Allegories of Influence: Spenser, Chaucer and Italian Romance

This essay reflects upon Renaissance writers' self-reflexive meditations on literary genealogy, by examining Edmund Spenser's allusive interrogation of his relationship to Chaucer on the one hand, and to Boiardo and Ariosto, on the other in Book IV of The Faerie Queene. Focusing on the emblematic tale of Cambell and Triamond, and its striking resolution by the introduction of Cambina, a romance enchantress in bono, it argues that Spenser strategically moves away from metaphors of patrilineal descent and erotic triangulation to re-imagine literary imitation and influence in terms of friendship, symbolized by the tetrad. In the process, it reconsiders models for describing literary originality, inheritance, canon formation, and cross-linguistic influence.