Endurance, Excess, and Embodied Readings in/of The Faerie Queene Marathon Reading and Symposium at Tampere University, 3-7 May 2024

This year’s iteration of the marathon reading will be organised in partnership with the University of Zurich and the University of Bristol. In addition to staff and students from Tampere University, the event will be attended by a group of students from Zurich as well as an international group of Spenser scholars. The marathon reading will be followed by a one-day conference on the topic of ‘Endurance, Excess, and Embodied Readings in/of The Faerie Queene’. The notion of reading pervades The Faerie Queene, where it is frequently connected to perceptual, cognitive, and physical struggles. If the ‘ample volume’ that Guyon reads in Alma’s castle exceeds the narrator’s ‘leasure’, this functions as an allegory not only of the many journeys and quests in The Faerie Queene, but also of the reader’s passage through Spenser’s monumental work. As Patricia Parker noted long ago in Inescapable Romance, The Faerie Queene continually defers the end of its spatial and textual paths. This deferral implies a serial logic in which there is always more space to traverse and always more text to read. It is therefore not surprising that the poem repeatedly presents images of endurance and bodily exhaustion: ‘After long wayes and perilous paines endur’d, / Hauing their wearie limbes to perfect plight / Restord, and sory wounds right well recured . . .’ (3.1.1.2-4). The conference will explore the parallels between the characters’ physical struggles and the reader’s embodied experience of the text, discussing different forms of endurance, excess, and embodied reading in Spenser’s monumental work. 

The event is open to all interested staff and students. Students can earn 2-3 credits points for participating in the marathon reading and the symposium (2 points for the marathon reading, 3 points for the marathon reading and the symposium). 

Participants should bring a copy of The Faerie Queene to the event. Recommended edition: Penguin Classics. 

Please e-mail johannes.riquet [at] tuni.fi to sign up for the marathon reading and/or the symposium.