Interpretation and Theology in Spenser.

In Interpretation and Theology in Spenser, Darryl Gless brings new historicist perspectives to a study of the theological environment of Book One of The Faerie Queene. Rather than cobbling together some notion of Spenser's theological loyalties and intentions, Gless focuses on the possibilities of readerly reception. For example, he asks: based on an assessment of, to borrow Greenblatt's phrase, the "social energy" of theological issues, how might a contemporary reader have understood the poet's work? Gless does for theology what Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra, Louis Montrose, and others have been doing for history - questioning its status as a stable system able to confer stability on the literary text. Gless opens his text accusing "Spenser specialists and Renaissance scholars generally" of treating documentary material of religious subject matter "as if their meanings were easily available, unambiguous, and therefore unproblematically applicable to literary interpretation" (1). As a corrective, the introduction and first chapter set out to explore the "complexity, occasional indeterminacy, and not infrequent self-contradiction of theological doctrines themselves" (2). Contributing nicely to Gless's argument is a skillful deployment of some of the theories of reception articulated by Wolfgang Iser and E.H. Gombrich. Gless uses Gombrich's notions of "the beholder's share" and the "etc. principle" particularly well to point up the way in which readers construct meaning and consistency rather than discover it.

Gless builds on the work of "revisionist" theological historians such as Christopher Haigh and Patrick Collinson, who have begun to question the supposed ease with which the English were converted from Roman Catholic and Pelagian systems to a uniform Protestant orthodoxy. Elizabethan theology is characterized by "eclecticism" (13), and this various nature thwarts attempts to reduce the allegory of The Faerie Queene to simple theological statements. Gless finds in the poem, rather than the dissemination of Protestant dogma, "invitations to engage in active intellectual exercise" (24).

To do this, however, Gless must posit notions of Renaissance readers, and it is here that he is less convincing. I have no trouble with his imagining a reader "interested in theology as well as in poetry like The Faerie Queene" (18), but he also suggests that this reader would "feel less of the religious historian's need to minimize inconsistency and uncertainties in order to classify and clarify" (18). Does such a reader exist? If the principles of Iser and Gombrich that Gless uses against Spenser critics and theological historians are persuasive, it is not clear why the Renaissance reader should feel any less the productive desire to discover/create meaning. Though Gless does allow for multiple responses to Spenserian representation, his fictional discerning reader, who provides the grounding of Gless's own excellent commentary on The Faerie Queene, is often too ideal.

Chapters two to six work through Book one in linear fashion, evaluating textual moments in terms of the various definitions of holiness, and with regard to contemporary issues of faith, good works and grace. Particularly strong is Gless's reading of Arthur, the character traditionally perceived to embody the perfected virtues of each book. Gless reveals the limitations of Arthur's heroism and argues that these limitations are consistent with perspectives made available in the Reformed theology: "though he acts as an instrument of grace in that combat [with Orgoglio], at viii.45 he discredits himself as an embodiment of it, or even as theological truth's spokesman. He commends force and reason to a knight [Red Cross] who has been victimized by his efforts to employ force and reason" (140). Arthur, finally, is not grace, but one of the "corrupting channels" (140) through which grace operates.

Chapter seven extends some of the implications of the previous readings into the other books of The Faerie Queene, and, while Gless offers strong readings of the Phedon and Mercilla episodes, the chapter tries to do too much too quickly. But even in his haste, Gless asks provocative questions and vividly suggests ways in which interpretations are determined by expectations and a certain "hermeneutic circularity" (177).

The central assertion of Gless's text is that interpretation remains provisional. His readings do not attempt to displace the many admirable theological investigations undertaken by such scholars as Kaske, Tuve, Hume, and others; they suggest instead that the "differing possibilities made available by the variation within Elizabethan Protestant theology allow for differing perceptions to arise from the same data" (169). Though Interpretation and Theology in Spenser may cast some doubt on Gless's ability to come up with an intriguing title, the book makes abundantly evident his skill at producing clear, engaging, and insightful commentary.

DAVID KINAHAN University of Western Ontario