century’s women. Protagonist and antagonist, Una and Duessa, are the representations of two opposite gender stereotypes in a literary sense in the “Faerie Queene”. The writer focuses on the virgin and the whore by combining facts and his ideas about Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, who he aims actually, by giving examples from the bible.

To begin with, 16th century was the era of discoveries, inventions, explorations and great literary works. To exemplify, Leonardo da Vinci constructed a flat-water wheel, Peter Henlein invented pocket watch, Zacharias Janssen invented compound microscope, Galileo Galilei invented water thermometer, Isabella Cortese wrote a book about alchemical secrets, Thomas More wrote his ‘Utopia’… Besides, Elizabeth I was one of the most...