Edmund spenser (1552-1599)

Edmund Spenser was the greatest non-dramatic poet of the Elizabethan era. Though his parents descended from a noble house, the family was poor. He studied at the University of Cambridge as a "sizar", or poor scholar.

Spenser was learned in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French. His generation was one of the first to study also their mother tongue seriously. While at college, he acted in the tragedies of the ancient masters and this inspired him to write poetry. Spenser began his literary work at the age of seventeen. At the age of twenty-three, Spenser took his M.A. degree.

Before returning to London he lived for a while in the wilderness of Lancashire where he fell in love with a "fair widow's daughter". His love was not returned but he clung to this early passion; she became the Rosalind of his poem Shepheardes Calendar. The poem about ideal shepherd life was written in 12 eclogues. Each eclogue is dedicated to one of the months of the year, the whole making up a sort of calendar. The publication of this work made Spenser the first poet of his day. His poetry was so musical and colourful that he was called the poet-painter.

Spenser was given royal favour and appointed as secretary to the new Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Thus he had to 1eave England for good. He felt an exile in the lonely castle of Kilcolman, yet the beauty of his surroundings inspired him to write his great epic poem the Faerie Queen ("Fairy Queen").

The poem had a success. The Queen rewarded him with a pension of 50 pounds, but his position remained unchanged. Although he tried continually to get appointments in England he spent the rest of his life in Ireland, holding various minor government posts. In this period he married Elizabeth Boyle and wrote the Amoretti sonnets to celebrate their courtship and Epithalamion for their wedding. In 1596 he wrote, perhaps, his strangest work, a prose treatise defending English colonialist regime and displaying a virulent contempt for the Irish, A View of the Present State of Ireland. The end of his life was sorrowful. When the next rebellion broke out, the insurgents attacked the castle and Spenser and his wife and children had to flee for their lives. Their youngest child was burnt to death in the blazing ruins of the castle. Ruined and heart-broken Spenser went to England and there he died in a London tavern three months later. He was buried near his beloved Chaucer in what is now called the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Spenser cannot be put into neatly labelled categories. He was strongly influenced by Puritanism in his early days, remained a steadfast Protestant all his life, and portrayed the Roman Catholic church as a villain in The Fairie Queene, yet his understanding of faith and sin owes much to Catholic thinkers. He is in some ways a backward-looking poet who paid homage to Chaucer, used archaic language and compared his own age unfavourably with the antique world. Yet as British epic poet he is a forerunner of Milton and the Romantics. He experimented with meters, adapting some but mostly inventing. He is sometimes called the “poet’s poet” because so many later English poets learned the art of versification from him. He brought a melody to the English verse that had never been there before.

Spenser invented his own stanza – now known as the nine-line “Spenserian” stanza. In this verse each line but the last has 10 syllables, the last line has 12 syllables. The rhymed lines are arranged in the following way: a b a b b c b c c.

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain, a

Yclad in mighty arms and silver shield, b

Where in old dints of deep wounds did remain, a

The cruel marks of many a bloody field; b

Yet arms till that time did he never wield; b

His angry steed did chide his foamy bit, c

As much disdaining to the curb to yield; b

Full jolly knight he seemed, and fair did sit, c

As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit. c

Spenser’s masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, is an epic poetic allegory set in Medieval times in a Mythical Fairy Land. The principal characters are Queen Gloriana, the glorious Fairy Queen (symbolic of Queen Elizabeth); Prince Arthur, hero of heroes (embodying all virtues in one); the six commissioned knights: Red Cross (epitome of holiness), Guyon (hero of temperance), Palmer (patron of prudence), Britomart (defender of chastity), Artegall (champion of justice), and Caldore (sovereign of courtesy).

The Faerie Queene is a whirlwind of action and a complication of plot that rivals the most intense modern thrillers. Holiness, justice, and chastity are presented as virtues in the symbolic form of mighty knights, whose duty is to battle vice. Wizards, witches, dragons, and giants serve as extended metaphors in this moral conflict, portraying the hosts of evil wrestling against the good within us.

Alongside these extensive allegories Spenser also addresses the political atmosphere and historical conflicts that dominated Elizabethan England. Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, represents the supreme virtue and authority of Queen Elizabeth’s position; crucial issues of the time, such as the conflict in Ireland are shown through Irena’s restoration to her throne. Thus, Spenser’s moral and historical fable serves not only to entertain the modern reader, but also to give insight into daily Elizabethan life.

Story overview: In the highest court in Fairy Land, knights and warriors of great virtue received their commissions from Gloriana and set out upon great adventures, inaugurating the ultimate victory and perfection of virtue over vice.

Red Cross Knight must chaperon the maiden Una, or truth, on her journey home, and to rescue the kingdom of her family from domination of a hideous dragon. Realizing his mission he has to fight with the evil half-woman, half-dragon Error, is seduced by the witch Duessa who imprisons him in the House of Pride, where he finds himself at the mercy of the giant Argolio. Una liberates Red Cross Knight with the aid of the noble Prince Arthur. Having recuperated at the House of Hope, Red Cross fights with the flaming dragon that holds Una’s ancestral lands in terror. Fulfilling his commission, Red Cross marries Una with the blessing of all.

Guyon, representing the virtue of temperance, is commissioned to destroy the Bower of Bliss, where the enchantress Acrasia transforms her victims into gluttonous beasts. In his quest Guyon repeatedly calls upon humility and godliness, powers which enable him to conquer Braggadocio, or boastfulness, Pryocholes, or anger, and Cymocles, or the the lure of sensual pleasure. Ultimately, his companion Palmer, the epitome of prudence, helped him to resist the enticements of Mammon in the Cave of Riches, which lay at the gate of hell. In the Bower of Bliss Guyon and Palmer repulsed the wiles of the sorceress Acrasia. Thus Guyon withstood the threat to his temperance.

The warrior maiden Britomart, who represented chastity, sought the conquest of lust by virtue. She freed the chaste damsel Florimel from Foster, who tried to compromise her, and left in search of her dear Artegal. In Gloriana’s court Britomart and Artegall took their wedding vows, and Artegall set off on a mission to dispense justice, his ultimate goal being to restore Queen Irena to her kingdom, Ireland, which had been subdued by the mighty ogre Grantorto.

But once restored to power, Irena’s court was besieged by a triad of strifes: Envy, Detraction, and the Blatant Beast of slander. Sir Caldore, sovereign of courtesy, captured the Blatant Beast. But the latter escaped and spread its cancerous venom throughout wayward lands for generations thereafter.

The battle between virtue and vice raged on, with no apparent end in sight. At last, however, the Fairy Queen’s commissions culminated in a trial against Mutability, a Titaness who had gained control over the earth and who sought to rule the heaven as well. Nature, as judge, cast her verdict against Mutability.

However, while affirming the rights of goodness and virtue, this verdict did not eradicate the influence of corruption in human affairs. The verdict served to assign humanity outside the Fairy Land the responsibility of carrying on the great virtuous quest to achieve victory over vice.