In the House of Holiness - Faerie Queene, Book 1, Canto 10

Speranza's poems

Oscar Wilde's mother was born Jane Frances Elgee, though she later morphed her middle name into Francesca. As a poet, before her marriage, she adopted the pen name "Speranza." More than just some vague personification of Hope, I suspect the future Lady Wilde was thinking of The Faerie Queene when she took her pseudonym.

In canto 9, Spenser lays on the allegorical personages thickly. There's never a doubt about who an individual might be. Una takes the knight to the house of Cælia, with her daughters the Graces, Fidelia, Speranza, and Charissa (Faith, Hope, and Charity).

Then we meet the various servants who attend on Heaven: Humilitá, Zele, Reverence (Humility, Zeal, Reverence). But the real journey in this part of the poem, where—finally—no one is in peril, is the education of the Redcrosse Knight, who (though our allegory of the soul seeking holiness) needs to be prepared. In a way, this is the didactic poem I feared.

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