My Research

My PhD research focuses on the textual images that Edmund Spenser has created for his female villains in his poem, The Faerie Queene.

Spenser constructs a distinct visual schema of 'otherness' through his villainous female characters. This stands in stark, calculated contrast to his ideal feminine figures. Far from being arbitrary poetic embellishments, these repeated images of the non-ideal female serve a pedagogical imperative. They are systematically designed to educate the noblemen of England, fashioning them in virtuous discipline by externalising physical, racial, and ideological threats to the emerging English self