The Review of English Studies Advance Access originally published online on May 14, 2008
The Review of English Studies 2009 60(243):34-60; doi:10.1093/res/hgn062
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press 2008; all rights reserved
The Well-Schooled Wrestler: Athletics and Rhetoric in The Faerie Queene, Book II
St Andrews University
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Abstract |
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It is generally accepted that the presence of wrestling in Book II of Spenser's The Faerie Queene reinforces the ‘theme of self-mastery’ crucial to the Legend of Temperance. Not surprisingly in a poem designed to ‘fashion a gentleman’, Guyon, the titular knight of Book II, may be distinguished from other combatants in the poem as an educated and courteous wrestler, the definitions for which Spenser could readily have accessed in recommendations for this sport made in Castiglione's The Courtier and Elyot's The boke named the Governour. These definitions, however, fall short in providing a link between wrestling and the virtue it is called upon to figure. Such a connection, I argue, presents itself in Positions, a work of pedagogical reform written by Spenser's schoolmaster, which draws upon patristic and rhetorical traditions that associate educated wrestlers not only with temperance, but also with the hand gestures appropriate to an orator. So, although Homer, Lucan and Ariosto may all be present in this Book's wrestling matches, so too are Cicero, Quintilian and Clement of Alexandria; this latter section of sources encourages a consideration of Spenser's gestures, and offers a hitherto unexplored link between The Faerie Queene and the author's education at Merchant Taylors’ School.