Book I

Proem: In the opening stanza, Spenser contrasts his old pastoral Muse ("in lowly Shepheards weedes") with his new Muse of epic poetry. He plans to include both fierce wars and faithful loves. In stanza 3 he talks about Venus and Mars, a prime pairing of opposites: goddess of love and god of war.

Canto i: The Redcross Knight and Una are described in starkly contrasting ways, and they react in opposite ways to their first adventure, the encounter with Error. Note pairings of wisdom and virtue (stanzas 12-13), faith and force (19).

Canto ii: Evil and Good are an unresolvable opposition, but they have much in common here because evil is always an imitation or parody of good. Compare Archimago the false hermit with Contemplation in x.46 (i.e. canto x, stanza 46). Duessa imitates Una.

Cantovii: The giant Orgoglio (Pride) is a bad union of earth and air (9). Compare with Redcross's true nature, revealed at x.60-61--son of earth but destined for sainthood.

Canto viii: Prince Arthur conquers Orgoglio through a combination of strength and humility (2, 7-8, 22), and Pride is deflated (24). Contrast Duessa (who calls herself "Fidessa," faithful) with her cup of poison (14) and the true Fidelia (Hope) at x.12-13, holding a cup with a serpent in it.

Canto ix: Despair is a false imitation of humility, really another form of Pride. Note the way Despair gets inside Redcross's mind--really he is inside the hero's mind.

Canto x: Dame Caelia (heaven, sky) is actually quite down-to-earth, a true combination of earth and sky, human and divine. She both prays and does good works, resolving the theological opposition between faith and works (1-3). The holy characters are described in very physical terms (e.g. Charissa--Charity--at 30-31).

Book II

Canto i: The opposite of Temperance is Acrasia (bad mixture)--again evil parodies good. Mordant (death-giving) and Amavia (life-loving) are radical opposites and unable to achieve complementary union, so they fall under the power of Acrasia and die.

Canto ii: The prime reference point for Book I was the Bible, esp. the Book of Revelation. Here the prime reference is Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, where the philosopher argues that virtue is always a golden mean between two opposites (e.g. courage hits a balance between cowardice and foolhardiness). Spenser allegorizes Aristotle's theory with three sisters: Elissa (defect, too little), Perissa (excess, too much) and Medina, the Golden Mean (27-31), who brings concord out of discord.

Canto xii: Acrasia's Bower of Bliss (43-52) appears to be a natural paradise but is actually artificial--a demonic parody of the true relation between art and nature. Note that Guyon's guide, the Palmer, carries a caduceus (41), the symbol of Mercury whose two intertwining snakes represent the union of opposites. Acrasia is almost like a mother figure, but she sucks the soul out of her youthful victims (73-82).

Book III

Paradoxically, the knight of Chastity, Britomart, spends all her time chasing through the world looking for a man (Artegall). Chastity is not here a cold virtue but a virtue that protects true love and guides it toward its proper end: marriage and procreation.

Canto ii: Spenser examines the relation between self and other in describing how Britomart uses a magic mirror to catch a glimpse of the man she will marry (18-26).

Canto vi: The first part of this canto brings together the antithetical goddesses Venus (love) and Diana (chastity) and their human counterparts: Amoret and Belphoebe (11-29). The Garden of Adonis is a true natural paradise, a source of fertility. Though it is subject to the endless cycle of life and death, the Garden achieves through that cycle a kind of eternity, and Adonis is "eterne in mutabilitie" (47). The fascinating tale of Cupid and Psyche is briefly told (49-50), signifying a difficult union of masculine and feminine, divine and human, erotic love and procreative marriage.

Book IV

Canto x: The Temple of Venus is a place of both friendship and love, suggesting a necessary interaction between these two types of affection. The figure of Concord appears here (34). Venus herself is described as a mysterious veiled statue symbolizing the androgynous union of the two sexes (39-42). Scudamour comes here to take away his beloved Amoret (52-58). He does so against her will, yet with the encouragement of the goddess.

Book V

Canto vii: Britomart experiences a vision in the Temple of Isis (12-16) in which Isis subdues Osiris (the crocodile) but then yields to him and bears his child. This is another image of masculine-feminine complementarity. Artegall has been defeated by the Amazon Radigund, who has imprisoned him and dressed him in women's clothes. Britomart kills Radigund (24-34) and frees Artegall from bondage, restoring the right order of male dominion (37-42). Both the vision in the temple and the rescue examine the possibility of a kind of equality within the accepted hierarchical relationship between husband and wife.

Book VI

Canto i: Calidore, the knight of Courtesy, is both gentle and strong (2).

Canto ix: Courtesy is a virtue of the Court, but here the hero finds himself in the country, among shepherds. The pastoral poetry that Spenser said he was abandoning at the beginning of his epic claims him again at the end. Calidore meets a lovely shepherd lass, Pastorella (14), who of course is really a princess, and falls in love with her. Pastorella unites high and low.

Canto x: Calidore sees the Graces dancing to the music of a shepherd (Colin--Spenser himself?). In the middle of their ring, instead of Venus, is a shepherdess (15-16), implying again a communion of human and divine, heavenly and earthly, as Colin interprets it (25-27). At the end of this canto, Pastorella is kidnapped by some Brigands (39-44).

Canto xi: The Brigands get into a fight and slaughter their captives. Pastorella is protected from death by the captain of the Brigands (30-31) and rescued by Calidore (44-50). The pastoral world is beautiful and peaceful, but when it is attacked by villains, it's handy to have a knight from the court around to kill them. Here again we see an intersection of the epic and pastoral genres.

Book VII, Mutabilitie Cantos

Canto vi: Mutabilitie (change) goes up to the throne of Jove and challenges him, saying she is the true ruler of the world (24-35). After an inconclusive argument with Jove, Mutabilitie appeals to a higher judge, the goddess Nature.

Canto vii: Nature appears, another image of androgynous union (5-6), as bright as Christ revealed in His glory on Mt. Tabor (7)--the ultimate manifestation of divine and human perfectly united. Mutabilitie argues that everything is changing and hence subject to her, but Nature answers that within this change an eternal providential pattern is worked out (58). Her own androgynous nature symbolizes this conjunction of time and eternity.