Edmund Spenser was an English poet and a contemporary of William Shakespeare. The Faerie Queene is his major contribution to English poetry. It is mostly a poem seeking (successfully) the favor of Queen Elizabeth I. The poem is a long allegory of Christian belief, tied into England’s mythology of King Arthur. In form, the poem is epic. The language is purposely antique. As such, it is supposed to remind readers of such earlier works as The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, whom Spenser greatly admired. Spenser’s Epithalamion is the most admired of its type in the English language. It was written on the occasion of his wedding to his young bride, Elizabeth Boyle. Spenser’s effort to match the epic proportions of the Aeneid earned his place in English literature. Spenser devised a verse form for The Faerie Queene that has come to be known as the “Spenserian stanza.” Two poets who became influenced by Edmund Spenser were John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, and John Keats.
The first poem to earn him notability was a collection of eclogues called The Shepheardes Calender, written from the point of view of various shepherds throughout the months of the year. It has been suggested that the poem is an allegory, or at least is meant to symbolize the state of humanity at large in a universal sense, as. implied by its cyclical structure. The diversity of forms and meters, ranging from accentual-syllabic to purely accentual, and including such departures as the sestina in “August,” gave Spenser’s contemporaries a clue to the range of his powers and won him a good deal of praise in his day. The Faerie Queene is his main contribution to English poetry. It says much about Spenser’s attitude towards the degeneration of the world in time and the moral superiority of England’s past compared with its present time. It should be noted, however, that Spenser’s language seems much more antique to us than it did to the Elizabethans, for whom standardization was not yet in strict practice.
Spenser devised a verse form for The Faerie Queene that has come to be known as the “Spenserian stanza,” and which has since. been applied in Poetry by the likes of William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, to name a few. The number of English poets influenced by Spenser is manifest. But he is often overshadowed by his immediate successor, William Shakespeare.
Spenser in Ireland
Edmund Spenser came to Ireland in the 1570s, during the Elizabethan re-conquest of the country, hoping to acquire land and wealth there. From 1579 to 1580, he served with the English forces during the second of the Desmond Rebellions and afterward was awarded lands in Cork that had been confiscated from the rebels. In the early 1590s, he wrote a prose pamphlet titled, A View on the Present State of Ireland. This piece has become very influential and famous since it was published in the mid-seventeenth century, although it was not published in Spenser’s lifetime, being thought too inflammatory The pamphlet argued that Ireland would never be totally pacified until its indigenous language and customs had been utterly destroyed, if necessary by violence. He recommended using scorched earth tactics which Spenser himself had seen used in the Desmond Rebellions, to create famine. For this reason, some people see the “View” as bordering on genocidal in intent. However, it has also been highly regarded as a polemical piece of prose and as a historical source in 16th-century Ireland. Ironically, Spenser was driven from his home by Irish rebels during the Nine Years’ War in 1598. He died the following year.
Historical Background
The sixteenth century is commonly designated as the high period of the Age of the Renaissance. That designation suggests mainly the extravagant productivity in art, letters, science, and philosophy. Great names are legion: for example, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian; Ariosto, Tasso, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes; Sir Thomas Moore, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare — to name a few. The century is also designated as the Age of Discovery. Following the voyages of Columbus (1492) and Vasco de Gama (1498), European sailors boldly explored new continents and new oceans; and colonies were established in strange, newly discovered territories.
Further, the century is designated as the Age of Reformation. With the breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church by such leaders as Luther and Calvin, Western Europe was split between Catholic and Protestant countries, a situation that developed enmities of the fiercest nature. The history of England during this period is colored throughout with struggles between supporters of the Church of England and the Englishmen who remained faithful to Rome as well as the power struggle between Protestant England and Catholic forces in Ireland and on the Continent, especially Spain.
Henry VIII declared the Church of England independent of the authority of Rome in 1533. The majority of Englishmen, churchmen, and laity, adopted Henry’s new church, but some retained their allegiance to Catholicism. The fate of those, at least the prominent ones, was to leave the country or face imprisonment or even execution. From that time on through the century, there was a pro-Catholic party, at home or abroad, who longed and worked- more or less militantly- for the re-establishment of their church.
At the death of Edward VI (1553), Henry’s eldest daughter Mary succeeded to the throne. Mary was a staunch Catholic and had strong reasons to abhor Henry’s “reformation,” which was motivated by his eagerness to divorce Mary’s mother so he could marry Anne Boleyn. Mary restored the Catholic Church as the official English church, and a number of the leaders who had broken from her church were burned as heretics. Many others had to take refuge on the Continent. The country was torn by rivalries, bitterness, and struggles of conscience.
Much the same turmoil was repeated five years later when Mary died (1558) and her half-sister Elizabeth, a Protestant, came to the throne. The Protestants were in and the Catholics out, many of the latter losing their homes or even their lives. Most Englishmen had had enough of this. The Church of England remained the official church, but the position was an uneasy one through the rest of the century and long after. Fears and rumors of Catholic plots were common and feelings ran high. Spenser, an ardent supporter of the Church of England, had no sympathy or tolerance for the Catholic opposition either among Englishmen or foreign powers, and he wrote much of this church history into The Faerie Queene with unabashed partisan animus.
In addition to those persons and events connected with the Catholic-Protestant struggle, he introduced numerous celebrities: the queen, Leicester, Sidney, Essex, Raleigh Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, Philip II of Spain, Henry of Navarre. Notable events such as the Irish rebellion, the revolt in the Low Countries, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada are also reflected in the poem. It must be understood that these personages and events are never named but are concealed by veiled allegorical references that Spenser’s contemporaries could readily recognize.
Literary Background
Spenser’s reading covered a wide range; and much of what he read he adapted, a practice that was not only accepted but admired by his contemporaries. In addition to the medieval romances of chivalry and the Greek and Roman classics, he was familiar with much theological writing and Neo-Platonic philosophy. His principal English antecedents-other than the romancers- were the works of Chaucer and the Mirror for Magistrates. His closest models, however, were the Italian Renaissance poets, Ariosto and Tasso, whose poems he imitated extensively and whose names he linked with those of Homer and Virgil as the world’s great poets.
A list of authors whose works are echoed in passages of The Faerie Queene would mount into the scores. Those mentioned most frequently by Spenser annotators, in addition to those already mentioned, are; Ovid, Boccaccio, Malory, and Natalis Comes (a compiler of classical mythology). Biblical allusions are numerous, and matter drawn from Irish folklore is also evident.
The two greatest poems of the Renaissance prior to The Faerie Queene were Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, a fantastic story about Charlemagne’s war with the Saracens, and Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, a pseudo-historical poem on the First Crusade. Understanding these works helps us to understand Spenser’s concept of a modern epic. The term romance-epic best describes these poems because they combine many of the elements of medieval romances with features of classical epic poetry. Their setting is strictly medieval: knights in pursuit of romantic adventures in a world of fantastic wizardry and enchantment, dragons and fairies, magic rings, magic fountains, flying horses, sorceries, and such.
It is a matter of curiosity that the most cultivated writers of the classically oriented Renaissance courts should have carried on in that romantic tradition. Actually, a considerable quantity of material from classical literature was woven into the text. For one thing, there were innumerable allusions to Greek and Roman mythology. There were also numerous episodes imitated by Homer, Virgil, and Ovid: for example, Circe’s garden, a journey to Hades (Inferno), and the discovery of a tree that bleeds and talks. The Homeric simile was a prominent feature of their style. And the poets’ study of ancient authors taught them important lessons in classical style: polish, grace, and proportion.
Ariosto’s poem, which is as long as The Faerie Queene, is impressive for its prodigious variety of action. The multiple threads of the plot are interlaced in a complicated pattern. All of this seems to serve as a description of Spenser’s poem as well. Ariosto had a special flair for irony, and his work is rich in humor. Tasso, like Spenser, is more serious and more moral. Among Tasso’s chief assets are his musical power, his beautiful descriptive passages, and his gift for pathos. These too are qualities that we find preeminent in Spenser.
Language
The vocabulary of The Faerie Queene is so “foreign” to most modern readers as to make the reading of the poem difficult in the early stages. The frequent use of words that were archaic in Spenser’s time was a practice deliberately followed. Comparing his language to that of Shakespeare or the King James translation of the Bible, Spenser’s is clearly antiquated. He chose this method of “enrichment” of English vocabulary for the flavor it gave to his poem with its medieval setting and also the advantages of selectivity it gave for sound and word color.
The archaic words are Chaucerisms, and any student who has been trained to read Chaucer finds no difficulty with the language of The Faerie Queene. Others are faced with the necessity of looking up strange words in the glossary, a feature that is provided in every student’s edition of the poem. Part of the vocabulary puzzle comes from eccentricities of spelling. Often words that appear strange are actually familiar words in spelling disguises. One gradually comes to recognize the commoner spelling tricks: y for i, u for w, u for v, and the reverse. Imagination and consideration of the context of the passage will supply many meanings. For actual archaisms, there is no substitute for study. The sooner the reader masters the basic Chaucarisms, the sooner he can read with a minimum of interruptions. Once mastered, the special Spenserian language becomes a source of pleasure to the reader.
There are perhaps fifty such archaic terms. Among the commonest are: anon (at once), doom (judgment), eyen (eyes), fere (companion), yfere (united, together), for thy (therefore), is hight (is called), lief (dear), mote (may, must), nis, nys (is not), read (advise, counsel), sith (since), uneathe (scarcely), weedes (garments), ween (expect, suppose), wood (mad).
Prosody
For reading the poem aloud- and it must be read aloud for full enjoyment- it is important to understand Spenser’s meters. He was one of the most regular of all important English poets in his use of iambics. Variations from the established accentuation and syllable count are relatively scarce. If on first reading, a line seems to hobble, the probability is that the reader has erred, not the poet. We must remember that the verbal ending-ed is always to be pronounced as a separate syllable. That will resolve at least nine-tenths of the apparent irregularities. Other difficulties come about because of Elizabethan pronunciations. Either they placed the accent on a syllable other than the one we expect (perséveréd, recórd, n.) or they gave a word with more syllables than we do (puissance, gorgeous, spacious, all pronounced with three syllables).
Students wonder why Spenser chose to write his huge poem in stanzas, especially in such technically demanding stanzas as he used. The answer is that it was expected, it was standard practice. Since Chaucer had employed his seven-line stanza (rhyme royal) in Troilus and Criseyde, all long, serious poems in English up to Spenser’s time had followed his lead. Furthermore, the major Continental poets wrote in eight-line stanzas (ottava rima): Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, and Camoëns.
The Spenserian Stanza, the invention of our poet, was longer and more complex than either of the others, with its interlocking rhyme scheme and its long last line. The fact that Spenser wrote more than four thousand such stanzas of almost uniform perfection and made them say what he wanted them to say-made them sing, declaim, lull, or grate- is in itself an awesome accomplishment.
Spenserian Stanza
The Peculiar Qualities of the Spenserian Stanza
One of the most remarkable features of The Faerie Queene is the use in it of a stanza which was Spenser’s own invention. This stanza has highly been praised by all critics. It shows Spenser’s ingenuity and originality as a craftsman in verse. Indeed, it was a most outstanding contribution to English prosody. The supreme merit of this stanza is that it suits all of Spenser’s purposes in The Faerie Queene. This stanza has been described as liquid, fluent, and luxuriant. It is notable for its fluidity and its sweet case. It is admirable for conveying impressions of languor, melody, gentle music, beauty, and repose. Spenser obeys the law laid down for him by the stanza which he created for himself, so that the sense almost always pauses with the natural pause in the meter, and so that each stanza is usually complete in itself and gives us either a complete picture or a complete portion of a picture. The great-sounding Alexandrine at the close of each stanza seems to sum up the verse as if at the end of each stanza there were a strong and clear pause. The Alexandrine is indeed a magnificent conclusion to the linked sweetness of the preceding eight lines, and in it, the music of the whole stanza spreads and settles to a triumphant or a quiet close. This ninth line stands apart from the rest of the stanza by reason of its greater length, and it forms a definite climax. And yet it never suffers sharp isolation from the first eight lines because it is linked in rhyme with the sixth and the eighth lines. The rhyme scheme of this stanza is ababbcbc c. This means that the first and the third lines rhyme with each other, that the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh lines rhyme with one another, and that the sixth, eighth, and ninth lines rhyme with one another. The rhythm of the stanza is iambic pentameter for the first eight lines, and iambic hexameter or Alexandrine for the ninth line; and the rhythm is not subject to the variations of the Italian Ottava Rima on which Spenser modeled his stanza and which had been used by Ariosto and Tasso.
Plan of the Poem
Spenser explains the purpose and general plan of the poem in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, which he published with the first edition of the poem. His principal intention, he declares, is to present through a” historical poem” the example of a perfect gentleman: “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in the virtuous and gentle discipline.” He speaks of twelve virtues of the private gentleman, “according to Aristotle”, (as distinguished from the virtues of a noble ruler, the public virtues); and he plans twelve books, each one having a different hero distinguished for one of the private virtues. With such a plan, there is a danger of a lack of unity. However, the hero of heroes, who possesses all of these virtues, is Arthur. As Prince Arthur, (that is, Arthur before he became king) he is to play a role in each of the twelve major adventures. Consequently, though each adventure has its individual hero, the recurring appearances of Arthur serve as a unifying element for the poem as a whole. Another character contributing to the unity of the work is Gloriana, the Fairy Queen. It is from her court and at her bidding that each of the heroes sets out on his particular adventure. Prince Arthur’s great mission is his search for the Fairy Queen, whom he has fallen in love with, through a lovely vision.
The grandiose plan was never completed. The first three books were published in 1590, and in 1596 a second edition appeared with a total of six books. In a posthumous edition, an additional fragment of a seventh book was included. Even in its unfinished state, it is one of the longest poems ever published. Each book contains twelve cantos of approximately fifty-nine-line stanzas. The books average 6,000 lines each. The six completed books treat the virtues of holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy. Thus far Spenser progressed in presenting his conception of the perfect gentleman.
Spenser states quite explicitly that his poem is not to be read merely as a narrative of wonderful chivalric adventures, but that it is also “a continued Allegory or dark conceit.” He does not, however, give the reader detailed clues as to the interpretation of the allegory beyond a statement that the Fairy Queen represents glory but also “the most excellent and glorious person of our Coleraine the Queene” and that at certain points in the story, another character may also represent the queen; for example, Belphoebe, who exhibits the beauty and purity of Diana. The detailed interpretation of the allegory has, therefore, been left to the commentators, who are legion.
Summaries and Commentaries
Book 1
The first is the most nearly perfect of the six books, judged according to Spenser’s announced plan. The hero, St. George, admirably personifies the virtue of holiness that the book is intended to celebrate. The romance or literal story-that is, the adventures of knights, ladies, castles, enchanters, and monsters-is plotted with consummate skill and is rich in varied and colorful action; at the same time, the book is skilfully adapted to perform its function as the key to three separate schemes of allegory which are operating simultaneously. And in this book, the several levels of allegory are treated with greater consistency and thoroughness than in any of the other books.
The virtue of holiness needs some explanation since in modern parlance this quality would not normally be associated with a military man but rather with a churchman. It must be remembered that throughout medieval and Renaissance literature books were written and sermons preached on the “Christian warrior,” signifying that every good Christian was to “gird on the armor of Christ” in the fight against sin. For Spenser then the term suggests righteousness.
(Canto i, 1-28) Summary
Invocation: I, who used to write of shepherds’ life but now would celebrate the deeds of brave knights and their ladies fair, beseech the aid of the muse Calliope, of Cupid, Venus, and Mars, and lastly of our great Queen Elizabeth.
A knight and his party are riding across the plain. On his breast and on his shield he bears the emblem of a bloody cross, and because his name is not given, he is called the Red Cross Knight. The lovely damsel by his side, wearing a black stole over her white gown and covering her face with a veil, leads a snow-white lamb and is attended by a dwarf. The purpose of the knight’s journey is to rescue the lady’s royal parents from a dragon that has ravished their kingdom and is holding them imprisoned in their castle tower, a mission assigned to him by Gloriana, the Fairy Queen.
Seeking shelter from a shower, the party takes refuge in a wood, where they lose their way. Coming to the entrance of a dark cave, the knight dismounts and rashly ventures in, despite the warning of his companion. Here lurks the vile monster Error, half-woman, and half-dragon. In the ensuing fight, the monster envelops the knight with the coils of her tail, and his lady urges him to strangle the fiend. But as he is throttling the monster, she showers him with her vomit (full of books and papers), which carries such a stench that he is nearly overcome. She also belches up her offspring, hideous little creatures who had taken refuge in her mouth. At last, in one mighty effort, the Knight cuts off her head. Her progeny lap up the poison blood of their mother until their bodies swell and burst, spilling out their bowels.
The knight wins praises from the lady upon the success of this, his first great adventure.
Commentary
At the beginning of the story, the Red Cross Knight is a young man aspiring to holiness, but as yet his virtue is untried, and he will commit serious blunders before he achieves perfection.
Una, the beautiful damsel he is pledged to serve and defend, stands for Truth, or the one true religion. Book I is the story of their joint venture: they’re setting out together, their separation brought about through treacherous enemies and lack of trust on the part of the hero-their reunion, and their final success.
The elemental symbolism of the costuming of the hero and heroine is easily interpreted. The knight bears a bloody cross, an emblem of Christian faith; the lady is gowned in white for purity, though her gown is covered by a mourning stole, and she wears a veil to suggest that the truth is not always plain to see.
The stylized description of the trees in the forest is derived from a literary tradition. Most directly reminiscent of a passage in Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules (172-182), it has its counterpart in Ovid, Lucan, Status, Boccaccio, and Tasso.
The encounter with the monster Error in the dark wood suggests the type of trial constantly facing the man who aspires to righteousness but who is untried in the ways of the world. The tangling coils of the monster’s tail and the vomit of stinking books and pamphlets almost overcome the hero, who is only saved by the counsel of truth and the force of faith. Strength, courage, and good intentions are not enough to meet this trial.
Spenser has sometimes been characterized as an effeminate, over-dainty kind of poet, but no one who remembers passages like the Cave of Error will accept that verdict.
(Canto i, 29-55) Summary
Shortly after finding their way out of the woods, the travelers meet an old man, Archimago, who appears to be a reverend hermit. He courteously offers them night’s lodging, but after they have gone to sleep he starts to work some magic spells. Conjuring up two evil spirits, he sends one to the kingdom of Morpheus to borrow a false dream. Archimago, meanwhile, has transformed the second spirit into the image of Una. In a false dream, the imitation lady is brought to the bedside of the knight declaring her passion for him in seductive tones. Though he is stirred by her charms and her tender words, he virtuously rebuffs her advances and returns to his rest. Commentary
The seeming-pious hermit who offers his humble shelter to Red Cross and Una, Archimago, the arch-magician, stands for Hypocrisy. The Knight’s blunder in this episode, when he considers himself to be acting on high moral principles, is succumbing to the machinations of a vicious calumniator. His weakness is a sign of inexperience, a failure to distinguish appearance from reality.
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