SHEILA T. CAVANAGH is Assistant Professor of English and associated faculty in Women's Studies at Emory University.

"Cavanagh has managed to give an almost entirely new reading of [The Faerie Queene]; it is the first feminist rereading of the entire epic, and it reshapes the contours of the huge poem in often startling and remarkable ways." Maureen Quilligan, University of Pennsylvania " ... very readable, lucid, intriguing study ... " Spenser Newsletter " ... a very thoroughgoing inventory of the cruel male fantasies and nightmares imposed on ... female-gendered figures ... " Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Manliness of Virtue1. Beauties Chace: Male Responses to Women in Faeryland2. Nightmares of Desire3. The Importance of Being Fairest: Kidnapping and Courtship in Faeryland4. Fayre of face...though meane her lot: The Worth of Virtue5. Like an Enraged Cow: Britomart among the Chased and the unchasteNotesWorks CitedIndex