Spenser, Wolfram, and the Reformation of Despair

Abstract

To date, no consensus has emerged concerning the derivation of Spenser’s names Trevisan and Terwin, the only two characters in Book I’s “Legend of Holiness” whose names are not obviously labels. This essay proposes that Wolfram’s Parzival offers a strong analogue that may also point to a possible origin for the names of Spenser’s Trevisan and Terwin. Further, and most significantly, the comparison between Wolfram’s poem and Spenser’s gives the more important of those two figures, the fearful knight Trevisan, a complex role to play as Spenser probes Protestant theological treatments of despair.