ABSTRACT
According to James Nohrnberg, that Arthur and Gloriana embody the organizing principles of The Faerie Queene: "like the magnified but unfulfilled Arthur, the queen is allegorically concealed in the present poem, and allegorically revealed in it. Arthur and Gloriana belong to the poem's framework and partly express the poem' theory". Increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity would likely coincide with a greater awareness of the environment and its "systems of public signification", which had to be negotiated if self-fashioning was to take place. It is the false Florimell, not "public opinion", who is ultimately discovered to be "evanescent". Ironically, the oblivion Belphoebe describes is epitomized by Spenser's Arthur and Gloriana, both of whom are similarly inaccessible to the allegorical world of the poem. Through the parallels offered by Arthur's and Braggadocchio's portraits, a new form of publicity is articulated in The Faerie Queene.
