"If she was Belphoebe, then Frederica ... was Britomart ..."
Britomart figures in Edmund Spenser's knightly epic The Faerie Queene, where she is an allegorical figure of the virgin Knight of Chastity, representing English virtue - in particular, English military power - through a newly-coined etymology that associated Brit- as in Briton with Martis, here thought as of Mars, the Roman war god. (Spenser: Faƫrie Queene, book iii. Her marriage, book v. 6.)
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
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