6 - Defended Spaces, Fast Spaces, Proper Spaces

Summary

In my previous chapter I investigated the material (and ideological) implications of the construction and destruction of fortified buildings at the end of the sixteenth century, and also looked at some projects for building such fortifications. In doing so, I situated The Faerie Queene in a context that was both European and specifically Irish, and also teased out the implications of the process by which this small defended space could be made to stand allegorically for the body, and the self. I now want to examine the relation between the production of these very particular, individual spaces, and the ideas and strategies that were developed for the defence of larger areas in Ireland. As well as increasing the scope of my context, because of the wider spaces involved, this will also alter the range of my analysis of the poem. For I suggested in the previous chapter that Books 5 and 6 of The Faerie Queene could be read – through an analysis of the instances when they depict fortifications and castles, and the knights' adventures in and around them – in relation to an account of an ideal project and the failure and compromise of the way that it was implemented. I now want to consider whether, by examining a dialectical relationship between particular defended buildings and the defence of larger spaces, a reading of the poem can be made that suggests a coherence between various separate episodes.