Scorned Little Creatures?: Insects and Genre in Complaints (1591)

This chapter looks at Spenser’s animal writing through two related lenses. In the first place, it considers animal hermeneutics, using the influential work of Jill Mann to suggest the continuing vitality of medieval models of signification in the foxes and badgers of The Ruines of Time. Secondly, it looks in detail at the neglected Visions of the Worlds Vanitie sequence (also from Complaints) to suggest further connections with medieval genres in the shape of the bestiary. However, as the essay suggests, the detail of these poems works against the simplified moralizing they seem to evoke in favour of the destabilization of conventional hierarchies in ways which remain surprisingly unpredictable.