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Emblems of Temperance in The Faerie Queene, Book II

This chapter discusses the emblems of temperance in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Book II. It was Spenser’s invariable practice to build into the imagery of The Faerie Queene, at strategic points, the traditional emblems of the virtue whose legend he was writing. These emblems must once have helped to make at least the main drift of his allegory widely intelligible; but unfortunately it no longer works like that. In Book II, where emblems are heavily relied on for structure as well as for imagery, either their existence is now not even noticed, or else they are treated as mere surface decoration. Yet they are essential to Spenser’s method, which is oblique, working indirectly through details. The chapter focuses on perhaps the most common emblem of temperance in The Faerie Queene: the pouring of water into wine. This emblem makes the least obvious appearance, but only because it is developed on a scale not expected; it is hidden, only because it is most deeply structural.