Figuring Justice: Imperial Ideology and the Discourse of Colonialism in Book V of <i>The Faerie Queene</i> and <i>A View of the Present State of Ireland</i>

Edmund Spenser is a vocal spokesman for the colonization of Ireland. In A View of the Present State of Ireland, he provides one of the most sustained imperialist articulations in Elizabethan England. And in Book V of The Faerie Queene, he promulgates a vision of justice that is necessary for containing individual and social dissent, as well as for consolidating monarchical authority. Spenser wants a similar form of relentless justice applied to controlling the recalcitrant Irish, but discovers that his implacable imperialist policy stands in direct opposition to Queen Elizabeth’s own.