Abstract
Abstract
This chapter, which concludes the book, demonstrates the broader literary significance and applications of the book’s concluding chapters by providing a new account of Hercules and the workings of mythology more generally in Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Focusing first on Arthur’s fight with Maleger in Book 2 and its Virgilian and Herculean associations, and then on Artegall and Talus’ encounter with the Giant with the Scales in Book 5, the chapter argues that allusions to Hercules take place through objects and topographical settings in the poem, especially stone-throwing. These topographical settings serve as intertextual markers, through which a variety of sometimes contradictory resources are introduced into particular moments in the poem: they are both literal and literary loci. The chapter proposes that topographical spaces and places are sites of mythological, literary, temporal, and generic accumulation in early modern texts.