Gendered creation: The form/matter duality of creation tradition in Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'

This study focuses on the development and evolution of the Form/Matter paradigm from the classical period to the late sixteenth century. The philosophical origins of this dualist creation model date back to two conceptual developments: the ontological realization that we come from two, not one; and the cosmological description of two-world dualism. In historical times, the paradigm is recorded most succinctly in Plato's Timaeus in which Plato postulates an "ideal world" underlying the materiality and meaning of the perceived physical world. Plato preserves the ontological origins of the paradigm when he metaphorically "genders" the mechanical actants of cosmological creation. Chapter One focuses on the evolution of the paradigm during the classical period. The sources which record the paradigm during this period are primarily philosophical and apply the paradigm to cosmological descriptions.;Chapter Two explores the "allegorization" of the paradigm resulting from its activation into narrative structures. During the medieval period, the creative duals, form and matter, evolve into the allegorical literary figures Genius and Nature who embody their creative potentials. Although these figures date back to classical personifications, it is in the twelfth century works of Alan of Lille and Bernardus Silvestris that the allegorization of these figures and the paradigm they represent reach full bloom as cosmological description.;The final chapter considers Spenser's use of the paradigm as a cosmological, ontological and epistemological model in his dynastic epic The Faerie Queene. By Spenser's time the paradigm had become a common concept and was no longer limited to philosophical literary works. Authors in the late medieval to the early modern period emphasized the paradigm's ontological and epistemological applications over its use as cosmological description. Significantly, Spenser's epic retains the traditional literary applications of the paradigm while challenging its usefulness as a cosmological model in the early modern period.