Style, Objects, and Heroic Values in Early Modern Epic

This essay offers a revaluation of the heroic and imperial values of post-Virgilian early modern epic by attending to objects and the material in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596) and King James VI and I’s Lepanto (1591). It identifies a recurring attention to, and irruption of, the quotidian within early modern epic style, plot, and narratology, and formal innovation at many of epic’s most characteristic moments. In some cases, female voices and experience prove crucial, enabling critique of imperial epic from within, as well as opening vistas of alternatives to heroic values and a certain suspicion of the contemporary relevance of epic.