A feminist rereading of a key work in the English Renaissance canon, Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

" . . . very readable, lucid, intriguing study . . . " —Spenser Newsletter

" . . . a very thoroughgoing inventory of the cruel male fantasies and nightmares imposed on . . . female-gendered figures . . . " —Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"Cavanagh has managed to give an almost entirely new reading of [The Faerie Queene]; it is the first feminist rereading of the entire epic, and it reshapes the contours of the huge poem in often startling and remarkable ways." —Maureen Quilligan, University of Pennsylvania