• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
God's Only Daughter: Spenser's Una as the Invisible Church

God's Only Daughter: Spenser's Una as the Invisible Church

Hardcover

Series: Manchester Spenser

Literary CriticismGeneral ChristianityGeneral Poetry

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0719090377
ISBN13: 9780719090370
Publisher: Manchester Univ Pr
Published: Nov 30 2013
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.70 Depth: 8.60
Language: English

In this study, Kathryn Walls challenges the standard identification of Una with the post-Reformation English Church, arguing that she is, rather, Augustine's City of God - the invisible Church, whose membership is known only to God. Una's story (its Tudor resonances notwithstanding) therefore embraces that of the Synagogue before the Incarnation as well as that of the Church in the time of Christ and thereafter. It also allegorises the redemptive process that sustains the true Church. Una is fallible in canto I. Subsequently, however, she comes to embody divine perfection. Her transformation depends upon the intervention of the lion as Christ.

Convinced of the consistency and coherence of Spenser's allegory, Walls offers fresh interpretations of Abessa (as Synagoga), of the fauns and satyrs (the Gentiles), and of Una's dwarf (adiaphoric forms of worship). She also reinterprets Spenser's marriage metaphor, clarifying the significance of Red Cross as Una's spouse in the final canto.

Also in

Literary Criticism