ABSTRACT
Of the Elizabethan poets, the one who has been placed within a recognisable thought movement is Edmund Spenser, usually described as a Neoplatonist. This label, as formerly used, left out the Hermetic-Cabalist core which modern scholarship has revealed within Renaissance Neoplatonism, as formulated by Ficino and Pico. Notwithstanding the immense literature on Spenser, his Neoplatonism has not yet been tackled on modern lines, though much has recently been brought to light of which the older Spenser criticism never dreamed. Alastair Fowler has argued for intricate numerological patterns in The Faerie Queene, and for an astral or planetary pattern in its themes.1 Angus Fletcher has drawn attention to the Hermetic-Egyptian setting of Britomart’s vision in the Temple of Isis.2 Thus there are
movements stirring towards new solutions of Spenser’s philosophy, if one can use that word of his outlook.
