Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" When Edmund Spenser wrote his romantic epic The Faerie Queene, he intended for it to be an allegory. An allegory is a literary device used to give a literary work two different meanings. One meaning is easily understood, but the second meaning is expressed through a more subtle approach. In a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser wrote, “Sir knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed, and this booke of mine, which I have entituled the Faery Queene, being a continued Allegory, or dark conceit...” (514). In the letter, he is explaining to the readers that it is an allegory, so that they will