A Literal Reading of Spenser’s Book of Holinesse

Spenser's Book of Holinesse is frequently cited by scholars as holding the key to all else that happens in The Faerie Queene, but no one has ever been able to exactly define what is going on in that book. William Heise believes this is because Spenser was writing for a Reformation audience whose ideals have been replaced in the modern day by the Enlightenment’s more scientific approach to experience. This causes modern critics to translate Spenser’s naïve allegorical poetry into more precise scientific terms. Noting that modern science was built on the assumptions of Descartes, who brought the mind into contact with nature without any break in experience but who lived in the century after the death of the poet, Heise substitutes the thought of Augustine, a thinker whose thought posited a break in experience that only faith could overcome. Reading the first book of The Faerie Queene through the lens of Augustine, Heise is able to solve problems that have baffled more scientific critics.