Essays on The Faerie Queene

This Great Stage of Fools: The Journey of Delusion and Deceit in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s King Lear Perhaps more than any other period in British history, the English Renaissance embodied the themes of deception and deceitfulness. Political conspiracies ran rampant in court...

The role of the magic mirror in Britomart’s encounter with Arthegall extends beyond the fact that it drives her quest to find him. It is also the center point of Spenser’s theme of reflection and representation and its influence on his use of allegory and...

The Chaste Chase: Britomart’s Naivety in The Faerie Queen Juliette Tang June 1, 2005 For a text of Elizabethan literature, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is unique in its portrayal of chastity-a virtue generally associated with the domestic sphere-in the figure of Britomart the female...

The literature of the English Renaissance demonstrates a remarkable range of attitudes towards women. While there are significant proclamations of chivalric attitudes towards women such as Walter Raleigh’s devotion to Queen Elizabeth I, nearly divine descriptions of love and fidelity such as John Donne’s poetry,...

Spenser’s Faerie Queene evinces the New Testament religious doctrine that God shows infinite mercy toward man, and by “heauenly grace doth…vphold” (VIII.1.3) him despite his weaknesses. This philosophy, shown in The Faerie Queene through Redcrosse Knight’s ascension to Sainthood despite his failures and weaknesses, contends...

The Faerie Queene Book Two, by Edmund Spenser, is a book entirely devoted to the concept of temperance and moderation. Espoused as a cardinal virtue in Plato’s Republic, and referred to similarly in several other influential works from across many cultures, temperance encompasses myriad traits...

Though he is by no means a single-minded man, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti focus largely on the beauty and physical form of the woman he addresses these poems to. In seven of these sonnets, he calls this woman’s beauty her “hew”, or in the modern spelling,...

Serene landscapes and seductive relationships are key themes throughout Edmund Spenser’s work and are major assets to the plot and character development in “The Faerie Queene” and “Epithalamion.” Spenser’s early works are all in the pastoral tradition, most notably “The Shepheardes Calender,” with a strong...

The Romantic era saw a wave of primitivism sweep through its literature and art. The dissatisfaction of the present led to a glorification of the past, and it was explored and philosophized by looking at the ‘noble savage’. However, a branch of primitivism arose which...

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene features an array of characters that appear briefly, usually to influence Redcrosse in a critical moment along his journey. Fradubio is one such character, given sixteen stanzas in a poem of over 600 stanzas. The importance of Fradubio’s character becomes...

Varying representations of both genders are abundant in romantic literature of the Renaissance period in general, a fine example of which can be found in Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic poem, The Faerie Queene. The poem depicts the tale of seven knights, who each represent the...

Spenser’s Faerie Queene fights against reduction; there is no one-to-one correspondence of thing to meaning. Spenser recasts figures and images throughout the poem, allowing meanings to be changed and complicated through the course of reading. Language and form work to divide these moments of action...

Fidessa’s character in Edmund Spenser’s “The Fairy Queene”, introduced in the second canto of book 1, is essential to the understanding of one of Spenser’s main messages in the poem: the Roman Catholic Church is corrupt and falsely interprets Christianity. Through Fidessa’s and her Saracen’s...

In many ways The Faerie Queene presents a unique challenge to the English reader. It can be described as epic, romance or fantasy and covers a wide range of topics religious and romantic, political and spiritual, Christian and Pagan. It is also incomplete, leaving the...

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene follows its protagonist Redcrosse on a traditional hero’s journey, all of which is a religious and historical allegory for the conflicts of the church taking place during Spenser’s time. Redcrosse encounters the mysterious Duessa on his journey, a figure who...

“The Faeire Queene” is an epic poem written by Edmund Spenser in the 16th century – English Renaissance, but set in the Middle Ages because of its being a chivalric romance. Aside from religious allegories, juxtapositions, and contradictions, Spenser mentions the place of gender by...

The work of art is a central image in The Faerie Queene, though it rarely appears as a neutral force. On the contrary: art often seems to act as a tool of the post-lapsarian world, dragging once-pure characters into earthly knowledge and moral descent. Specifically,...

Spencer’s Faerie Queene is perhaps the most intricate allegory written in the history of the English language. In this poem Spencer not only releases his creative genius by twisting the letters within his words to create perfect puns but also seeks to engage the Elizabethan...

Spenser’s The Faerie Queene was written mainly to fulfil an allegorical purpose and to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” However, the moralistic tone is softened by the fact that the whole complex allegory is masquerading as a medieval romance,...

In his prefatory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser sets out his intention in constructing The Faerie Queene as allegory. Its aim, he writes, is to ‘fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous or gentle discipline’ He continues; the Knights of each book...

Many poets draw on the theme of nature to symbolize the message they are trying to convey. In many cases, nature is juxtaposed with artistic design to emphasize the conflict or the relationship between the natural and the human worlds. Millar Maclure clarifies the distinction...