The Fairie Queene

Dr Teresa Grant

25th February 2014

Edmund Spenser (c.1552/4-1599)

http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26145?docPos=1

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Editions of The Fairie Queene

1590: books I-III (Q)

1596: books I-VI (Q)

1609: books I-VI with ‘Two Cantos of Mutabilitie’

1611: first Folio collected edition of Spenser’s Works

The ReformationA bit of background

Catholic versus Protestant

The ‘Antichrist’ – millenarianism

What was at stake?

God is English – John Foxe and telling the Reformation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/english_reformation_01.shtml#two

Why Ireland?Old Irish

Old English

New English

Plantation/settlement

‘Beyond the pale’

1588 – Armada

1690 – Battle of the Boyne

The Allegorical Structure

Book I: Holiness

Book II: Temperance

Book III: Chastity

Book IV: Friendship

Book V: Justice

Book VI: Courtesy

Arthur represents magnificence; Gloriana glory and the Mutability Cantos constancy.

Letter to Ralegh

• Allegory v. history

• Darke conceits

• Protecting himself against difficulty with Elizabeth

• Ireland in all this

Letter to Ralegh 1

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 darke conceit, I haue thought good aswell for auoyding of gealous opinions and misco[n]structions, as also for your better light in reading thereof, (being so by you commanded) to discouer vnto you the general intention and meaning, which in the whole course thereof I haue fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes or by accidents therein occasioned. 

 

Letter to Raleigh 2

The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline: Which for that I conceiued shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter, then for profite of the ensample:

So much more profitable and gratious is doctrine by ensample, then by rule.

The Allegorical Method

Four-fold scheme used for biblical interpretation by the Church Fathers:

Literal

Allegory

Tropology

Anagogy

Iconography

• 1. The illustration of a subject by drawings etc.

• 2. The study of portraits, especially those of one person.

1758

Nuremberg, 1564

Bk 1, canto 10, stanza 13

He had a faire companion of his way,    A goodly Lady clad in scarlot red,    Purfled with gold and pearle of rich assay,    And like a Persian mitre on her hed    She wore, with crownes and owches garnished,    The which her lauish louers to her gaue;    Her wanton palfrey all was ouerspred    With tinsell trappings, wouen like a waue,Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses braue.

40 Thensforth I tooke Duessa for my Dame,    And in the witch vnweeting ioyd long time,    Ne euer wist, but that she was the same,    Till on a day (that day is euery Prime,    When Witches wont do penance for their crime)    I chaunst to see her in her proper hew,    Bathing her selfe in origane and thyme:    A filthy foule old woman I did vew,That euer to haue toucht her, I did deadly rew.

41 Her neather partes misshapen, monstruous,    Were hidd in water, that I could not see,    But they did seeme more foule and hideous,    Then womans shape man would beleeue to bee.    Thensforth from her most beastly companie    I gan refraine, in minde to slip away,    Soone as appeard safe opportunitie:    For danger great, if not assur'd decayI saw before mine eyes, if I were knowne to stray.

FQ, I.iv.10So proud she shyned in her Princely state

Looking to heaven; for earth she did disdayne,

And sitting high; for lowly did she hate:

Lo underneath her scornefull feete, was layne

A dreadfull Dragon with an hideous trayne,

And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright,

Wherein her face she often vewed fayne,

And in her self-lov’d semblance took delight;

For she was wondrous faire, as any living wight.

Book Title: "Zurich Bible" - Die gantze Bibel : das ist alle Bücher allts vnnd neüws Testaments den vrsprünglichen spraachen nach auffs aller treüwlichest verteütschet Author: Not AvailableImage Title: The Whore of BabylonScripture Reference: Rev 17Description: A woman wearing the papal tiara rides the beast with seven heads and holds a cup aloft in her hand, and she is greeted by kings, some of whom have fallen down before her..

Douglas Brooks-Davies (ed.), The Fairie Queene, Books I-III (London: Dent, 1987). Introduction, p. xxvi-xxvii.

Una, abandoned by Red Cross, search[es] for him between cantos ii and viii. Anagogically she thus represents the Church, appearing as the bride of her knight/Christ in canto xii. Allegorically she is the English church (and Elizabeth I as the head of that church). Slightly more complicatedly, she represents the Truth embodied in the English Church (as subscribing Elizabethans understood it). Red Cross separates from her, having been deceived into believing her to be false, and succumbs to Duessa (two-ness, duplicity: canto ii). He is allegorically England (figured in her national saint) tied to a corrupt Catholicism, moving towards, and awaiting the revelation of, the true faith. This movement is paralleled by Red Cross’s tropological development, his journey as embodiment of fallen man through error (canto i), pride (worldly and spiritual, cantos iv, vii-viii), lust (Duessa throughout, esp. beginning of canto vii), despair (canto ix) and consequential fitness to battle with the dragon of the sins.