ABSTRACT
In Book V of The Faerie Queene, when Artegall comes upon the sight of Sir Turpine being “reuiled, and reproched” and about to be hanged by “a troupe of women warlike dight / With weapons in their hands, as ready for to fight” he sends forth Talus, who routs and disperses them “and sent them home to tell a piteous tale / Of their vaine prowesse, turned to their proper bale” (V. iv. 23, 21, 24).1 The powerful Amazonian warrior nation is reduced to a community of domestic storytellers, and their condition as such is noteworthy: women tell stories in defeat and of their defeat, and they do so not in the more public arenas of the court and the battlefield, but at “home.”
