Spenser's Submarine Creation

Abstract Spenser's use of aquatic monsters in his imagery is perhaps influenced by observation, but surely also by his reading of Gessner's Historia Animalium (Zurich 1551-87). He uses images of sea monsters to expres a stage of emergent creation as yet incomplete and terrifying. These images can be linked vertically with images of the fish of the fertile waters and the fruitfulness of the lands they water, to suggest a universal harmony, in cosmological, psychological and even political terms.