An Analysis of the Epic Tree Catalogue in Spensor's The Farie Queene and the Illustrative Effects of its Parody in Joyce's Ulysses

An Analysis of the Epic Tree Catalogue in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and the Illustrative Effects of its Parody in Joyce’s Ulysses

Edmund Spenser’s epic catalogue of trees in Book 1 of The Faerie Queene (1.1.69-81), an interpolation that shows that Una and Red Cross Knight have, at this early point in the epic, a “narrow preoccupation with the things of this world to the exclusion of broader concerns” (Cheney 24), has precedents in the works of Chaucer and Ovid, as well as in the works of many lesser-known classical authors such as Lucan, Statius, Claudian and Seneca (Wurtsbaugh 56). Thus Spenser, in allowing Una and Red Cross two stanzas to not “see the forest for the trees” (Cheney 27), established himself as among a tradition of epic cataloguers who date back to Homer (Monaghan 25). Within The Faerie Queene, Spenser offers other minor catalogues (including a catalogue of sea monsters in stanzas 23-24 in canto 12 of Book II) as well as a few major ones, such ...