Knowra The Faerie Queene The Faerie Queene An unfinished allegorical epic by Edmund Spenser, published in stages from 1590 to 1596. Its knights’ adventures dramatize virtues and celebrate Elizabeth I.
Edmund Spenser : An English poet whose major works include The Faerie Queene and The Shepheardes Calender. He composed the epic and dedicated it to Elizabeth I.
The Redcrosse Knight : The hero of Book I of The Faerie Queene, representing Holiness on a quest against evil. His encounters trace the testing and formation of the poem’s first virtue.
The Aeneid : Virgil’s Latin epic recounting Aeneas’s journey from Troy and the legendary origins of Rome. Spenser models national epic ambition on Virgil’s account of Rome’s beginnings.
The Legend of Holiness : The narrative design of Book I of The Faerie Queene, centered on the Redcrosse Knight. It offers the poem’s most sustained account of virtue tested through allegorical adventure.
English Renaissance literature : Literature written in England during the Renaissance, roughly from the late fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. The epic became one of the period’s most ambitious works in English.
Allegory : A mode of writing in which characters, events, or settings carry sustained meanings beyond their literal roles. The knights and their adventures embody moral and political ideas.
Una : A character in The Faerie Queene who represents truth and accompanies the Redcrosse Knight. Her separation from Redcrosse dramatizes how error misleads virtue.
Orlando Furioso : An Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto, published in its final version in 1532. Its intersecting adventures and enchanted episodes offer a major romance precedent.
The Legend of Chastity : The narrative design of Book III of The Faerie Queene, centered on Britomart. Britomart’s quest links chastity with desire, marriage, and the future of Britain.
Milton's Paradise Lost : John Milton’s epic poem, first published in 1667, recounting the Fall of humankind. Milton’s epic inherits and transforms Spenser’s English Protestant epic tradition.
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