SOURCE: Panja, Shormishtha. “A Self-Reflexive Parable of Narration: The Faerie Queene VI.” Journal of Narrative Technique 15, no. 3 (fall 1985): 277-88.

In the following essay, Panja applies structuralist and poststructuralist critical theories to an analysis of Spenser's narrative in Book VI of The Faerie Queene, emphasizing how the text of the poem comments on itself and on the nature of storytelling.

The charm of applying structuralist and post-structuralist narratology to a “classic” text like Spenser's The Faerie Queene lies not only in the confidence of sounding modish and polemical; today scholars and critics have the freedom to analyze certain “occurences” in the text and admit that they do not have to be wound into a watertight, perfectly closed argument. Critics can present it “like it is” and admit that they are occasionally baffled. Not only that, they can thereby avoid the pitfall of an easy and fallacious attribution of excessive...