Religion
The Faerie Queene was written during a time of religious and political controversy – the Reformation. After taking the throne following the death of her half-sister Mary, Elizabeth changed the official religion of the nation to Protestantism (“Mary” 687). The plot of book one is similar to John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, which was about the persecution of the Protestants and how Catholic rule was unjust. (McCabe 41) Spenser includes the controversy of Elizabethan church reform within the epic. Gloriana has godly English knights destroy Catholic continental power in books one and five (Heale 8). Spenser also embodies many of his villains with “the worst of what Protestants considered a superstitious Catholic reliance on deceptive images” (McCabe 39). He ends up showing us with the epic that all religions are unclear in some way, and that although we as humans strongly desire this clarity, it is impossible (McCabe 39).
Read more about this topic: Sir Guyon
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“The cloister and the observatory saint
Take comfort in about the same complaint.
So science and religion really meet.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It’s almost impossible to deal with a crazy man, except that he does have religious beliefs, and the world of Islam will be damaged if a fanatic like him should commit murder in the name of religion against 60 innocent people.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)