Sanchez, Melissa E. “White chivalry in The Faerie Queene.” Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/white-chivalry-in-the-faerie-queene. [Date accessed].
White chivalry in The Faerie Queene
White knights and the whiteness of knights
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene sought "to fashion a gentleman or noble person" through the instructive device of allegory. The knights of the story who embody Christian virtues like chastity, justice, and temperance must prevail over enemies like lust, perversion, and excess. Throughout the poem, these negative qualities are personified as blackened pagan, Islamic, or Indigenous characters. Three centuries later, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation used the same chivalric allegory to bolster the political message of white supremacy in the Reformation era. Reading allegory as a political structure reveals how chivalric logic is still shaping national rhetoric about immigration, gender, race, and belonging.
Further learning
Religion, race, and sexuality
This graduate seminar examines how religion, race, sexuality, and gender have been mutually constituted across early modern, modern, and contemporary literature and thought. Through comparative readings and student-led presentations, participants analyze the theological and political forces that shape identity, difference, and hierarchy.
Recommended
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Spenser and his racializing influences
Comparing episodes from The Faerie Queene with episodes from the works that inspired Spenser, in particular excerpts from Ariosto’s and Tasso’s works, is a productive way to draw attention to how racialization travels and mutates across national traditions.
The lap of whiteness in The Squire's Tale
In Chaucer's The Squire's Tale, a woman spreads her skirt to catch a falling falcon, all while setting a quiet lesson about whiteness in motion. Wan-Chuan Kao dives into Chaucer's imagery to show how empathy can be a lens for understanding and a tool of racialization.
