Glauce’s “Foolhardy Wit” and the Revision of Romance in The Faerie Queene

Abstract

Britomart's old nurse Glauce is introduced in The Faerie Queene Book III as a stock figure who nonetheless transcends her low generic origins through comic improvisation and transformation. Initially a figure of fun who provokes Merlin to smile, the humble nurse becomes invested with the powers of a Sidneyan poet to teach and inspire; in her application of generic frames to the interpretation of experience, she is both a product and practitioner of genera mista. Britomart is motivated to pursue her chivalric career through Glauce's pragmatic narrative interventions. Through a comparison of the earthy materialist Glauce with Britomart's other primary mentor, the prophetic Merlin, we may see how Spenser's comic impulse informs his revisionist treatment of the romance itself. Glauce is a low comic figure by definition, in all respects without learned or textual authority. Her literal adoption of chivalric identity as she steals Angela's armor for Britomart exemplifies her violations of decorum with respect to class, gender, and even genre. As squire, Glauce achieves genuine heroic stature in Book IV, as her poetic interventions help to "upknit" the relationship of Artegall and Britomart.

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