The "antique guize": Persia in the Faerie Queene

Abstract

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 pompand glory in The Faerie Queene, the representation of Islam is adversarial in character. The paper addresses how and why it is so. © 2005 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.