Spenser’s Anatomies: Allegory, Violence and Pity
Lecture by Eli Cumings
Chaired by Gareth Williams
In the works of Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), representations of starvation recur with striking persistence and unsettling precision. Reflecting on this preoccupation, some scholars have diagnosed Spenser with psychic trauma relating to the famine he witnessed while serving as secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, who had been tasked with suppressing an Irish rebellion against English rule and who employed scorched earth tactics to achieve this objective. Bearing in mind Spenser’s status as apologist for and beneficiary of colonial violence, this lecture advances an alternative account. Spenser’s depictions of starvation, Eli Cumings argues, participate in long-standing textual traditions that represented famine as a providential punishment, a just outcome of legitimate warfare, and a laudable expression of piety. In each of these contexts, starvation—often violently enforced—was presented as both consequence of and remedy for moral inadequacy. Crucially, the alleged pedagogic and spiritual value of starvation determined not only how human affliction and suffering was interpreted and responded to but also how violence itself was understood and justified.
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