CANTO 1 of book 3 of The Faerie Queene is an inviting place to test theories old and new regarding the import and the impact of a literary text, for Britomart's run-in with Guyon comprises a rather strange episode for Spenser's narrator, characters, and reader. Interestingly, what starts as a conflict between two allegorical heroes turns into a conflict within the reader over the adequacy of Spenser's narrator and the agenda of the poet himself. Moreover, the very strategies that Spenser uses to handle the crisis of Guyon's defeat produce a crisis of reader response in that they raise but do not resolve questions concerning the equality of the sexes and the integrity of Spenser's characters. Because battle between Redcrosse and Guyon is averted at the beginning of book 2, the reader may well wonder why it is permitted between Guyon and Britomart at the beginning of book 3. Since the difference between the two episodes lies in the gender of the characters involved, it is as if the clash between the Knight of Temperance and the Maiden of Chastity occurs in order to focus the reader's attention at the start of the Legend of Britomartis on the ramifications of conflict, particularly armed conflict, between a man and a woman.