Allegory has a central role in the Spenserian agenda, and indeed, Edmund Spencer brings a new style and approaches toward allegory. Spencer wrote "The Faerie Queen" to illustrate his concept of the role of allegory. Spencer works is an enormous effort to reconstruct a framework around the individual; his idea is that the individual should look for God by himself. In an era when there was a struggle between two world orders, the Roman Catholic Church defined allegory as dangerous, but "The Faerie Queen" was Spencer''s major contribution to English poetry and has Christian motifs and symbols in it that has inspired other
poet later on.
In the first sentence of the "Letter to the Authors" Edmund Spencer emphasizes the difficulty to write an allegory in England of Elizabeth the first, and that he is afraid that the use of allegory will cause a religious chaos, because most Catholics don’t know how to interpret allegory in the right way.
"Sir knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed, and this booke of mine, which I have entituled the Faery Queene, being a continued Allegory, or darke conceit, I haue thought
good aswell for auoyding of gealous opinions and misconstructions…" (Letter to the Authors)
In the "Letter" Spencer explains why he chose to use in his allegory characters that connected to English mythology, he claims that these characters are very familiar to the English
reader and that he is familiar with their good virtues, and the use of that characters makes it easy to the reader to understand that allegory.
"To some I know this Methode will seeme displeasaunt, which had rather haue good discipline deliuered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they vse, then thus clowdily enrapped in Allegoricall deuises." (Letter to the Authors)
Allegory was brought by Spencer for protestant use, and as a poet Spencer prefers the poet over the
historiographer. The poet, he explains, do not attaches himself to facts and chronological order for the events, but he analyzes the past deeply and goes back into it.
"For the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an Historiographer. For an Historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions, but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, euen where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and diuining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing Analysis of all" (Letter to the Authors)
The allegory writing style was banned by the Catholic Church, they considered this kind of writing as a heresy. The only texts that should be read by the believers is the Holy Scriptures, other texts should be banned. Spencer, in contrary to that refers to allegory as educational and delights, it forces the reader to deal with the text and to reach the right conclusion, it encourage the reader to ask questions about religion and belief, and can also cause him to doubt his belief or to doubt the way he believe; for that reason the Catholic Church feared from that new fashion.
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