This is a study of time and providence, looking at how they relate to the narrative in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Time can be destructive or benign, and in his poem Spenser explored both these aspects from the point of view of the individual and also of humanity as a whole. In this thoughtful and capricious study, McCabe is careful not to impose a single intellectual interpretation on the intricacies of the storyline of the poem; instead he provides a series of meditations on how Spenser responds aesthetically to his central theme.  Richard A. McCabe is Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College at Oxford University.