The ‘Antique Guize’: Persia in the Faerie Queen

As part of a larger project investigating the figurations of Persia in Renaissance English literature, this essay traces the matter of Persia in The Faerie Queene and attempts to address some of the issues that compound any reading of the matter of the East in the light of Edward Said’s notion of orientalist discourse. I suggest that whereas Persia figures as an imperial realm of pomp and glory in The Faerie Queene, the representation of Islam is adversarial in character. The paper addresses how and why this is so.

Persia, Spenser, The Faerie Queene, representation, orientalist discourse, Renaissance English literature