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Why was The Faerie Queene written?

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Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene as a grand religious, moral, and political allegory intended to span 12 books. Each book was designed to follow the adventures of a knight representing a specific moral virtue, such as Holiness, Temperance, or Justice, all serving the Faerie Queene, who symbolized both Glory and Queen Elizabeth I.12

Beyond its structural design, the poem served as a paradigm of human experience, framing the moral life as a quest or pilgrimage. Spenser viewed the work as a reflection of the intense conflict of his era between Protestant England and Roman Catholic Spain, treating the struggle between good and evil as an immediate, real-world concern. By utilizing the romance form, Spenser sought to exalt generous virtues and explore the complexities of ethics, love, and political life during the Elizabethan period.2