Essay Archive - Spenser's "The Faerie Queene"
Spenser's "The 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....
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