Scholars have often felt that Books III and IV of Spenser's Faerie Queene were loosely, almost carelessly, structured. Thomas P. Roche, Jr., seeks to show by a close examination of the text that all four books have a logical structure, and that the apparently randomly selected episodes form one complex allegory. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book argues that current criticism tends to take the mythology of love either too innocently or too skeptically and therefore distorts the complex roles played by the god of love in longer narrative poems and discursive works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

"As it is written, 'Our God is a consuming fire' (Heb. 12:29); so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work." --Amma Syncletica, fourth century. What could be more natural and timely than ... Spiritual wisdom drawn from a woman's world; word paintings expressed in the poetry of mother-daughter dialogue? Home and hearth lessons in eternal truth, firmly grounded in day-to-day experience? Small scenarios of inquiry and response, deep questioning and fledgling faith, that reverberate with quiet insight? Dialogues that reflect modern levels of questioning; knots of paradox that require a woman's patient attention and inner care to tease out true, gentle wisdom? A poetic exploration of the large and the small issues of women's life-nested, braided, interwoven, never fully unraveled-in precise language that retains the mystery but awakens the soul? Enter into the world of Becoming Flame: Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom Dialogues with questions at the end for individual and group study.