The private lives of trees and flowers
pp. 117-139
in: Paul Cefalu, Gary Kuchar, Bryan Reynolds (eds), The return of theory in early modern English studies II, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
A mere handful of stanzas into Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), Redcrosse Knight, Una, and the dwarf that lags behind them enter a "shadie groue ... Whose lof tie trees yclad with sommers pride, / Did spred so broad, that heauens light did hide."1 What imme- diately follows is the first epic catalogue of the poem, with its striking meditation on trees: