A comprehensive study of the impact of Middle English romance on "The Faerie Queene". It employs the concept of memory, in which both Middle English romance writers and Spenser show specific interest, to build a sense of the thematic, generic and cultural complexity of the native romance tradition.

Spensers memories of native romance involve a more troubled engagement with that tradition of providential national history as well as an endeavour to see in pre-Reformation romance a prophetic and objective authority for Protestant belief.

1. Approaching Spenser's Medievalism
2. Middle English Romance: Tradition, Genre, Manuscripts, and Prints
3. The Matter of Just Memory: Providential History in Middle English Romance
4. Displaced Youths and Slandered Ladies in Middle English Romance
5. Malory's Le Morte Darthur: Remembering Native Romance
6. The 'Reformation' of Native Romance in The Faerie Queene, Book I
7. 'It seemed another worlde to beholde': Native Romance, History, and Book II of The Faerie Queene
8. 'The world runne quite out of square': Remembering/Dismembering Native Romance in Book V
Conclusion