Spensers The Faerie Queene | Page 6

outlined in his letter to Sir
Walter Raleigh. This letter serves as an admirable introduction to the
poem, and should be read attentively by the student. Gloriana, the
Queen of Fairyland, holds at her court a solemn feudal festival, lasting
twelve days, during which she sends forth twelve of her greatest
knights on as many separate adventures. The knights are commissioned
to champion the cause of persons in distress and redress their wrongs.
The ideal knight, Prince Arthur, is the central male figure of the poem.
He is enamoured of Gloriana, having seen her in a wondrous vision,
and is represented as journeying in quest of her. He appears in all of the
legends at opportune moments to succor the knights when they are hard
beset or in the power of their enemies. The six extant books contain
respectively the legends of (I) the Knight of the Redcrosse, or Holiness,
(II) Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, (III) Britomart, the female
Knight of Chastity, (IV) Sir Campbell and Sir Triamond, the Knights of
Friendship, (V) Sir Artegall, the Knight of Justice, and (VI) Sir
Caledore, the Knight of Courtesy. Book I is an allegory of man's
relation to God, Book II, of man's relation to himself, Books III, IV, V,
and VI, of man's relation to his fellow-man. Prince Arthur, the
personification of Magnificence, by which Spenser means
Magnanimity (Aristotle's [Greek: megalopsychía]), is the ideal of a
perfect character, in which all the private virtues are united. It is a poem
of culture, inculcating the moral ideals of Aristotle and the teachings of
Christianity.

2. INFLUENCE OF THE NEW LEARNING.--Like Milton, Gray, and
other English poets, Spenser was a scholar familiar with the best in
ancient and modern literature. As to Spenser's specific indebtedness,
though he owed much in incident and diction to Chaucer's version of
the Romance of the Rose and to Malory's Morte d'Arthur, the great epic
poets, Tasso and Ariosto, should be given first place. The resemblance
of passages in the _Faerie Queene_ to others in the Orlando Furioso_
and the _Jerusalem Delivered is so striking that some have accused the
English poet of paraphrasing and slavishly borrowing from the two
Italians. Many of these parallels are pointed out in the notes. To this
criticism, Mr. Saintsbury remarks: "Not, perhaps, till the Orlando has
been carefully read, and read in the original, is Spenser's real greatness
understood. He has often, and evidently of purpose, challenged
comparison; but in every instance it will be found that his beauties are
emphatically his own. He has followed Ariosto only as Vergil has
followed Homer, and much less slavishly."
The influence of the New Learning is clearly evident in Spenser's use
of classical mythology. Greek myths are placed side by side with
Christian imagery and legends. Like Dante, the poet did not consider
the Hellenic doctrine of sensuous beauty to be antagonistic to the truths
of religion. There is sometimes an incongruous confusion of classicism
and mediævalism, as when a magician is seen in the house of
Morpheus, and a sorcerer goes to the realm of Pluto. Spenser was
guided by a higher and truer sense of beauty than the classical purists
know.
A very attractive element of his classicism is his worship of beauty.
The Greek conception of beauty included two forms--the sensuous and
the spiritual. So richly colored and voluptuous are his descriptions that
he has been called the painters' poet, "the Rubens," and "the Raphael of
the poets." As with Plato, Spenser's idea of the spiritually beautiful
includes the true and the good. Sensuous beauty is seen in the forms of
external nature, like the morning mist and sunshine, the rose gardens,
the green elders, and the quiet streams. His ideal of perfect sensuous
and spiritual beauty combined is found in womanhood. Such a one is
Una, the dream of the poet's young manhood, and we recognize in her

one whose soul is as fair as her face--an idealized type of a woman in
real life who calls forth all our love and reverence.
3. INTERPRETATION OF THE ALLEGORY.--In the sixteenth
century it was the opinion of Puritan England that every literary
masterpiece should not only give entertainment, but should also teach
some moral or spiritual lesson. "No one," says Mr. Patee, "after reading
Spenser's letter to Raleigh, can wander far into Spenser's poem without
the conviction that the author's central purpose was didactic, almost as
much as was Bunyan's in _Pilgrim's Progress." Milton doubtless had
this feature of the _Faerie Queene in mind when he wrote in Il
Penseroso:--
"And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have
sung
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments
drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear."
That the allegory of the poem is closely connected with its