ABSTRACT

Of Spenser’s works, FQ VI was the most obviously influenced by pastoral romance. Similarities with Diana have been noted, such as the figure of the shepherd-poet who suggests the author himself, and detailed parallels between the Pastorella-Calidore episode and the main story of Perez’s continuation. Some broader concerns shared by both works are a highly conscious interest in the power of poetry, a strong sense of fortune’s operation and the fragility of happiness, an examination of the nature of nobility, and a constant awareness of the importance of ‘civill conversation,’ that is, ‘an honest commendable and vertuous kinde of living in the world’ (Guazzo ed 1925, 1:56).