Personified Hyena

The personified hyena’s placement here is very important for a comparison between the son and this beast. Not only was the son unchaste, the hyena shows that he had sexually violent desires as well. The hyena also reveals that the son did not act on his desires because of his sense of morality, but simply out of laziness and a presence of love through the guise of control. The hyena is meant to enact the son’s controlling and lustful intentions because he was too enchanted by his own false sense of control to do it himself. The hyena is the ultimate inaction of sexual violence and tyranny over women because it “feeds on women’s flesh”(III.vii.22.9). It will also not rest or take a breath “…Till her had attaind, and brought into place/ or quite deuourd her beauties scornedfull grace” (III.vii.23.3-5). The

A lion with the ability of critical thought can relay an important allegorical message that RCK’s and Sansloys behaviors alone may not. Similarly, a goal-oriented and cruel hyena immediately can bring up notions that the actions of the witch’s son or Sir Satyrane on their own may be insufficent to express. The lion both reveals RCK’s mistakes and shows how men can behave like beasts as compared to Sansloy. Moreover, the hyena reveals the insidious intentions of the witch’s son, and the problematic motives of the knightly Sir Satyrane. These animals serve as both a representation of animal symbolism and as agent characters that are able to take action within the plot and allegory of the poem. These personified animal characters require and disserve a close and meaningful evaluation because they strikingly bring to life qualities Spencer is attempting to illuminate within the human and supernatural