The Diana figure in Sidney's Arcadia and Spenser's Faerie Queene

The Diana figure is prominent in both the Arcadia and the Faerie Queene. Sidney's Pyrocles and Spenser's Britomart function in much the same way as the Roman goddess Diana, combining masculinity and femininity, passion and chastity, self-sufficiency and dependency, Britomart is a lady knight, a seemingly contradictory term, which describes her dual nature as one capable of functioning in both the private and public realm. Pyrocles, on the other hand, is a hero posing as an Amazon, one who combines the characteristics of each sex into his personality. [...]