Revealing influence: Exploring British identity, sexual power, and lyric ambiguity in Spenser, Keats, and Tennyson

i DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CHAPTERS CHAPTER 1 – Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2 – From Whence He Came: Spenser, History, and Keats’s Emulative Inspirations 7 CHAPTER 3 – Chastitie Reimagined: A Close Reading of The Eve of St. Agnes 32 CHAPTER 4 – A New Interpretation: Critical Responses to Keats and Tennyson, and Echoes of Spenser in Idylls of the King 53 BIBLIOGRAPHY 75 VITA 79