Spenser and Allegory

Abstract

This essay examines The Faerie Queene’s relationship to the tradition of the allegorical epic. Drawing comparisons with Ariosto and Tasso, it demonstrates how a hermeneutic originally developed to interpret Classical texts in moral or political terms came to influence the composition of early modern heroic poetry and inform the concept of allegory itself. However, as Spenser’s ‘Letter to Raleigh’ indicates, traditional habits of allegorical interpretation threatened the proliferation of politically dangerous ‘misconstructions’ of the text. Hence The Faerie’s Queene’s self-reflexive preoccupation with its own exegesis and the development of the narrator’s role as a simultaneously reliable and evasive expositor. Analysis of the diverse rhetorical strategies Spenser employs to meet the conflicting demands of his project discloses how it operates as both ‘continued Allegory’ and ‘darke conceit’.