ABSTRACT
Patricia Parker combines the cultural analysis of new historicism with the gender analysis of feminism. Although Greenblatt argues that Guyon's reaction against the sensuality of the Bower expresses Spensers 'pledge of loving service to the royal mistress', Parker claims that Guyon's violent destruction represents an attack on Queen Elizabeth's erotic Petrarchanism. The episode of Guyon in the Bower has long been interpreted, following Milton, as the drama of an individual trial. The dynamics of this threatening female dominance and male remastery the narrative dynamism of the overpowering of the Bower's Queen is, however, already part of the sexual politics of Petrarchan lyric itself. The vulnerable, subject status of the male lover within this Petrarchan lyric structure is countered by the mastery of the poet. The narrative of the overpowering and surpassing of Acrasia uncannily resembles the narrative progression of this Lacanian family romance.
