Calvin on Divine Authority and Spenser's Mutabilitie Cantos

Abstract

Abstract: Despite the failure of Mutabilitie's appeal against Jove, she remains for some recent critics an admirable figure, and the Cantos remain unresolved. But in the light of Calvin's treatment of civil government the Mutabilitie Cantos cohere as a poetic adumbration of what Calvin prescribed as obedience to the "powers that be"; powers, however wicked, requiring the obedience due to God. Spenser echoes the vocabulary of Calvin's biblical sources, while insisting on the principle of delegation which links mortal magistrates to God. God is figured as Nature; Creation is designed to inspire faith.