Title: Spenser's allegory of love
Description: 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.
Subjects: Sex in literature, Love in literature, Literature and society, Social ethics in literature, History and criticism, Influence, Body, Human, in literature, Allegory, Political and social views, English Epic poetry, History, Human body in literature, Spenser, edmund, 1552?-1599, Epic poetry, history and criticism, Ethics in literature
Places: England
People: Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599), Galen
Time periods: 16th century