The Spenser Review requests proposals for the upcoming issue 56.3 on the topic of Spenser and the Weather:

Just before Una and the Redcrosse Knight meet the monster Errour, they run into some nasty weather. “The day with cloudes was suddeine ouercast,” we hear, “And angry Ioue an hideous storme of raine / Did poure into his Lemans lap so fast, / That euery wight to shrowd it did constrain” (I.i.6). Fleeing the storm and following their “pleasure,” the protagonists of Book I find themselves lost in the forest, the guiding stars obscured by the canopy and the clouds. They do not wander long before their own vagrancy confronts them in the form of the monster Errour—perhaps the first and most indelible example of how landscape in The Faerie Queene evolves, as Harry Berger, Jr. wrote so memorably, from the projection of inscape.  

But what about that storm? Where did it come from, and what does it mean? What kind of moral and mortal peril might it represent? Why should it take the form of the “angry” father-god, in contrast to Errour’s monstrous femininity? Speaking more broadly: what can we say about the weather in Spenser? Papers might focus on such instances as the eternal Spring of the Bower, the earthquake in Busyrane’s palace, Britomart's tempestuous sea, or Nature’s volatile forecast. Papers might also reflect on how we, and Spenser, define "weather" and consider the relationships between the categories of weather, climate, landscape, nature, and disaster. Are these local events? Or parts of a larger pattern? Does The Faerie Queene have a climate? And is that climate changing? Papers might also consider other works, not least the Shepheardes Calender. What happens when the pastoral migrates from the balmy mediterranean to an English landscape? Abstracts of no more than 250 words requested by September 20f or essay drafts of approximately 2000 words due November 1. In keeping with past practice, The Spenser Review welcomes submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers. Abstracts can be sent directly to editors Kasey Evans (ksevans@northwestern.edu), Claire Falck (falck@rowan.edu), and Margo Kolenda-Mason (mkolendamason@uca.edu).