Spenser's Allegory of Love

Book excerpt: Spenser's Allegory of Love approaches the major characters in Books III, IV, and V of The Faerie Queene as fictional personages who function psychically according to Renaissance sexual psychology and physically according to Renaissance sexual physiology. This approach enables readings of the quests in their own peculiar, allegorical way as imitations of actions. For each of the questers - Britomart, Florimell, Scudamour, and Timias - union with a loved one is the goal; and that goal is achieved, however problematically, in each of the quests. When the interwoven quests, which begin in Book III, continue through Book IV, and, with Britomart's quest, into Book V, are separated out and explicated, these three books of Spenser's Faerie Queene can be read so as to constitute a social vision.