LIT 251
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Faerie Queene, Book I, Proem and Cantos 1-6

Spenser is attempting to do something very interesting and unusual in The Faerie Queene.  He's writing an allegory, a kind of writing that is supposed to work on several levels.

First, there's the human level.  Spenser is telling a story in Book I about a knight and a lady who are essentially going out on their first date.  So, you can read Book I of The Faerie Queene as a story about the first stages of love – about a man (Redcrosse Knight) and a woman (Una) getting to know one another.

Second, there's the moral level.  Spenser intends his poem to teach his readers about virtue.  On this level, Book I is about holiness.

Third, there's the historical level.  Within the human story and its moral lessons, Spenser also reenacts or refers to important events in recent English history (such as the Spanish Armada).  This level isn't always present, but if events seem to begin to sound like some great event in English history, they are probably meant to sound that way.

So, as you read Spenser's poem, you should try to see all the levels and move back and forth between them.

In addition, Renaissance England was influenced by two different schools of thought – humanism and Calvinism.

Humanism was initially an educational reform movement.  Humanists were optimistic about what human beings could do (that's why they're called humanists), and they thought that education was the key to getting human beings to reach their full potential.  They were interested in new technologies, new human accomplishments, and new realms of knowledge (e.g., the printing press, the circumnavigation of the earth, and physics).

Calvinism, on the other hand, was very pessimistic about human nature.  According to Calvinist thinking, human beings are all damned, but some few people are chosen, more or less randomly, by God to be saved (the Protestant notion of predestination).  All good comes from God, and human beings are hopelessly depraved, perverted sinners.

These two schools of thought might seem to be contradictory (since one believes that human beings are capable of much good and the other believes that human beings are capable of nothing good), but in Renaissance England, many writers and thinkers somehow reconciled them to each other.  Spenser, for example, writes The Faerie Queene in order to educate the leaders of his day to be better people (a decidedly humanist project), but there are some unanswered questions about how Calvinist Spenser may have been deep down.

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. On the human level, what is happening?  How is the story of Redcrosse Knight and Una unfolding?  In what ways do they behave realistically on a psychological level?  How is their relationship typical of the early stages of love?  How does Spenser seem to view love?
2. On the moral level, what is happening?  If Redcrosse represents holiness, what is holiness?  Is Redcrosse just a pure, cut-out figure of holiness?  Does he start out holy?  Does he have to learn to be holy?  How does Spenser seem to view holiness?  Is it something that we're born with?  Is it something that we have to struggle to achieve?  How hard is it to achieve?  What are the obstacles in the way?  Does Spenser seem to have primarily a humanist or a Calvinist attitude toward virtue (or a combination of the two)?
3. In what way might the story of Redcrosse and Una work on the historical level?  Who is Redcrosse Knight supposed to be?  Who carries a shield with a red cross?  What might Una (Latin for "one") represent historically?  What might Archimago and Duessa represent?  What recent religious and social events for Spenser might be being imitated by having Redcrosse and Una separated by Duessa and Archimago?

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