Transforming Desire: Erotic Knowledge in Books III and IV of the Faerie Queene

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Summary: Silberman on Spenser on Love
Review: Lauren Silberman is not only a savvy critic but an informed scholar. This book is now a classic among Spenserians and it is not hard to see why: Silberman is funny (and unusually appreciative of Spenser's own humor)and also humane. She understands that Spenser's exploration of erotic relations in Books 3 and 4 of The Faerie Queene is not designed simply to demonstrate a truth expressible in a sermon or parental exhortation to behave oneself but rather to test, to interrogate, to analyze, to comment with some irony on human sexual behavior and the desires that impel it. What first struck me when reading this lovely book was Silberman's ingenious way of reading Spenser's early modern text in the light of some very postmodern science. Silberman doesn't mean that Spenser anticipated quantum mechanics or string theory, but she does show that what modern science has to say about "chaos" and other concepts is already figured in Spenser's sense of the world's and Amor's slipperiness. Hers is a Spenser for grownups. Anne Lake Prescott