Faerie_Queene

Faerie Queene When Edmund Spenser wrote his romantic epic The Faerie Queene, he intended for it to be an allegory. An allegory is a literary device used to give a literary work two different meanings. One meaning is easily understood, but the second meaning is expressed through a more subtle approach. In a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser wrote, “Sir knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed, and this booke of mine, which I have entituled the Faery Queene, being a continued Allegory, or dark conceit...” (514). In the letter, he is explaining to the readers that it is an allegory, so that they will look for a hidden meaning to objects in his epic. Later in the letter, Spenser went on to tell that each of the twelve books that he intended to write would symbolize one virtue. Then combined as a whole, they would represent a truly noble person. However, only six of the twelve were completed. “Each book of The Faerie Queene has as its centre a hero or heroine whose task is to learn a particular virtue by facing, falling before but ultimately discovering how to master, the specific vices which beset it” (Evans 143). The second book portrays the virtue of Temperance sir, guyon, book, virtue, allegory, temperance, spenser, red, queene, palmer, one, meaning, letter, knight, first, crosse, archimago, young, twelve, through, symbol, second, person, literary, leads, girl, faerie, encounters, each, duessa, after, wrote, write, work, woman, wise