“Pricking on the plaine”: Spenser's Intertextual Beginnings and Endings
“Pricking on the plaine”: Spenser's Intertextual Beginnings and Endings
The opening line “A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine” in the first canto of the first Book of The Faerie Queene introduces the Chaucerian intertext and does so problematically. The problem in Spenser's first line centers on the word “pricking,” which has the perfectly straightforward and innocent meaning, to spurge or urge a horse. The word “pricking” is already conspicuous as the first verbal action in the opening line of Spenser's story, which occurs in a context designed to render its meaning specifically problematical. It causes some logical distraction and besides being narratively incongruous, the word “pricking” has a resonance and politely a doubleness of signification that some words simply lack. The greatest numbers of forms of the word “prick” occur in Spenser's second and fourth Books, and it is reasonable that they should do so.
Keywords: The Faerie Queene, Spenser, pricking, prick, Chaucerian intertext
Fordham Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
