is generally compatible with the teaching of the common and vulgar pride in the power of this world’ Reformed church, and therefore with doctrines (cited Var 1.423). Readers today, who rightly query found in the Book of Common Prayer and the hom-any labelling of Spenser’s characters, may query just ilies, rather than as a system of beliefs. See J.N. Wall how the knight’s pride, if he is proud, is personified 1988:88–127. by Orgoglio. Does he fall through pride? Most cer-Traditional interpretations of Book I have been tainly he falls: one who was on horseback lies upon either moral, varying between extremes of psycho-the ground, first to rest in the shade and then to lie logical and spiritual readings, or historical, varying with Duessa; and although he staggers to his feet, he between particular and general readings. Both were soon falls senseless upon the ground, and finally is sanctioned by the interpretations given the major placed deep underground in the giant’s dungeon. classical poets and sixteenth-century romance writers. The giant himself is not ‘identified’ until after the For example, in 1632 Henry Reynolds praised The knight’s fall, and then he is named Orgoglio, not Faerie Queene as ‘an exact body of the Ethicke doc-Pride. Although he is said to be proud, pride is only trine’ while wishing that Spenser had been ‘a little one detail in a very complex description. In his size, freer of his fiction, and not so close riuetted to his descent, features, weapon, gait, and mode of fight-Morall’ (Sp All 186). In 1642 Henry More praised ing, he is seen as a particular giant rather than as a it as ‘a Poem richly fraught within divine Morality particular kind of pride. To name him such is to as Phansy’, and in 1660 offers a historical reading of select a few words – and not particularly interesting Una’s reception by the satyrs in I vi 11–19, saying ones – such as ‘arrogant’ and ‘presumption’ out of that it ‘does lively set out the condition of Chris-some twenty-six lines or about two hundred words, tianity since the time that the Church of a Garden and to collapse them into pride because pride is one became a Wilderness’ (Sp All 210, 249). Both kinds of the seven deadly sins. To say that the knight falls of readings continue today though the latter often through pride ignores the complex interactions of all tends to be restricted to the sociopolitical. An influ-the words in the episode. While he is guilty of sloth ential view in the earlier twentieth century, expressed and lust before he falls, he is not proud; in fact, he by Kermode 1971:12–32, was that the historical has just escaped from the house of Pride. Quite allegory of Book I treats the history of the true deliberately, Spenser seeks to prevent any such moral church from its beginnings to the Last Judgement identification by attributing the knight’s weakness in its conflict with the Church of Rome. According before Orgoglio to his act of ignorantly drinking the to this reading, the Red Cross Knight’s subjection enfeebling waters issuing from a nymph who, like to Orgoglio in canto vii refers to the popish captivity him, rested in the midst of her quest. of England from Gregory VII to Wyclif (about 300 Although holiness is a distinctively Christian years: the three months of viii 38; but see n); and the virtue, Book I does not treat ‘pilgrim’s progress from six years that the Red Cross Knight must serve the this world to that which is to come’, as does Bunyan, Faerie Queene before he may return to Eden refers but rather the Red Cross Knight’s quest in this world to the six years of Mary Tudor’s reign when England on a pilgrimage from error to salvation; see Prescott was subject to the Church of Rome (see I xii 1989. His slaying the dragon only qualifies him to 18.6–8n). While interest in the ecclesiastical history enter the antepenultimate battle as the defender of of Book I continues, e.g. in Richey 1998:16–35, the Faerie Queene against the pagan king (I xii 18), usually it is directed more specifically to its imme-and only after that has been accomplished may he diate context in the Reformation (King 1990a; and start his climb to the New Jerusalem. As a con-Mallette 1997 who explores how the poem appro-sequence, the whole poem is deeply rooted in the priates and parodies overlapping Reformation texts); human condition: it treats our life in this world, or Reformation doctrines of holiness (Gless 1994); under the aegis of divine grace, more comprehens-or patristic theology (Weatherby 1994); or Reforma-ively than any other poem in English. tion iconoclasm (Gregerson 1995). The moral allegory of Book I, as set down by Ruskin in The Stones of Venice (1853), remains gener- Temperance: Book II