There are two portions of Spenser’s Faerie Queen that are particularly productive for interpretation when placed in conversation with materiality. The first is the Garden of Adonis in Book III. In this portion, Spenser describes a model for creation that involves vegetal souls awaiting embodied forms so that they might enter life on Earth. These souls would seem to be eternal, for when their forms on earth die, they return to the garden and are replanted. And yet time itself enters the garden, using his scythe to cut down the plant souls. Though the soul seems to be immortal, as in Christian doctrine, its destruction at the hands of Time suggests that it is as material and mortal as Lucretius had argued centuries before.

The second set of cantos that are particularly interesting are the two Mutabilitie Cantos that were published posthumously. In these cantos, Mutabilitie climbs up to the Gods and claims her birthright as a descendent of the Titans who were dispossessed by Jove. The gods, a bit freaked out by her presence and demands, decide to allow Nature to decide the case. In a legal setting then, Mutabilitie argues that her presence is much more significant to the lives of people than Jove’s dictatorial power and she therefore deserves her due. Nature ultimately acknowledges her significance notes that the change she creates is cyclical and all things return ultimately to their original state.

In both of these instances, Spenser seems to be working out the role of chance and the mortality of the immaterial. The Mutabilitie Cantos are significant because they suggest a model of a universe held in balance, for now, by Nature, not Jove. This privileging of the natural word also decenters people and offers a kind of agency to the materials of the world.

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