Allegory in Renaissance literature

By the 16th century allegory was firmly linked to what is known as the Elizabethan world picture, taken from Ptolemy and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. This theory postulates the existence of three worlds:

• The sublunary world we live in, subject to change.
• The celestial world, the world of the planets and stars, unchanging.
• The supercelestial world, where angels and the Godhead are.

Pico della Mirandola discusses the interrelations between these three worlds in the introduction to his Heptaplus: 'For euen as the...three worlds being girt and buckled with the bands of concord doe by reciprocall libertie, interchange their natures; the like do they also by their appellations. And this is the principle from whence springeth & groweth the discipline of allegoricall sense' (translated by Pierre de la Primaudaye in The French Academie, London, 1618, p. 671).

The most famous example of an allegorical work from the Renaissance is probably Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In book 4 Agape has three sons, Priamond (from one), Diamond (from two), and Telamond (from téleios, perfect, but emended by Jortin to Triamond in his 1734 edition). The three sons correspond to the three worlds, born of love. Cambell's battle with the three sons is an allegory of "man's battle with the three worlds to find his place in the universe, to establish harmony in God's creation, and ultimately to achieve salvation"Thomas P. Roche:......
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