SOURCE: Mallette, Richard. “The Protestant Art of Preaching in Book One of The Faerie Queene.” Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual, Vol. 7, edited by Patrick Cullen and Thomas P. Roche, Jr., pp. 3-25. New York: AMS Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Mallette examines Book I of The Faerie Queene in the context of English Reformation ideas about Protestant preachers and preaching.

At a privotal point in Spenser's Legend of Holiness, with Redcross cast into Orgoglio's dungeon and Una's spirits languishing, Arthur makes his ceremonious entrance into the poem. The scene in which he consoles Una and volunteers as her champion deserves closer attention than it has usually received, because the method Arthur employs “in saving Una from despair” (to quote a recent editor)¹ is firmly bound to Reformation ideas about the role of the preacher in the Protestant ordo salutis. The scene can therefore serve as the gateway...