The Faery Queene

Honestly, I have to say that the letter wasn’t very easy to understand, but thanks to the discussion we had in our last class I could get the idea.

According to my understanding, Spenser wrote about King Arthur because, in a way he wanted to express and demonstrate that Arthur was a brave knight who had manifold virtues. That’s the reason why Spenser wrote an allegory named “The Faery Queene”. An allegory is a story that has a hidden message, which has a moral, religious or personal meaning behind. Actually, Spenser wrote this letter to Sr. Raleigh, where he, through 6 virtues; Courtesy, Holiness, Justice, Friendship, Chastity, and Temperance tried to clarify an internal matter. In the story, every virtue was represented by a character.


I believe that he wrote the letter to Sr. Raleigh to protect himself from every bad circumstance he could live or maybe a miscomprehension by Queen Elizabeth. Spencer knew that Sr. Raleigh was a powerful man with strong influences, this way through this “mismessage” he wanted to represent a good image for him.