The Uses of Spenser for Self-Definition
"The destruction of Acrasia's Bower tests in a remarkably searching way
our attitudes toward pleasure, sexuality, the body; tests too our sense
of the relation of physical pleasure to the pleasure of aesthetic images
and the relation of both of these to what Guyon calls the 'excellence' of
man's creation. By 'tests' I do not mean that the work examines us to
see if we know the right answer -- the poetry of the Faerie Queene,
as Paul Alpers has demonstrated, continually invites us to trust our own
experience of its rich surface -- rather, this experience tends to reveal
or define important aspects of ourselves" (Greenblatt 170).
volume 2, issue 2
SN 173
