The theme of my paper centres around feminine reproduction and motherhood. I will be comparing the impotence of Edmund Spenser’s Bower of Bliss, with the negative portrayals of Kaylb in “The Seven Champions of Christendom” and Cecropia of “The New Arcadia”. All three texts have a problem with reproduction, referring to women as the problem. I will be looking at why Kalyb and Cecropia are portrayed as the enemy, as women who need to be destroyed. I will be examining if they are a reflection of paganism or Catholicism. I will also examine if motherhood holds power and therefore is somehow unnatural for a woman. I will then be examining whether Spenser’s Bower of Bliss is a reaction to fertility.

Brumbaugh, Barbara. “Cecropia and the Church of Antichrist in Sir Philip
Sidney’s New Arcadia” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 38.1 (1998): 19-43. 8 July 2008.

The article suggests that Cecropia is a representative of the Roman Church due to several personal traits, such as pomp, arrogance and comparing herself to an almost god. Cecropia’s plotting against the royal Arcadian family, parallels the Catholic Church’s plots against Queen Elizabeth, Brumbaugh suggests. Cecropia’s name further supports the papal argument, as King Cecrop’s lower body was a serpent, similar to Edmund Spenser’s Errour, another Catholic literary symbol.

Francus, Marilyn. “The Monstrous Mother: Reproductive Anxiety in Swift and
Pope” ELH 61. 4 (1994): 829-851. 8 July 2008.

Marilyn Francus examines the common trope in the West of portraying mothers/fertility as monstrous. Francus suggests this monstrosity is due to Christian influence, which sees the act of reproduction as an invocation of Eve’s fall. The characters present in “The Faerie Queen”, “Paradise Lost”, “Battle of the Books” and “Dunciad” are not sexually and social passive and this is where their monstrosity stems from. It is the exclusion of masculinity, Francus argues, that the authors find problematic.

Lei, Bi-Qi Beatrice. “Relational Antifeminism in Sidney's Arcadia”
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 41.1 (2001): 25-48 7 July
2008

Bi-Qi Beatrice Lei finds most of the misogyny, both polemical and personified, in “The New Arcadia” are quickly corrected or renounced, yet she does not deny that there is hostility towards women, present in the text. It is a subtle hostility and based on women as a collective, rather than a fault in the individual. Sidney asserts that distance from women and homosociality is the only way to retain masculinity. The love for male friends and other male relations is portrayed as positive versus the love of females, which is full of tension. Cecropia represents the ultimate misogynist, yet it is patriarchal power that turns her into the enemy.

Grossberg, Benjamin Scott. “Politics and Shifting Desire in Sidney’s “New
Arcadia” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 42.1, (2002): 63-83. 7 July 2008.

Benjamin Scott Grossman emphasizes the importance Sidney puts on homosociality and traces the shift from the ideal to reality, using the additions in “The New Arcadia”, as evidence. Grossberg suggests that there is an underlying homoerotic love, which is hidden under the intention of love for women, such as Musidorus and Pyrocles reunion, where Musidorus thinks Pyrocles is a woman. Heterodesire is shown continuously to be problematic, especially as it poses a threat to the homosocial relationships.