So what is left, at the end of the Faerie Queene and at the end of this book, of that supposedly ‘modern self’ whose emergence is glimpsed and refracted through the complex transformations of the allegorical quest tradition? For all its differences from the allegories that precede it, Spenser's narrative seems to me a good place to stop and look back as well as forward – even if this has nothing to do with Spenser's real or supposed ‘literary’ merits in ‘overgoing’ his predecessors. Like its ancestors the allegory of the Faerie Queene once more fails for the same reasons, divided between metaphysical longings on the one hand, and more earthly, time-bound aspirations on the other. Spenser's allegory is the last to exploit quest narratives in such a way and to experience their characteristic ‘failure’, which marks a possible ‘end’ of the tradition. This however also raises a fundamental question for the history of the early modern subject constructed by quest narratives of this type: to what extent is the constitution of this emerging individual self – despite all its implications in temporal, political, affective and religious affairs of a distinctively secular sort – still shaped by a transcendentalising and deeply spiritual understanding of the ‘pilgrimage of human life’? I can offer only a tentative answer, anecdotal but I believe symptomatic of wider realities in the period: first, I would suggest that to some extent the very concept of an individual, modern self is constructed in opposition to the notion of a more inclusive, universal and paradigmatic Christian self such as it is articulated by Deguileville.