A mirror or a crystal ball? That interpretive crux arises at the heart of Book iii of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene – when Britomart discovers Merlin’s “glassy globe” and first sees Arthegall in its surface. The “looking-glasse,” that is, not only reflects Britomart but also tells the future. This essay revisits the problem of Merlin’s glass by locating it in the context of rapidly developing sixteenth-century optics, and one invention in particular: the reflecting telescope. By 1590, a range of thinkers from John Dee to Leonard Digges discovered in the reflective properties of mirrors innovative ways to understand human sight, cognition, and prediction. And it is Digges that proposes a reflecting telescope, a device that Merlin employs in Book iii. These scientific advances, in turn, inform Spenser’s references to vision and reflection throughout the poem, granting his allegory the ability both to distort sight and counter-intuitively to produce the future. Indeed, The Faerie Queene uses misrepresentation to protect its queen and to protect budding projects of nationalism. To see, for Spenser, is to change “the world it self” and to bring about its British futures.

镜子还是水晶球？这种解释性的症结出现在Spenser的《仙境女王》第三卷的核心–当Britomart发现Merlin的“玻璃地球仪”并首先在表面看到Arthegall时。“眼镜”不仅反映了Britomart，而且还告诉未来。本文将梅林的玻璃定位在快速发展的16世纪光学技术的背景下，尤其是一项发明：反射望远镜，以重新审视梅林的玻璃问题。到1590年，从约翰·迪（John Dee）到伦纳德·迪格斯（Leonard Digges）的众多思想家在镜子的反射特性中发现了创新的方式来理解人类的视线，认知和预测。正是Digges提出了反射望远镜，这是Merlin在Book iii中使用的一种装置。这些科学的进步反过来又使斯宾塞在整首诗中提到了视觉和反思，这使他的寓言既有扭曲视线的能力，又有悖于直觉的能力来创造未来。确实，女王仙境使用虚假陈述来保护其女王并保护萌芽的民族主义计划。对于Spenser来说，看到它就是要改变“它自己的世界”并实现其英国的未来。