EDMUND SPENSER’S “THE FAERIE QUEEN” AS “CONTINUED ALLEGORY”: FROM EMBLEMATIC AND CONCEITED WRITING TO SYMBOLICAL

The article aims to direct attention of the Russian readers to the rich- ness of Spenser’s allegorical palette in his poem “The Faerie Queene.” The words “allegory” and “symbol” are employed here in their modern sense, with reference to the definitions discussed by scholars of literature and philosophy. In particular, the article draws on A. F. Losev’s and S. S. Averintsev’s studies of symbol and the neighboring semantic-and-structural categories (allegory, personification, artistic image, metaphor, and myth). Some of these terms were divorced from one another during the Romantic period. For Spenser, the borderline between allegory and sym- bol seems to be quite fuzzy: both of them convey hidden meaning. The discussion of passages from “The Faerie Queene” speaks for Spenser’s departure from the pure al- legory. His “continued allegory” embraces emblems, extended metaphors (conceits), mythical and symbolic figures.