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Edmund Spenser

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Edmund Spenser An English poet best known for The Faerie Queene (1590/96), an epic poem and fantastical allegory which celebrates the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I, he is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English language. SECTION SUMMARY 2 EDMUND SPENSER 1552: born in London, he was entered as a “poor boy” in the Merchant Taylors’ grammar school, where he would have studied mainly Latin, with some Hebrew, Greek, and music. 1570: he matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. 1579: he married Machabyas Chylde and also published The Shepheardes Calender, his first first major poetic work, a series of pastorals in emulation of Virgil’s Eclogues. • 1580: he went to Ireland, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, served with the English forces against the native Irish and was awarded confiscated lands in County Cork. 4 EDMUND SPENSER Among his acquaintances in the area was Walter Raleigh, a fellow colonist. In his company he later visited court hoping to secure a place through his poetry. 1590: he delivered the first three books of his most famous work, the Faerie Queene, an allegorical romance designed to glorify Queen Elizabeth I of England. 1591: having boldly antagonized the queen’s principal secretary, William Cecil Burghley, all he received for it was a pension… When it was proposed that he receive payment of 100 pounds for his epic poem, Burghley remarked “What, all this for a song!” 5 EDMUND SPENSER 1596: he published the second part of The Faerie Queene and wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland, a controversial text kept out of print during the author’s lifetime because of its inflammatory content. Though expressing some praise for the Gaelic poetic tradition, he argued that Ireland would never be totally “pacified” by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence… 1598: during the Nine Years’ War he was driven from his home, his castle at Kilcolman, by native Irish forces. 6 EDMUND SPENSER His castle was burnt down and it is thought that his wife and one of his infant children died in the blaze. • 1599: he travelled to London carrying official letters about the desperate state of affairs in Ireland and died on 13th January perhaps of illness brought on by exhaustion. It was arranged for his coffin to be carried by other poets, possibly including Shakespeare, upon which they threw many pens and pieces of poetry with many tears. He was buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, near the grave of Geoffrey Chaucer. 7 THE FAERIE QUEENE Considered his masterpiece, The Faerie Queene (1590/1596) is a huge epic poem, an extended allegory of life, whose aim was to create a great national literature for England, equal to Homer’s and Virgil’s classic epic poems. It is written in a verse form which will be called Spenserian stanza: its main meter is the iambic pentameter with a final line in iambic hexameter – the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. The diction and atmosphere of The Faerie Queene relied on much more than just Middle English with its frequent archaisms: it makes use of classical allusions and classical proper names abound. 9 THE ORIGINAL PLAN A letter written by Spenser to Raleigh in 1589 contains a preface for The Faerie Queene, in which he describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical “Faerieland”. The letter outlines a plan for 24 books: ❑ 12 based each on a different knight who exemplified one of twelve “private virtues” (such as honesty, mercy, prudence …); ❑ a possible 12 more centred on King Arthur displaying twelve “public virtues” (such as equity, faith, justice …). Aristotle is named by Spenser as his source for these virtues, although the influence of Thomas Aquinas can be observed as well. 10 . THE PUBLISHED WORK The Faerie Queene – in six books (plus a seventh incomplete one) – is set in the fictional Faerie Land, ruled by Queen Gloriana, an allegorical figure for Queen Elizabeth I, representing the quality of Glory. Prince Arthur, representing Magnificence (“the perfection of all the rest” which “conteineth in it them all”) is madly in love with her and spends his time in pursuit of her when not helping the other knights out of their sundry predicaments. At the beginning of the epic, twelve knights gather at the annual feast of the Faerie Queene, where each is to be assigned a quest… 11 AIM AND THEMES Spenser explicitly stated that through this tale he wished to improve the social graces of the reader: “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” The major themes may thus be determined by the subject of each of the six books, i.e. the virtues presented: Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. These themes are expressed through the allegorical meanings of the many plots and subplots in The Faerie Queene: Book I, for example, is generally interpreted as a religious allegory concerning the split between the Catholic Church and the Church of England during the era of the English Reformation.13 LEGEND & REALITY As the Aeneid states that Augustus descended from the noble sons of Troy, The Faerie Queene suggests that the Tudors can be connected to King Arthur. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini (1135) Merlin proclaims that the Saxons will rule over the Britons until the “Boar of Cornwall” (Arthur) restores them to their rightful place as rulers. The prophecy was adopted by the British people and eventually used by the Tudors. Through their ancestor, Owen Tudor, the Tudors had Welsh blood thanks to which they claimed to be descendants of Arthur and rightful rulers of Britain. 14 CURIOSITY TIME…! Spenser is the man believed to have crafted the phrase “without rhyme or reason” (= senza capo né coda). Why? Remember the promised payment from the Queen of 100 pounds for his epic poem? It was a so-called «reason for the rhyme». The Lord High Treasurer William Cecil, however, considered the sum too high. After a long while without receiving his payment, Spenser sent the Queen this quatrain: I was promis’d on a time, To have a reason for my rhyme: But from that time unto this season, I had neither rhyme or reason. … so she immediately ordered Cecil to send Spenser his due!16 LEGACY There is no concealing the fact that Spenser’s role in Ireland and his views of it as a colonialist are unpleasant and despicable aspects of him as a man, but as a poet he was considered in his day to be the greatest of English poets. Dubbed “the Poet’s Poet” by Charles Lamb, he had a strong influence upon his immediate successors, such as John Milton and Alexander Pope. In the Romantic period the sensuous features of his poetic style, as well as his nine-line stanza form, were admired and imitated by poets like William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Alfred Tennyson. 17.
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