Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires

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

Presents an investigation of sexual ideology in "The Faerie Queene", combining theoretical advances in feminist scholarship and research on Elizabethan accounts of women with an examination of the representations of female sexuality. This work points to the poem's pervasive emphasis on locating the roots of "virtue" in "manliness."

" . . . 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