the faerie queene · spenser

Edmund Spenser's vast allegorical romance, published from 1590, was meant to 'fashion a gentleman' through twelve books of knights, each embodying a virtue. Book I follows the Redcrosse Knight, Holiness, through error, pride, despair and the House of Holiness to his fight with the dragon, an allegory of Protestant faith and of the English church.

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, edited by Thomas P. Roche and C. Patrick O'Donnell (Penguin Books, 1987). Read over two sessions, Sophomore Spring at Torrey Honors: Book I only.