Improvisational Fashioning

Britomart is both Spenser's fictional creation and the poet's counterpart. This connection is emphasized when we see Britomart engaged in fiction-making herself. She lies to the Redcrosse Knight about her childhood so she can provoke talk about Artegall without betraying her own interest:

Faire Sir, I let you weete, that from the howre
    I taken was from nourses tender pap,
    I haue beene trained vp in warlike stowre,
    To tossen speare and shield, and to affrap
    The warlike ryder to his most mishap;
    Sithence I loathed haue my life to lead,
    As Ladies wont, in pleasures wanton lap,
    To finger the fine needle and nyce thread;
Me leuer were with point of foemans speare be dead.

All my delight on deedes of armes is set,
    To hunt out perils and aduentures hard,
    By sea, by land, where so they may be met,
    Onely for honour and for high regard,
    Without respect of richesse or reward.
    For such intent into these parts I came,
    Withouten compasse, or withouten card,
    Far fro my natiue soyle, that is by name
The greater Britaine , here to seeke for prayse and fame.
                                                                                       (3.2.6–7)

Britomart appropriates the childhoods of the epic characters Camilla and Clorinda, just as Spenser adapts his literary predecessors Virgil and Tasso. In the same canto, we see another version of Britomart's early years in an extended flashback that parodies the enfances of her literary precursors. Spenser emphasizes the gendered nature of Britomart's growing up, in an ironic commentary on Virgil and Tasso. Virgil's Camilla is given a symbolic, male-identified rebirth when she is bound to her father's spear and cast across the river to safety (Aeneid 11.544–566).^[27] In contrast, Britomart's formative experience carries connotations of menarche:^[28]

Sithens it hath infixed faster hold
    Within my bleeding bowels, and so sore
    Now ranckleth in this same fraile fleshly mould,
    That all mine entrailes flow with poysnous gore,
    And th'vlcer groweth daily more and more;
    Ne can my running sore find remedie,
    Other then my hard fortune to deplore,
                                                            (3.2.39.1–7)

The novel emphasis on the fact of specifically female physiology calls attention to the literariness of literary genealogy. Having accentuated the discrepancy between the literary formation of Britomart as she inherits traits from her literary predecessors and the biological development of a young woman as she achieves maturity, Spenser focuses on the constructedness of his fictional character. By introducing menarche to the literary tradition of the Martial Maid, Spenser calls attention to his rewriting of that tradition in a strategy of emphasizing the feminine. Whereas Virgil and Tasso describe the extraordinary infant diet and childhood training program of their virago to account for her military prowess, Spenser accounts for Britomart's chivalric vocation in a conspicuously improbable piece of

bricotage .^[29] Although magical visions enframe Britomart's career as a Martial Maid—her vision of Artegall in Merlin's mirror and Merlin's prophecy of their dynastic future represent termini ad quem and a quo—the arrangements Glauce and Britomart make in order to bring the prophesied marriage to pass are, if anything, stranger because they purport to be practical. Britomart's father is conveniently away at a war with a pair of paynim brothers, so Britomart and Glauce can leave the castle as they please. A band of Britons has happened a few days before to capture a hoard of Saxon goods, among which there happily chances to be a suit of ladies' armor, previously belonging to the Saxon queen Angela. Since Britomart is a big, healthy girl, she can simply disguise herself as a knight. As Glauce assures her: "Ne ought ye want, but skill, which practize small / Will bring, and shortly make you a mayd Martiall" (3.3.53.8–9). The string of coincidences suggests that Britomart and Glauce are not the only ones willing to make things up as they go along. Spenser emphasizes improvisation as a principle both of individual self-fashioning and of narrative.^[30] Unlike Redcrosse or Guyon, Britomart is not assigned a quest by Gloriana. She puts on armor as a pragmatic means of achieving her desire, much as Spenser adapts the form of quest romance in Book III as a way of reflecting on his own art and on the relationship of art to desire.