This analysis attempts to establish that the Faerie Queene is a poem written on the basis of the two main ideals of Renaissance criticism, teaching and delighting. It begins by showing that Elizabethan critics state the primary importance of the two ideals, but never explain how they used them as practical guides for writing poetry. Even Spenser himself, though he wrote a long preface to the Faerie Queene, never explains how he intended to teach and delight in the poem. Furthermore, no critics since the Elizabethan have demonstrated adequately how Spenser applied the ideals. To answer this question, the analysis seeks specific answers throughout the Faerie Queene. Yet all such evidence cannot add up to a complete solution of the poem, for in its thousands of lines it accomplishes many purposes and lends itself to many analyses. Nevertheless the two ideals of teaching and delighting represent one important approach which offers one basis for understanding the poem. The analysis divides the poem into two levels, narrative and allegorical, and approaches first through the simpler narrative. The discussion begins with Canto One Book One and demonstrates that Spenser unfolds a story which ordinary readers can follow with efficiency and interest. He sets it in a deliberately artificial world which allows incidents and persons to be both natural and unreal; He reveals its main conflict with a sufficiently brisk pace, and weaves that conflict firmly through the interaction of character and event. With this simple story-telling level Spenser therefore attempts to retain the attention of ordinary readers to his poem, and hereby reveals his conception of delighting to lie mainly in interesting his readers, in motivating them to read on. The analysis also shows that he begins his teaching within the narrative level through such obviously important instruments as his main characters, who teach because of the kinds of persons they are and the kinds of conflicts in which they become involved. The analysis turns then to the allegory, and since this is a more complex level, attempts first to offer a simple definition of allegory. From this base, the argument shows in detail how Spenser painstakingly develops an allegorical incident. He inserts it carefully within a story sequence; he foreshadows its coming; at exactly the right moment he arranges a marked, symbolic shift from the narrative world into the allegorical and, lastly, he guides his reader into the scene by a series of intricate clues. In such ways Spenser therefore organizes the mechanics of allegory so his reader can follow him efficiently and, at the same time, so designs his clues that he motivates the reader to want to pursue his meanings throughout the entire scene. Hence on the allegorical level, too, the poet's conception of delighting lies in capturing reader interest and here, too, he is able to use the very essence of his pleasure to accomplish his teaching. But the allegory teaches and delights more subtly, and thereby retains the attention of even the most advanced reader. To illustrate this most subtle level fully, the analysis will discuss both humorous and serious allegorical scenes. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Book One of The Faerie Queene is a neatly patterned, moral allegory based on a series of tests of Red Cross Knight's Holiness. Holiness is treated as a virtue compounded of faith, hope, and charity, and the tests are organized according to this triple division. Intimately associated with the triple division of Holiness is the psychological scheme by which moral behaviour, and hence character, is represented in the legend. Each of the parts of Holiness is associated with a portion of the soul which is divided according to the Neoplatonic, tripartite conception. Faith is associated with intellection, hope with reason, and charity with appetite. The tests of the knight's faith, hope, and charity are tests of the moral character of the intellectual, rational, and appetitive soul, and in sum the trial of Holiness is a trial of the knight's soul. The knight faces two series of tests, each comprised of tests of faith, hope, and charity. The knight fails the first set of tests, chiefly as a result of his innocence and his inability to bridle the appetites of the flesh. In the second set, having been perfected in Holiness in the House of Holiness, he succeeds. In the first set of tests of the knight's Holiness, he faces, in order, a test of faith, a test of charity, and a test of hope. The tests, however, are not distinctly separate, as each is a test of the knight's Holiness with a focus on one of its three parts. In the second set of tests, the knight faces, in order, a test of charity, a test of hope, and a test of faith. The order of the first series of tests is based on the order of generation and is emblemized in the antagonists of the three parts of Holiness, the brothers Sans foy, Sans loy, and Sans joy. The knight's initially imperfect Holiness is tried according to the order in which these gross imperfections of faith, charity, and hope were created by their satanic father. In the second set of tests, the perfected knight is tried according to the order of perfection of the three parts of Holiness. The relationship between the flesh and reason figures prominently in the legend, with Prince Arthur as the chief representative of reason and Orgoglio the chief representative of the flesh. As well, there is a hierarchy of figures representing various states of control of fleshly appetite, and ranked from beast to rational man. The figures in the hierarchy are all associated with Una, and the set of relationships involved serves the moral allegory by presenting various states of charity. Rather than using the method of choosing parts of the text to illustrate general conclusions about the nature of Book One, I have chosen the method of sequential, textual analysis. I have tried to be as careful as possible in my schematization of the legend, noting where my scheme separates tests which, in the legend, are overlapped. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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This thesis endeavors to show how Edmund Spenser used classical mythology, and his variations from it, in his work The Faerie Queene.

“Emergent Discourses of Difference in Spenser's Faerie Queene" argues that Spenser's project of fashioning "a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" is in fact a project to define both an English literary and national identity. Yet his idea of faerie which expresses this Englishness is based upon the perception of difference as dangerous and monstrous. While Spenser's faerie is romanticized and politicized, the nature of its threat to the Christian hero is expressed in emerging discourses of anxiety concerning racial, sexual, and class differences, discourses which continue to inform English/British identity well into the age of empire. Although the medieval romance which influenced Spenser presents faerie as an aristocratic ideal, Spenser also borrows from an older, more popular conception of faerie as inherently dangerous, perhaps even predatory. Spenser's use of popular faerie folklore may be read as either an "imperial" appropriation or an instance of the shaping power of popular culture to influence the hegemonic discourse of Elizabethan courtliness, gentility, and the power of the (female) monarch. Spenser's depiction of the lower classes is more complex than the ubiquitous "many-headed monster" so commonly represented by his contemporaries. In turn, Spenser's use of folklore provides an interpretative lens with which to view Spenser's depiction of Elizabeth Tudor as the Faerie Queene, suggesting that the female body and female sexuality present a source of danger both to the titular heroes of the work and to the idealized Christian hero, Arthur. I contend that Spenser's depiction of Elizabeth as Gloriana is not as complementary as it seems. Further, Edmund Spenser was writing at a time of an emergent discourse of race difference applied to Africans and Native Americans, a discourse which manifests itself in Spenser's work as a racialization of the Irish and the "paynim" enemies that challenge his heroes. The Faerie Queene demonstrates Spenser's anxiety for the corruptive effects of the uncivilized and "unworthy," the non-white/non-English, and the non-Protestant Other, including the female witch. Both the inhabitants of faerie and the Faerie Queene herself represent the anxieties at the source of what Spenser defines as English.

The first three cantos of the Book of Courtesy discover to us the realm of social relations, where, as in the sphere of Justice, a strict system of gradation operates. lndeed, Spenser, in the early part of Book VI, sustains much of the atmosphere of the "stonie" age of Book V, and Calidore's initial adventures illustrate the abuses to which a hierarchical order of society lends itself in the fallen world. The poet's artistic exploration of these abuses traces their origins to the mean and malicious impulses of the human mind, which are, in a larger context, manifestations of the cosmic evil that disrupts the quests of all the hero-knights of The Faerie Queene. [...]

Book Six of The Faerie Queene deals with the complexities of courtesy in a socially changing world. Calidore, the protagonist of Book Six, sets out to defeat the Blatant Beast, the chief enemy of courtesy, but abandons his quest midway through the book in order to live the shepherds’ life. Despite the ethical ambiguity associated with Calidore’s abandoning his quest, this pastoral setting should enable him to deepen his understanding of the nature and practice of courtesy. However, Calidore is unable to grow, and the poet essentially gives up on his own poetic quest.

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