The letter addressed to Sir Walter Raleigh, written by Spenser was very difficult for me to understand at the begining because it was very hard to figure it out what was the intention and also was very hard to understand the meaning of some old fashioned words, but even though all that difficult process that I had reading it, at the end, I could understand in a very general way the idea of this letter.
At a first glance what I understood from this letter taken from one part of the "Faeri Queene", is that this historicall fiction has an intention or a hidden message which was to glorify Queen Elizabeth, and also to show the virtuous image of a gentleman or noble person by using the much loved Arthurian knights. The main aim of Spencer with this letter as I said before is to demonstrate human virtues as well as the lives of knights, using them as a way to convey their virtues. This letter, from my point of view also represents a demonstration of political favor with the Queen.
In the letter Spencer showed to his readers the importance of six virtues, holinness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy, with all those virtues he expressed the representation of "magnificence" and perfection. What this letter represented to me is the importance of the good things in life, that's why it's a direct characterization of Queen Elizabeth, because Spencer wanted to demonstrate in Elizabeth's figure the goodness to define the eternal struggle in all of us; the good versus evil.
Through this letter to Sir Walter Raleigh and our Literature course I was able to understand the real intention of this passage of the Faerie Queen and why it's an allegory, because it symbolizes and answer to Catholics against Protestantism and the Queen. Spencer uses the character of Sir Walter Raleigh as a symbol and meaning, and each one symbolizes other aspect of the powers and factors that were in that era in the crisis that I mentioned before, the conflict between the Catholic Church and the protestants.
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