Spenser’s Dragon and the Law

Abstract

This essay claims that the dragon curbing the liberty of the citizens of Eden in Book I of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is the last in a series of representations of the Law of God. Such a depiction of the Law, I argue, can be traced to Martin Luther’s theology, and to his Lectures on Galatians in particular, where he claims that the Law is the principal weapon of “that ‘great dragon, the ancient serpent, the devil, the deceiver of the whole world, who accuses our brethren day and night before God’ (Rev. 12:9–10).”1 Research for this essay was funded in part by the 2003 NEH Summer Seminar on Literature of the English Reformation at Ohio State University.

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