SOURCE: "That True Glorious Type," in The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study, Columbia University Press, 1963, pp. 116-46.

In the following excerpt from a study of Spenser's poetry, Nelson analyzes Spenser's use of allegorical types to convey his meaning. He focuses on Spenser's use of Queen Elizabeth as "that true glorious type" of gentleness and nobility.

In the strange and various forest of The Faerie Queene many lose their way and succumb at last to the monster Error or, worse still, to exasperation and boredom. Omens for the journey are particularly unpropitious if the traveler enters upon it guided by the Aristotelian dictum that plot is the "first principle, and, as it were, the soul" of an epic poem, for here it will lead him only into a morass. He is better off if he comes armed, like the Red Cross Knight, with faith, faith in the book...