Literary Analysis Of The Faerie Queene By Edmund Spencer

The Faerie Queene is a very long, but interesting poem. The author, Edmund Spencer creates an allegory to present the real world as he sees it. This poem was written to revolve around holiness and Christianity. With high hopes to follow serve the lord, Redcrosse, the king of knights goes through many difficult and unexpected obstacles. Redcrosse is faced with fighting the dragon of all evil. Unfortunately, he was barely ready to face the dragon. His dedication to prove himself led him to a mini downfall as he followed Duessa and her dwarf. Duessa is one of the main characters who is very deceitful and evil. The three of them got lost deep in what Redcrosse thought was the forest. The trees were most definitely a transformation from a spell from the evil Duessa herself. As they go on their adventures, they eventually came across Archimago, a malicious magician. He comes off as a nice old man to them. With lack of knowledge of who he really is, the three falls under his trick and goes into his home.

I chose to analyze line 9 of Book 1, Canto 2. In these nine lines, Archimago shows how evil he can really get. He mainly manipulated Redcrosse and una because he was disappointed with the failure of his evil spirits.

The Faerie Queene and Beowulf both use dragons as a very important source in their poems. The dragons are used to symbolize all the bad that happens in life. In each story, the dragon represents its unique characteristics. Throughout the poems, the dragons are mentioned to either make or break the characters. They can either bring out the good or bad within the characters. In each story the dragons are pointed out as evil creatures that must be defeated. One imagery that is used in both poems are the dragons being accompanied by fire. This is also a symbolization of evilness.

The Faerie Queen is referred to as an Allegory because of its extended use of metaphors. In then poem each character represents something historical or a standard. In his poem, Spencer uses kings and queens in order to represent historical values. He also uses metaphorical terms in order to push forward his views on the moral values of Christianity. Spencer has his own has a unique sonnet form, it follows the rhythm: a b a b b c b c c d c d e e. Spencer is very huge on Holiness in book one, he represents the history of Christianity as a whole. He uses people, places and more in order to give his readers a better imagery of the story that he presents. The house of Holiness and the house of House of pride are both symbolic to Christians and Christianity.

This poem is full of mysteries. It is a very interesting read. Throughout this story many of the characters seemed to be left in the dark on some things. For instance, Redcrosse, the king fell for the evil witch, and also fell for the many tricks of Antimago. It is very interesting how he doubles some of the characters, for instance, how Antimago doubled una in order to trick Redcrosse into believing that she was with another knight. Spencer doubles characters to give out a bigger lesson on the perception of real life and real people. Spencer is a person who thinks outside of the box. All his stories/poems have deep meanings and values are always expressed throughout them. Spencer’s choice of words and more shows that understanding honor is very important in life. In order to have values and morals, honor must be present. 

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