ABSTRACT
Civility, and more particularly the creation of the civilised body, was intimately tied up with questions of sovereignty and its relation to the property-owning individual. In English ideology, the creation of civil society was premised on the destruction of forms of lordship which cut into the sovereignty of a state which more and more sought to guarantee the rights of absolute property of its subjects. While agreeing that the role of the aristocracy in the state formation process is the fundamental question of Renaissance epic literature, this chapter argues that it was precisely the English upper class's participation in the state, and their martial encounter with neo-feudal magnates on the peripheries of the British Isles, that conditioned Spenser's treatment of the knights of The Fairy Queen. It emphasizes that a much fuller understanding of English identity is gained by directing the attention to the state as both court and magistrate and examines this state's activities in Elizabeth's other kingdom: Ireland.
