“The False Florimell and Nonhuman Consent.”
ResearchPaper
EnglishJeffrey B. Griswold
Paper argues for the importance of species difference to the political thought of the English Renaissance. This essay argues that Edmund Spenser juxtaposes Florimell and the false Florimell in The Faerie Queene to think about how the latter’s autonomy illuminates the limitations of the human political subject. Although we might expect the automaton to exhibit less agency than her human archetype, the false Florimell has more control over her sexual life. Spenser uses the automaton to interrogate the metaphor of sexual consent as political consent, showing the ill-fit between the vehicle and the tenor in this key trope of political philosophy.“The False Florimel…Faculty62931The Spencer Review