In The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser set out to create a work that could never be rivaled in breadth and complexity. His magnificent poem spans religious and literary movements, exalts and denounces rulers at the same time, honors traditional poetic forms and creates new ones, all while telling a fantastic story of romance, heroism, morality, and glory. In book two, Sir Guyon, the knight of temperance, is led into hell, and tempted by the creature known as Mammon, but remains faithful to his temperate values. In stanzas 44-46 of book two, Spenser utilizes techniques of romance poetry to create an allegory between Mammon’s daughter and the Catholic Church, reflecting Reformation ideals of temperance in the Protestant faith.
The Faerie Queene is a work that subtly blends aspects of traditional epic and romance poetry. In stanzas 44-46, techniques of romantic poetry are employed to create the initial image of Mammon’s deceptively beautiful daughter. This initial and yet superficial image of a strikingly beautiful woman is important as we begin to look more deeply into the themes and messages of the passage. Lines such as 393, 397, and 398 paint for the reader this illustration of beauty (2.7.44-45). This Prima Facia woman, like the Catholic Church of the time, advertises only positives, while hiding a less pristine reality. Moving from stanza 44 and the first lines of stanza 45, where Mammon’s daughter is described and exalted, to the latter portions of stanzas 45 and 46, the reader becomes aware that all is not as it appears with this alluring vision, “Yet was not that
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same [beauty] her owne native hew, but wrought by art and counterfetted shew” (2.7.400-401). In fact, her false beauty masks a dark motive: “...
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...tant Movement. It grew in response to the lavishness of the hierarchy of the old church and the trade of what were essentially get-out-of-jail-free cards. This important Reformation value is critically examined and commented on throughout book two of The Faerie Queene where Spenser’s use of techniques of romance poetry reflect Reformation ideals of temperance in the Protestant faith and create an allegory between Mammon’s daughter and the Catholic Church. Sir Guyon’s brave temperance against the temptations of Mammon
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exalt this value, while the allegory of Mammon’s daughter as the Catholic church furthers the idea of temperance in Protestantism and intemperance in Catholicism. However, considering the same images as representing Elizabeth and her court demonstrates that Spenser also critically examines temperance within Protestantism as well.
Mercilla and Portia problematize the boundaries of these definitions. In the Proem to Book V of The Faerie Queen Spenser establishes his defi...
...David. “He still had the look in his eye, the pretty look. Maybe he really could see past her ugly face. Maybe what was inside her did matter to him more than anything else.” (279) By developing this relationship with David, it not only made Tally extremely happy; but she is able to understand the true meaning of what it is to be beautiful.
...ourneys, these men go in as an average man of the time, face a challenge that the Church thought a man of the day might experience, and come out purified and learned, as a man of those periods should behave. These stories are examples of how a life should be lived and the challenges that one may encounter. While the frames of these narratives change from fictitious to realistic according to the flow of Christianity-based, Northeastern literature, they each are pictures of the mentality of their times. As time progressed, so did the mentalities, which were heavily influenced by Christianity. This is evident in the slow removal of pagan beliefs in the supernatural monsters like dragons and giants into the more realistic literary frames. While all have their differences due to changing times, the hero's journey as a model for the everyday man is clear in these poems.
Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex: a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving.
What was the purpose of the Temperance Movement and Prohibition on alcohol? The Temperance Movement was an anti-alcohol movement. The Temperance Movement took place back in the early 20th century. The Christian abolitionists who fought slavery also prayed to the same God to end the scourge of alcohol. The purpose of the Temperance Movement was to try to abolish alcohol in the early 1900’s. “’We Sang Rock of Ages‘: Frances Willard Battles Alcohol in the late 19th Century” (Willard). The author the of literary piece is Frances Willard and the literary piece is an autobiography. America should get rid of alcohol because it ruins lives along with the family of that person who is an alcoholic. The article “’We Sang Rock of Ages’: Frances Willard Battles Alcohol in the late 19th Century” (Willard) reflects the temperance movement and the prohibition on alcohol in the 1920’s by banning the use of alcohol for any use other then medical use.
Mary Wroth alludes to mythology in her sonnet “In This Strange Labyrinth” to describe a woman’s confused struggle with love. The speaker of the poem is a woman stuck in a labyrinth, alluding to the original myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The suggestion that love is not perfect and in fact painful was a revolutionary thing for a woman to write about in the Renaissance. Wroth uses the poem’s title and its relation to the myth, symbolism and poem structure to communicate her message about the tortures of love.
Her beauty is very non-traditional: "features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen".
“The Knight’s Tale”, for example, uses the concept of a knight not only to parody the concept of the hero, but also to question the well-established courtly love convention. This last concept refers to a set of ideas about love that was enormously influential on the literature and culture of the medieval times for it gave men the chance to feel freely. Also, it gave women the opportunity to be an important element in the story – not only decorative. However, when scrutinizing the tale, the readers can realise that all the aspects of a knight’s love are exaggerated and conveyed throu...
lines two and three, the author makes an allusion to the Virgin Mary for visual imagery and
In the early parts of the 20th Century, Canada experimented with banning alcohol consumption. There were some exceptions to this, but most of Canada’s Provincial governments issued some sort of prohibitory laws. The exception being Québec who only prohibited hard liquor, meaning that they allowed the production and consumption of beverages, such as, beer. This drive towards prohibition started during the mid-19th Century. It all started during the Temperance Movement, when proponents voluntarily abstained from alcohol. This abstention was due to alcohol’s, perceived, moral downfalls. However, slowly, the various provinces reversed their restrictions on alcohol and moved from prohibition to system of coordination. There were several reasons for this change: lack of enforcement, lack of effectiveness in goal, change in public support or thought, and economic factors.
...ghthood within their story. Both poets remind the readers of the disparity between the ideals of chivalries presented in romances, and the reality of lived knighthood, highlighting how problematic the understanding of chivalry and Christianity (knighthood) could be for medieval audiences. Though chivalry shines as a brilliant light of the high civilization in the fourteenth century, both tales suggests that chivalry is at best a limited system, which achieves its brilliant at the cost of a distortion of natural life. It was part of the social and ethical system but did not take into account the entire range of human needs, mainly the fact of human morality and sense of human frailty. The context in which knights are depicted and celebrated in the medieval romance does not support a smooth connection between the harsh realities of a century of internecine strife.
Later in the story, the narrator builds the theme of religion by indirectly revealing a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This devotion is taken t...
Hale, John K. “Spenser’s Faerie Queene, 1. 11. 52 and 53". Explicator. 53.1 (1994): 6-8.
Villeponteaux, Mary. “Displacing Feminine Authority in The Faerie Queene.” Studies in English Literature 35:1 (1995) Winter 1995: 53-68.
He describes beauty as delicate and rare, unable to be established. He focuses on the lightheartedness of young girls, how they are caught up in beauty, and he warns them to be conscientious of the fact that their beauty will fade and that they cannot put all their hope on their beauty. At the same time, he encourages them to "practice" their beauty until it is gone, and he promises to celebrate that beauty as best he can, with all its value and frailty.