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SAGGI

Textual Memory and the Problem

of Coherence in Edmund Spenser’s

The Faerie Queene

DANIEL T. LOCHMAN

Texas State University

Abstract

Long fictional narratives with complex plots challenge readers who seek co-
herence within them, especially when narrative frames are complicated by
repetition, narrative intrusions, and many other disruptive elements. This
essay focuses on Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene as an early modern
narrative that employs textual memory as one form of experientiality. Textual
memory is cued by words, se ings, and experiential episodes that invite em-
bodied noetic, affective, and kinetic response. Textual memories may be evoked
intratextually through repetition and heightened emotional valence, and they
may persist over long narrative diversions of interlaced sub-narratives and
differences such as varied focalization and action. As instances of distributed
cognition, textual memories are embodied and enactive. They may extend be-
yond one text to others, forming intertextual networks. Such intertextuality
can be seen in memorial experiences in The Faerie Queene and early modern
texts and translations of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Tasso’s Geru-
salemme liberata.

Keywords: The Faerie Queene; textual memory; textual coherence; nar-
rative; distributed cognition.