The Faerie Queene, the most spiritual poem in all ways in English, is an epic in essence, though its action is developed by a revolution of the phases of the soul in succession to the eye, and not by the progress of one main course of events.

Even Spenser's Faerie Queene, with its abstractions, is a poem of action, for the virtues fight with the vices.

The Faerie Queene, too, was a tale of knight-errantry.

Fairie Queene, Book 2 Cant. 5 Stanzas 29, 30 and 31.