God's Only Daughter

Kathryn Walls is interested in the oneness of religion in Spenser, exemplified in the figure of Una. God's Only Daughter is a model of a sustained, close, critical reading of a single book and, indeed, a single figure in The Faerie Queene in the tradition of T. K. Dunseath's account of book 5. Ironically, A. C. Hamilton, who inspired Walls's work, once likened such single-book studies of The Faerie Queene to the Hindustani fable of the six blind men quarrelling over the description of an elephant. God's Only Daughter is more like an exquisitely carved two inches of ivory. Its strengths lie precisely in the painstaking and patient unpacking of book 1 through an immensely learned discussion of sixteenth-century theology and in particular the invisible church as conceived in Calvinism. Walls's sophisticated exploration of the many cultural and literary infratexts should be required reading for Spenser scholars or graduate students pursuing an interest in this remarkable and important early modern poet. The work evinces a refreshing independence of inquiry that is unafraid to follow the evidence wherever it leads. [God's Only Daughter] persuasively demonstrates that reading Una alongside contemporary Protestant thought about the invisible church greatly enriches her role in the poem. Walls's tightly-focused book establishes that Una's travails deserve as much careful attention as those of the knight(s) who seeks her. 'The reader of God's Only Daughter will come away better informed about sixteenth-century Calvinism.' -- .