In many ways The Faerie Queene presents a unique challenge to the English reader. It can be described as epic, romantic or fantasy and covers a wide range of topics religious and romantic, political and spiritual, Christian and pagan. It is also incomplete, leaving the resolution of the separate narrative open to conjecture. Furthermore, it is a poem that refuses to reveal itself in a single sitting; demanding more from the reader than usual. MacCaffrey describes the challenge to the reader as "Say no to plagiarism." Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "The characters, including the heroes, move primarily in the horizontal plane, but Spenser's readers have repeatedly drawn their attention to the upper and lower plane limits of reality which are also the sources of the poem's truth. This dimension vertical is ordinarily beyond the horizon of the characters, but visible to us as always when a distance develops between fiction and reader, the effect is to make us aware of the fiction itself and to reflect on the nature and relevance of fictions"Interpreting the allegory in The Faerie Queene is not simply a task of cracking a code, but a matter of relating to the Spenserian, Elizabethan, and fairy worlds to make sense of and thus bring together the poem's carefully structured layers and meanings. Both Spenser's contemporaries and his modern audience will likely know when they approach The Faerie Queene that what they are reading is an allegory. Allegory as a literary device evolved from the classical method of interpreting the world through figurative means with deities and myths, combined with the (somewhat simplistic) progression from simile to metaphor to allegory. Allegory was used extensively in the Bible; thereafter the technique was regarded as one with moral intentions and was used throughout the medieval period from Dante and popular novels such as The Romance of the Rose to Chaucer. Thus Elizabethans would have been fully aware of the allegorical style of The Faerie Queene, as are modern readers whose copies are invariably preceded by Spenser's famous letter to Sir Walter Raleigh. So we should assume that Spenser did not intend to confuse his readers in any way, but to use allegory as a more suitable technique to espouse his ideas and views on contemporary Elizabethan society. Therefore the reader must carry out the task of following the narrative in Fairy Land. as well as being aware on another level of Spenser's goals to "mould a gentleman or noble person in a virtuous and gentle discipline" based on Protestant Christianity and glorify, likewise, the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Book 1 of The Faerie Queene can be examined to highlight the demands placed on the reader in interpreting the allegory. As MacCaffrey explains, "In the epistemological allegory of Book 1, Spenser forces both his reader and his hero to confront the duplicity of appearances." This "doubleness of appearances" is mainly represented by the roles and differences of Una and Duessa. The reader already knows that Redcrosse is 'holiness' from the introductory quatrain and must keep this in mind to understand the meaning of the problems he must overcome. Duessa, Abessa, and Archimago are, for Spenser, allegorical representations of the Catholic Church – aimed specifically at deceiving Redcrosse and the reader, for Redcrosse is in many ways the Christian, or more precisely, Protestant everyman. His quest for truth and holy glory is something that Spenser sees as every man's duty and it is the forces of Catholicism that stand in his way. But Catholicism is notSpenser's only evil in the poem; Islam, represented by the 3 "Sarazins" brothers, is seen as faithless (Sansfoy), lawless (Sansloy) and joyless (Sansjoy). There would have been very few problems in interpreting these names for Spenser's audience as any reader of such a poem would most likely have a rudimentary knowledge of the poem's names (Latin origins); however the modern English reader may not understand the meaning of the name without secondary material. Understanding the names in The Faerie Queene is always helpful in the early stages of reading as they provide a "shortcut" to the allegorical meaning of the characters. Another problem for the modern reader is the blatant and consistent attacks on anything non-Protestant. , be they Catholic, Muslim or without faith. As a prominent Elizabethan, Spenser wrote with the support of the political and religious power base, and his views would have been silently applauded or opposed. However, modern English readers live in a society where multiculturalism is publicly celebrated and religious intolerance officially unacceptable. In Northern Ireland, for example, studying the allegory of The Faerie Queene would be a highly controversial issue as celebrating the poem would clearly constitute an attack on Catholicism in an area of ​​the world where religious differences can cost lives. Equally unacceptable would be to support a poem that condemned Islam as lacking law, faith and joy in a British society with an established Muslim community which would be deeply offended. While it is impossible to criticize Spenser for lacking 21st century sensitivity and enlightenment, a new task for the reader is to take Spenser's goals and give them universal meaning. This is dangerous in terms of developing an exclusive interpretation (i.e. attempting to publish a book that defines a universal interpretation), but the allegory of The Faerie Queene should be interpreted personally so that it means something to each individual reader. This may mean accepting Fidessa-Duessa as the personification of falsehood, but ignoring her being the Whore of Babylon, or perhaps accepting her as the Whore of Babylon but rejecting that figure as a representation of the Catholic Church. Likewise, Sansfoy does not have to be Muslim to represent the madness of being lawless. This selective interpretation may break the "completeness" of Spenser's poem, but the process itself would be a worthwhile experience. For such a personal interpretation to occur, first the reader must fully understand Spenser's intentions. The crux of this task lies in navigating the "vertical axis" mentioned by MacCaffrey. Redcrosse does not symbolize a fixed concept or figure. We have seen that he is the reader's ally in the problems he must overcome, making him in a sense an everyman, but he is clearly not just that. Spenser fashioned him to represent holiness, although this definition should be treated with care since he is not holiness itself, but a man who possesses holiness. There are characters, like Malbecco (Jealousy) in Book 3, who are concepts in themselves and One as Truth represents this type of allegorical figure. Whenever she is with Redcrosse he has the "real Christian truth"; when she is absent he is prey to the evils of Duessa and Archimago. Redcrosse possesses holiness and courage but lacks experience; at the beginning of book 1 he is described as longing for glory: "his heart has earned / to prove his might in brave batell". This gives us the impression of youthful striving: he desires glory in battle, thus suggesting that he has not yet achieved it, 1978.