Tempering the Time: A Temporal Approach to Phaedria and Mammon in Spenser’s Legend of Temperance.

This article analyzes Edmund Spenser’s Book II of *The Faerie Queene*, focusing on how the virtue of temperance is portrayed as a temporal discipline rather than mere restraint. It examines the episodes of Phaedria and Mammon as allegories of contrasting temporal distortions: Phaedria’s Idle Lake represents suspended, timeless idleness, while Mammon’s cave symbolizes accelerated, profit-driven time linked to colonial exploitation. Drawing on etymological, philosophical, and iconographic traditions, the study argues that Spenser’s temperance involves the ethical governance of time—balancing patience and action amid Renaissance cultural shifts toward mechanized timekeeping and economic urgency. The article situates Spenser’s moral allegory within early modern transformations of time, showing how temperance mediates between spiritual endurance and worldly ambition in an age of expanding trade and imperialism. [Extracted from the article]