The term “Allegory”:-
In an allegory, there lies a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one
.The events and persons which are described in an allegory are made to have a
double meaning –one in relation to the real person, and the other to vices or
virtues: “As a rule, allegory is a story in verse or prose with a double
meaning: a primary or surface meaning; and a secondary or under the surface
meaning. It is a story, therefore, that can be read, understood and interpreted
at two levels. It is thus, closely related to the fable and the parable” (J. A.
Cuddon ). The use of allegory was the fashion at the time of Spenser and he
carried it to a greater extreme than any other poet in English.
“Faerie Queene”as an allegory
:- Spenser’s The Faerie
Queene is an epic romance in the form of medievalism through which he
carries out his moral purpose by turning romance into allegory. In his letter
to his friend Sir Walter Raleigh Spenser himself specifies that his Book which
he has entitled The Faerie Queene is “continued allegory, darke conceit”
and of the purpose of the allegory, he says is “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle
discipline.” Here “drake” possibly implies obscurity of meaning because the
poem is replete with full of obscurity. Being an allegory, the characters in
the poem are types of vices and virtues. The knights of each Book whose
adventures the books deal with personify some virtues which are Holiness,
Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, Courtesy and Constancy. These
virtues are among those of twelve virtues which Aristotle enumerates in his Nicomachen
Ethics and Spenser possibly came to know of Aristotelian virtues through
Franscesco Piccolomoni. The Book I deals chiefly with the virtue of Holiness. The Red Cross Knight, the
protagonist in the Book I, personifies the virtue of Holiness. Like other
books, the moral allegory in the Book I of The Faerie Queene is very continuous
and prominent whereas other two allegories both religious and historico—political
are discontinuous and somewhat ambiguous too.
