I. Spenser's Intellectual Stance (Taken from NAEL)
Spenser can't be put into neat categories. He was strongly influenced by Renaissance neoplatonism, but was also (like the medievals) earthy and practical. He is a lover and celebrator of physical beauty, but considers good and evil in all their perplexing shapes and complexities. He was strongly influenced by Puritanism in his early days, remained thoroughly Protestant all his life, and portrayed the Roman Catholic Church as a villain in The Faerie Queene; yet his understanding of faith and sin owes much to Catholic thinkers. His poetry contains much of sensual imagery, yet he was deeply suspicious of the power of images (material and verbal) to turn into idols. He is an idealist, yet also a celebrant of English nationalism, empire, and martial power. He is a backward-looking poet who pays homage to Chaucer, used archaic language deliberately, and compared his own age unfavorably with the ancient world; yet as a British epic poet and poet-prophet, he points forward to Milton especially and also to the 19thC Romantic poets.

II. Influences
A. The Aeneid of Virgil
B. Chaucer and the courtly love tradition
Note some of Chaucer's words like "solas", "encheson," and the short syllables that carry the melody of Chaucer's line such as when Spenser says "There many minstales maken melodye."
C. Homer
D. Medieval allegory
E. The Irish countryside
F. Carpaccio's painting of St. George (patron saint of England) slaying the Dragon.
G. Protestant typology

Like medieval exegetes, Renaissance biblical scholars read the Bible on four levels: literal, allegorical or typological, moral or tropological, and anagogical. On the literal or historical level, the bible was seen to be a literally true and historical account composed by the Holy Spirit. First the exegete had to understand letters, words, and images to have an accurate ideal of the objective reality to which they referred.

 

After this understanding, the meaning was enriched and better understood by considering the other meanings described by Saint Augustine much earlier. First, an Old Testament person (type) could in his actions and in the nature of his own personal development forehadow Christ (antitype). (David's kingship, Solomon's wisdom, etc. ) This foreshadowing of Christ is a "typological" meaning. Second, if the OT type foreshadows some element in the life of Christ with a specific doctrinal meaning, such as baptism, which applies to the life of the individual Christian, it has a moral or tropological meaning. Finally, if the OT type foreshadows the union at the end of time of the resurrected members of the Church with God, it has an anagogical meaning.

III. Modes in the poem
A. Spenserian stanza
1. Nine line stanza ababbcbccc in iambic pentameter

2. The last line as an Alexandrine (iambic hexameter) that creates a conclusion to the stanza

This differs from the Medieval allegories that we've studied because not only the protagonist changes, but the other characters are multiple and shifting in their representations.

These are books of images that protestants used to impart moral lessons. Some of the scenes described in The Faerie Queene are common in Emblem books. Consider the picture at the start of the adventure: the knight, black and white of the lady, the dwarf might be found in a page of an Emblem book representing the Christian soul on its daily life.

Marks the rhythm, knits the verse together, enforces, the meaning, and has melodic beauty.

IV. The First Book (Kellogg's and Steele's Edmund Spenser)
Its purpose is to present a hero, The Red Cross Knight who represents Christian holiness. At the beginning Red Cross is young and brave but inexperienced. He starts his quest guided by princess Una with sincere but untested faith. He is not up to this quest. Before Red Cross can defeat the dragon that holds Una's parents captive, he must be "conformed to the image of Christ," he must become St. George who is a type of Christ.

 V. The Second Book
The story of Sir Guyon or Temperance is "shaped by Spenser's idea of the psychological development of the human character striving after moral control" (E. De Selincourt, Spenser: Poetical Works, xliv). Sir Guyon learns early in the Book, that the secret of virtue is moderation. The final canto of the book pictures Guyon resisting the "ultimate temptations of the sensuous life" ( (xliv). Some critics blame Spenser for lavishing all the power of his art on this canto and creating a magical experience. Acrasia herself draws her almost irresistible power from the "ravishing loveliness of all that surrounds her." Overcoming Acrasia and destroying the Bower of Bliss seals Guyon as the "true knight of Temperance" (xliv).

 VI. The Third Book
This book begins a change in the complexity of Spenser's plot. Britomart's story is set around 400 A. D. Her son Constantius is to rule 3 years and her grandson Conan longer. These are Celts whose rule will be broken by the Saxon invaders. Henry Vii (Tudor) will return the rule to the Celts.

 Some see the story of Britomart as exemplifying the tension between two human urges: the desire to form a union and the desire not to give oneself up (merge). Love can be seen as warfare where cooperative efforts break down into lust/love/hate. Book III has episodes of erotic violence as well as those that define chaste love. Such love is not defined as simply protecting oneself; chaste love here is the hightest expression not realizable for humans.
Britomart's masculine aspect suggests that she may be overprotecting her chastity. She must grow to come to chaste love in marriage.

 Canto I. Some aspects of love there.
Britomart's love for Arthegall is obsessive and also egocentric (since she has seen her love in a mirror). As she begins her procession towards chaste love, she needs to learn that all love begins in eye-contact. Malacasta has "false eyes." In the tapestry of Malacasta's castle we see the Peeping eyes of Venus for Adonis. The only knight who can wound Britomart is Gardante who represents the misuse of the eyes. In Canto I, Britomart is not perceptive in avoiding evil eyes. She must grow in the stages of loving.

 Canto II-III
Britomart is led to the awareness of the physical nature of love. She seems to overcompensate in protecting herself at this point. Still she might be seen as rejecting not sex but guile. Also, she must learn about maternal love, since she is destined through her love for Arthegall to be the mother of Britain. Spenser sees married love as loyalty to a commitment. He commemorates faithful married love. He perceives that the cement for civilization or personal life is the intimacy that comes out of marriage. He also suggests that pain is a component of chaste love.

 Britomart will pledge herself to protecting Scudamore's life because he is so loyal--he wants to marry his love.

 Canto VI. Origins of Belphoebe with whom Arthur's squire Timias falls in love. Her mother was impregnated by the sun and gives birth to twins. Venus, seeking her son Cupid with the help of Diana, finds the mother in a swoon. Diana takes Belphoebe to be raised by a nymph and Venus takes Amoret to the Garden of Adonis. This is a transcendent world removed from human love and desire. Amoret becomes a foil to Britomart in being overchaste because overprotected.

 Florimell is another foil to Britomart because she represents passion and the passive woman vs. Britomart as the woman actively seeking her love. Florimell has beauty while Britomart has beauty and virtue. Also, the dysfunction of Florimell's and Marinell's love is apparent in that Marinell is dominated by his mother.

 In the end of Book III Amoret and Scudamore represent another pair of foils. Scudamore is impotent--he can't get in to save the woman. While his love is faithful it is also problematic. In Book IV, Scudamore's proprietary love for Amoret is revealed. He is very self-absorbed.
Amoret has a skewed view of love also. She is immature and has been raised with models that imply it entails no pain. The House of Busiranc is an emblem for Amoret's ignorance and fear. She doesn't know the place of sex in marriage and mistakes it for violence.

 Britomart may act as a bridge between man and woman since she possesses qualities of both. For Spenser men need to transcend exploitation in marriage and women need to transcend fear. Even true love cannot constrain the dark desire to possess something intimately that lies behind the sexual or even any creative act.

 
THE MEANING OF LOVE IN THE FAERIE QUEENE
In battle Britomart trusts herself and is thus able to act rather than simply feel or think. She represetns a valorization of Elizabeth as totally feminine and yet a great leader.
Chastity to Spenser is not a monastic virtue, the mere escape from the temptations of the flesh. Instead it is the key to the right relations between men and women. It is also inseparable from some aspects of friendship; and the close of Book III which does not tell us how the relationship between Scudamore and Amoret works out, was designed to bring out the more clearly the close kinship of these two virtues, based as they both are on physical instinct, and carrying equally the power of good and evil depending on the spiritual quality of the characters in which the operate.
            Wonder it is to see, in diverse minds,
            How diversely love doth his pageants play,
            And shewes his powre in variable kinds (III.5.1)
This diversity couldn't be shown by focussing on one hero and/or heroine. The ideal needs different characters to be portrayed. Britomart, Amoret, Belphoebe, Florimel, are all types of 'chastity' but they differ significantly.

 Also, in giving prominence to Britomart over Scudamore, Spenser conceives of him as a man of high courage, in many respects noble and a sincere lover, but unable, without Britomart's help, to overcome the evil in his nature that makes him unworthy to gain his quest.

 Another significant point to Spenser's take on life is that Belphoebe, fancy free, has no male counterpart.

 Marinell's avoidance of woman is from fear and leads only to his overthrow. For man at least
            A lesson too too hard for living clay,
            From love in course of natrure to refaine. (III.4.26)

And how love may best be ordered in taught in a variety of its manifestation in different characters--
    Arthur, stirred to a restless desire for nobel deeds
    Timias, allows the strength of a noble passion to cloud his mind and paralyse him
    Malbecco and Braggadocchio, lust overmastered by greed and fear
    The witch's son and the fisherman, mere animalism
    Sir Paradell, the accomplished seducer who degrades his keen and subtle intellect to pander to his lust
    The Squire of Dames, contemptible offspring of a social decadence who delights in vanity that throws mud on        himself and his ladies. He is shown in the clutches of the Giauntess of prostitution.

 The whole of Book III is charged with moral significance. It is a mirror of the whole of Spenser's world--ideal and sordid. His treatment of friendship parallels this vision.  The center of his book focuses on the perfect friendship between Cambell and Triamond and is parallel to a perfect friendship between Britomart and Amoret. Both friendships are based on virtue and on ablsolute devotion of self to the friend.  In contrast is the friendship of Paridell and Blandamour who are only friends when it suits their private interests, and also the solitary Braggadocchio who is incapable of friendship or enmity.

 The second half of the book deals with the sensitive issue of friendship between the sexes. Timias represents the man who lacks the self-restraint demanded by such a friendship. He wounds Amoret even when defending her; and his well-intentioned protection leads him to be faithless to Belphoebe.
Arthur, the stronger and more controlled nature, has not temptations like those of Timias, and his friendship with Amoret and Emilia casts no shadow on the love for Gloriana to which his life is devoted.