J. Seth Lee 45 SEL 57, 1 (Winter 2017): 45–65 ISSN 0039-3657 © 2017 Rice University 45 Edmund Spenser’s Mind of Exile and Colonial Apologetics J. SETH LEE Edmund Spenser purportedly writes to Queen Elizabeth in 1592, “I am a stranger in mine owne countrye, and almost vnknowen to my best frends, onely remembered by her Maiestie … I should account my ten years absense a flatt banishment, were I not honoured in her Maiesties seruice … In all humility, I desire this Dart to be deliuered, an Irish weapon, and this with an English hearte, that in whose heart faith is not fastened, a Darte may.” 1 It is tempting to read sarcasm or a woe-is-me ap- peal to the queen into Spenser’s letter, but there is also an acute melancholy and a heartfelt sense of longing for his native England and a place at Court for the exiled poet. Spenser was no stranger to exile and the complicated identity that comes with it, so the potential dual valence in Spenser’s dart warrants attention. 2 His image encourages the reader to see past the gift’s outward appear- ance. What seems Irish is actually English; what hails from the margins of the empire belongs in the heart of the Court. Clear too is Spenser’s sense of himself as an exile with a complex national identity developed in between nations and lands. Numerous scholars call attention to the deeply rooted influ- ence of exile in Spenser’s literary creations. 3 Richard A. McCabe, for example, describes Spenser’s writings as “the product of an Irish environment, the product of mortal conflict between two ir- reconcilable cultures.” 4 McCabe’s “mortal conflict” is consistent with what Jesse M. Lander terms the “polemical culture” of the early modern period and, provocatively, may suggest a relation- J. Seth Lee is a visiting assistant professor of English at Christian Brothers University. His research focuses on sixteenth-century English exilic polemic and draws on the terminology and discourse of postcolonial notions of hybrid- ity and boundary studies. His current project is a book exploring the impact of exile on the formation of English national identity from Chaucer to Spenser.