Spenser and the Invincible Armada: The Allegory of the Anglo-Spanish War in The Faerie Queene

Abstract: The victory of the English fleet over the Invincible Armada aroused enormous enthusiasm at all levels of the English society and fueled a triumphant atmosphere that contributed greatly to identifying the reign of Elizabeth I with a real golden age in the history of the island. The long-term consequences of the victory sank the Spanish hopes for maritime hegemony and definitively consecrated England as a great power on the world chessboard. The Elizabethan naval enterprise is represented in the main English poem of the Sixteenth century, The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. Commonly considered an allegory of the reign of the queen of the Tudor family, The Faerie Queene is incomplete. It includes six books, written between 1590 and 1596, out of the twelve planned by the author, who illustrated his project in a letter addressed to Sir Walter Raleigh. He also revealed to Raleigh that the fairy queen was to be identified with Elizabeth. In Spenser’s vision, Elizabeth embodied all the moral virtues that made her kingdom a prosperous and happy regime, because it focused on harmony within society, favored by her justice and righteousness.