SOURCE: Lewis, C. S. “The Faerie Queene.” In Spenser's Critics: Changing Currents in Literary Taste, edited by William R. Mueller, pp. 206-32. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1959.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1936, Lewis discusses the various levels of moral and philosophical allegory in The Faerie Queene.

Let us return to the Knight and the Lady in the opening stanzas [of The Faerie Queene.] The knight has a red cross on a silver shield; the lady is leading a lamb. The lamb has puzzled many readers; but we now know¹ that it had a real function in earlier versions of the legend of St. George, and (what is much more important) we know that the lady was commonly represented leading her lamb in the pageants of St. George and the dragon. In other words, the two figures which meet us at the beginning of The Faerie Queene...