Spenser, Edmund

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) was the poet of The Faerie Queene,  a long allegorical poem dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. The theme of the poem are the “twelue priuate morall vertues,” one for each of the twelve planned books, although he died halfway through the project.
The most famous books are Book I and Book III.  The first book tells the adventures of the knight of Holiness, the Redcrosse Knight (later revealed to be St. George).  Once he unites with Una (Christian Truth), he can conquer the dragon that represents all the evil in the world. The third book tells about the adventures of Britomart, whose virtue is chastity.  While she already has the ability to resist lust, the book slowly reveals her education on learning how to love. 
In recent years the fifth book has seen increasing importance. Its virtue is justice, and scholars—particularly postcolonial scholars—are interested in Spenser’s representation of English imperialism in Ireland, depicted in the poem. Spenser himself was a colonial administer with estates in Kilcolman, Ireland.  Spenser also write a prose dialogue entitled A View of the Present State of Ireland, which seems to suggest that the only way for English colonization can succeed in Ireland is to exterminate Gaelic culture.
==Stevens and Spenser==
In the essay “Effects of Analogy,” Stevens makes the case that certain analogies belong “to that large class of images of emotional original in which the nature of the image is analogous to the nature of the emotion from which is springs” (Collected Poetry and Prose 710). Such emotional images or emotional analogies are meant to recreate that same emotion in others. Allegorical poems, however, such as Pilgrim’s Progress or The Faerie Queene, do not use any analogies from this “large class” of images of emotional origin. Their effect on the reader derive, in part, from their being long poems, causing the reader a great variety of responses or sensations. Stevens, however, does not seem to think that allegory has any non-length related effects.