The Serpentine Idol: Worme Imagery in Book I of Spenser's Faerie Queene and John Donne's Funeral Sermons

Abstract

In this Thesis, I will not speculate about what English literature would have looked like if Donne's poem had superceded The Faerie Queene, but I will investigate the topic of immediacy through an analysis of the worme imagery in Book I of The Faerie Queen and in Donne's funeral sermons. In the lines I have just quoted, Carey uses the term "immediacy" to express the contrast between Donne's writings and the imaginary aura of Spenser's poem, but I will use the term in a more temporal and spatial sense. In comparison with Donne's sermons, Spenser's poem exhibits a greater sense of deferral and distance. That is, the full manifestation or concretization of his message tends to recede further and further, deeper and deeper into the poem, and his stylized and allegorized writing tends to distance the reality of the Redcrosse Knight from the everyday world of the audience. By "worme imagery," I mean any imagery of worms, maggots, snakes, serpents, or dragons. [From Introduction]