Overview

In this study, Kathryn Walls challenges the standard identification of Una with the post-Reformation English Church, arguing that she is, rather, Augustine's City of God - the invisible Church, whose membership is known only to God. Una's story (its Tudor resonances notwithstanding) therefore embraces that of the Synagogue before the Incarnation as well as that of the Church in the time of Christ and thereafter. It also allegorises the redemptive process that sustains the true Church. Una is fallible in canto I. Subsequently, however, she comes to embody divine perfection. Her transformation depends upon the intervention of the lion as Christ. Convinced of the consistency and coherence of Spenser's allegory, Walls offers fresh interpretations of Abessa (as Synagoga), of the fauns and satyrs (the Gentiles), and of Una's dwarf (adiaphoric forms of worship). She also reinterprets Spenser's marriage metaphor, clarifying the significance of Red Cross as Una's spouse in the final canto. -- .

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Kathryn Walls is interested in the oneness of religion in Spenser, exemplified in the figure of Una. God's Only Daughter is a model of a sustained, close, critical reading of a single book and, indeed, a single figure in The Faerie Queene in the tradition of T. K. Dunseath's account of book 5. Ironically, A. C. Hamilton, who inspired Walls's work, once likened such single-book studies of The Faerie Queene to the Hindustani fable of the six blind men quarrelling over the description of an elephant. God's Only Daughter is more like an exquisitely carved two inches of ivory. Its strengths lie precisely in the painstaking and patient unpacking of book 1 through an immensely learned discussion of sixteenth-century theology and in particular the invisible church as conceived in Calvinism. -- Willy Maley. Winter 2014 Walls's sophisticated exploration of the many cultural and literary infratexts should be required reading for Spenser scholars or graduate students pursuing an interest in this remarkable and important early modern poet. The work evinces a refreshing independence of inquiry that is unafraid to follow the evidence wherever it leads. -- Roger Stritmatter. [God's Only Daughter] persuasively demonstrates that reading Una alongside contemporary Protestant thought about the invisible church greatly enriches her role in the poem. Walls's tightly-focused book establishes that Una's travails deserve as much careful attention as those of the knight(s) who seeks her. -- Susannah Brietz Monta. 'The reader of God's Only Daughter will come away better informed about sixteenth-century Calvinism.' -- Bart Van Es.

'The reader of God's Only Daughter will come away better informed about sixteenth-century Calvinism.' -- Times Literary Supplement.

Kathryn Walls is interested in the oneness of religion in Spenser, exemplified in the figure of Una. God's Only Daughter is a model of a sustained, close, critical reading of a single book and, indeed, a single figure in The Faerie Queene in the tradition of T. K. Dunseath's account of book 5. Ironically, A. C. Hamilton, who inspired Walls's work, once likened such single-book studies of The Faerie Queene to the Hindustani fable of the six blind men quarrelling over the description of an elephant. God's Only Daughter is more like an exquisitely carved two inches of ivory. Its strengths lie precisely in the painstaking and patient unpacking of book 1 through an immensely learned discussion of sixteenth-century theology and in particular the invisible church as conceived in Calvinism. Walls's sophisticated exploration of the many cultural and literary infratexts should be required reading for Spenser scholars or graduate students pursuing an interest in this remarkable and important early modern poet. The work evinces a refreshing independence of inquiry that is unafraid to follow the evidence wherever it leads. [God's Only Daughter] persuasively demonstrates that reading Una alongside contemporary Protestant thought about the invisible church greatly enriches her role in the poem. Walls's tightly-focused book establishes that Una's travails deserve as much careful attention as those of the knight(s) who seeks her. 'The reader of God's Only Daughter will come away better informed about sixteenth-century Calvinism.' -- .

Author Information

Kathryn Walls is Professor of English at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

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