THE REPRESENTATION OF THE MONARCH
The representation of the monarch in the Renaissance poetry goes with the idea that the ancient trobadours used this kind of poetry to metaphorizing all their rivalries in social, economic and political competitors. They used this kind of poetry to describe the courtly society during that time and all the rewards that a "serve" could gain according to system of patronage and that allows form of social mobility, so the passage from one political status to another one. So, the love lyrics could express the realties of service and recompense with which all the trobadours had to fight with.
In effect, during the period of Elizabeth I, the Queen was unmarried to preserve her symbolic and real value during the transactions, and she encouraged the trobadours to use an amorous vocabulary to express ambition. Poems and speeches at royal tilts and entertainments as well as complimentary letters and verse all expressed social, political, and economic suits in the language of love, metaphorizing the ambition.
It is commonly acknowledged that although Elizabeth I vowed herself to a life of perpetual virginity, she entered into a symbolic marriage with England as her husband. She was known to style herself as the virgin mother of her people.
This idea of the Queen seen as the pure and fair Diana can be seen in the poem of one of the most important followers of Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, in "Praisd be Dianas faire and harmles light".
Diana was the Latin goddess of the moon, and Walter Raleigh is imagining a shepherd praising the moon throughout this poem. Ralegh's poem depicts Elizabeth's goddess-like stature and the correspondingly exalted stature of her retinue. So by calling the moon Diana (talking about the moon as if the moon were a person) the poem is an example of Personification.
As we can see, in this poem, Raleigh is representing and comparing the figure of Elizabeth as the one of the goddess Diana. In...