The Faerie Queene (Oxford Companion)

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

The Faerie Queene, the greatest work of *Spenser, of which the first three books were published 1590, and the second three 1596.

The general scheme of the work is proposed in the author's introductory letter addressed to *Ralegh. By the Faerie Queene the poet signifies Glory in the abstract and *Elizabeth I in particular (who also figures under the names of *Britomart, *Belphoebe, *Mercilla, and *Gloriana). Twelve of her knights, the 'patrons' or examples of 12 different virtues, each undertake an adventure, on the 12 successive days of the queen's annual festival, and an account of their origins was to have been given in the last of 12 books. Prince Arthur symbolizes 'magnificence', in the Aristotelian sense (says the author) of the perfection of all the other virtues (he must have meant not 'magnificence' but 'magnanimity', or 'gentlemanliness'). Arthur has a  vision of the Faerie Queene and, determining to seek her out, is brought into the adventures of the several knights and carries them to a successful issue. This explanation, given in the introduction,does not appear from the poem itself, for the authors starts at once with the adventures of the knights; as we have it the poem does not conform to his scheme. Of the six books Spenser published, the subjects are:

I, the adventures of the *Redcrosse Knight of Holiness (the Anglican Church), the protector of the virgin *Una (truth, or the true religion), and the wiles of *Archimago and *Duessa.

the Redcrosse Knight, in Bk I of Spenser's *Faerie Queene, St. George, the patron saint of England. He is separated from *Una (the true religion) by the wiles of *Archimago (hypocrisy) and is led away by *Duessa (the Roman Catholic religion) to the House of Pride. He drinks of an enchanted stream, loses his strength, and is made captive by the giant *Orgoglio (pride). Orgoglio is slain by Prince *Arthur, and Una leads her knight to the House of Holiness, to learn repentance and be healed. The Knight and Una are finally betrothed, after he has killed the dragon which besieged her parents' castle.

Una, in Bk. I of Spenser's *Faerie Queene, typifies singleness of the true religion. She is separated from the *Redcrosse Knight of Holiness (the Anglican Church) by the wiles of *Archimago, but meets and is protected by a lion, until the latter is killed by *Sansloy, who carries Una off to a forest. She is rescued by fauns and satyrs, and is finally united to the Redcrosse Knight.

Archimago, or Archimage, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, is the great enchanter, symbolizing Hypocrisy, who deceives *Una by assuming the appearance of the *Redcrosse Knight (I.i). His deceits are exposed and Archimago is 'layd full low in dungeon deepe' (I.xii.36). From this he emerges in Bk II to seek vengeance on Sir *Guyon for what he has suffered at the hands of the Redcrosse Knight, and employs *Braggadochio for the purpose. 

Duessa, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the daughter of Deceit and Shame, Falsehood in general, in Bk I signifies in particular the Roman Catholic Church, and in V.ix, Mary Queen of Scots.

Orgoglio (Italian, signifying haughtiness), in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (I. vii, viii) captures the *Redcrosse Knight, and is slain by Prince *Arthur.

Arthur, Prince, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene. He symbolizes 'Magnificence' (Magnanimity), in the Aristotelian sense of the perfection of all the virtues. He enters into the adventures of the several knights and brings them to a fortunate conclusion. His chief adventures are the slaying of the three-bodied monster *Geryoneo and the rescue from him of Belge (the Netherland) V. x, xi); and, jointly with *Artegall, the slaying of the *soldan (Philip II) in his 'charret hye' (the Armada) (V. viii).

Sansfoy, Sansjoy, and Sansloy, three brothers in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (I. ii. 25 et seq.). Sansfoy ('faithless') is slain by the *Redcrosse Knight, who also defeats Sansjoy ('joyless') but the latter is saved from death by *Duessa. Sansloy ('lawless') carries off *Una and kills her lion (I. iii). This incident is supposed to refer to the suppression of the Protestant religion in the reign of Queen Mary.

II, the adventures of Sir *Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, his encounters with *Pyrochles and *Cymochles, his visit to the Cave of *Mammon and the House of Temperance, and his destruction of *Acrasia and her *Bower of Bliss. Canto x of this Book contains a chronicle of British rulers from *Brut to Elizabeth;

Guyon, Sir, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the knight of Temperance. His various exploits, the conquest of *Pyrochles, the visit to the cave of *Mammon, the capture of *Acrasia, and the destruction of her *Bower of Bliss, are related in II. v-xii.

Braggadochio, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the typical braggart. His adventures and final exposure and humiliation occur in II. iii; III. viii, x; IV iv, v, ix; V. iii. Cf. *Trompart.

Trompart, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. iii),

wylie witted, and growne old

In cunning sleights and practick knavery.

attends *Braggadochio as his squire, and with him is finally exposed and beaten out of court.

Pyrochles, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, symbolizes rage. He is the brother of *Cymochles, the son of 'old Acrates and Despight' (II. iv. 41). On his shield is a flaming fire, with the words 'Burnt do I burne'. He is overcome by Sir *Guyon (II. v), and tries to drown himself in a lake to quench his flames. He is rescued and healed by *Archimago (II. vi. 42-51), and finally killed by Prince *Arthur (II. viii).

Cymochles, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. v, vi, and viii), 'a man of rare redoubted might', given all to lust and loose living, the husband of *Acrasia and brother of *Pyrochles. He sets out to avenge on Sir *Guyon the supposed death of his brother, but *Phaedria intervenes. He is finally slain by Prince *Arthur

Phaedria, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. vi), the Lady of the Idle Lake, symbolizing immodest mirth.

Mammon, theCave of, described in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. vii). It is the treasure-house of the god of wealth, visited by Sir Guyon. Milton in his *Areopagitica uses the example of Spenser making Guyon visit the cave of Mammon, 'that he might see and know, and yet abstain'.

Acrasia, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, II. xii, typifies Intemperance. She is captured and bound by Sir *Guyon, and her *Bower of Bliss destroyed.

Bower of Bliss, the, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (II. xii), the home of *Acrasia, demolished by Sir *Guyon.

 

III, the legend of Chastity, exemplified by *Britomart and *Belphoebe;

Britomart, the heroine of Book III of Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the daughter of King Ryunce of Britain and the female knight of chastity. She has fallen in love with *Artegall, whose image she has seen in a magic mirror, and the poet recounts her adventures in her quest for him. She is the most powerful of several types of Queen Elizabeth in the poem. 

Belphoebe, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, the chaste huntress, daughter of the nymph Chrysogone and twin sister of *Amoret; she partly symbolizes Queen Elizabeth. Belphoebe puts *Braggadochio to flight (II. iii), finds herbs to heal the wounded *Timias ('whether it divine Tobacco were, / Or Panachae, or Polygony', III. v), and rescues Amoret from *Corflambo (IV. vii).

Artegall, Sir, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, V, the champion of Justice. *Britomart, to whom his image has been revealed by a magic mirror, is in love with him, and her quest of him ends in their union. Representing Lord Grey de Wilton, he undertakes the rescue of Irena (Ireland) from the tyrant Grantorto. Jointly with Prince *Arthur he slays the *soldan (Philip II of Spain). His name perhaps signifies 'equal to Arthur'.

Timias, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, Prince *Arthur's squire, may represent *Ralegh. When wounded (III. v), he is healed by *Belphoebe. The incident of Timias and *Amoret, in IV vii. 35 and 36, may allude to Ralegh's relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton.

Amoret, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, III. vi, xii and IV. vii, daughter of the nymph Chrisogone and twin sister of *Belphoebe. She is 'Of grace and beautie noble Paragone', and has been married to Sir *Scudamour, but carried off immediately after by the enchanter *Busirane and imprisoned by him until released by *Britomart. *Timias loves her, but being reproved by Belphoebe leaves her. This incident refgers to the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth at the relations of  *Ralegh with Elizabeth Throckmorton.

Busirane, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (III. xi and xii) the 'vile Enchaunter' symbolizing unlawful love. He is struck down by *Britomart in his castle and forced to release *Amoret. On the door of one of the rooms of the castle was written:

Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold.

But on another iron door,

Be not too bold.

 

IV, the legend of *Triamond and *Cambell, exemplifying Friendship; together with the story of *Scudamour and *Amoret.

Triamond, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (IV. iii, iv), the Knight of Friendship. After an inconclusive fight with *Cambello  in the contest to decide which of her suitors *Canacee (Cambello's sister) is to be awarded, Triamond and Cambello swear eternal friendship. IN the tournament arranged by *Satyrane, Triamond, though wounded, returns to rescue Cambello. He marries Canacee.

Cambell, or Cambello, the name given by Spenser in The Faerie Queene, IV. iii, to *Cambalo, whose tale he borrows from 'Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled', and completes. Cambell is brother of *Canacee, for whom there are many suitors. It is arranged that the stronges of these, three brothers, shall fight with Cambell and the lady be awarded to the victor. Two of the brothers are defeated: the contest between the third, *Triamond, and Cambell is undecided, each wounding the other.They are reconciled by Cambina, Triamond's sister; Canacee is awarded to Triamond and Cambell marries Cambina. The magic ring of Canacee in the 'Squire's Tale' reappears in the Faerie Queene, with the power of healing wounds.

Canacee, the daughter of King Cambuscan in Chaucer's 'Squire's Tale' (see CANTERBURY TALES, 11) and in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, Bk IV. 

Cambalo, one of the two sons of King Cambuscan, in Chaucer's 'Squire's Tale': see CANTERBURY TALES, 11; see also *Cambell for the continuation of his story in Spenser's *Faerie Queene.

V, the adventures of *Artegall, the Knight of Justice, in which allegorical reference is made to various historical events of the reign of Queen Elizabeth: the defeat of the Spaniards in the Netherlands, the recantation of Henry IV of France, the execution of *Mary Queen of Scots, and the administration of Ireland by Lord Grey de Wilton;

soldan (from the Arabic sultan). The soldan or souldan, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (V. viii) represents Philip II of Spain. He is encountered by Prince *Arthur and Sir *Artegall with a bold defiance from Queen *Mercilla (Elizabeth), and the combat is undecided until the prince unveils his shield and terrifies the soldan's horses, so that they overturn his chariot and the soldan is torn 'all to rags'. The unveiling of the Shield signifies divine interposition.

Geryoneo, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (V. x and xi), a three-bodied giant who represent's Philip II's power which controlled Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries.

Mercilla, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene (V., viii), 'a mayden Queene of high renowne' (Queen *Elizabeth I), whose crown the *soldan seeks to subvert.

VI, the adventures of Sir *Calidore, exemplifying Courtesy. 

Calidore, Sir, the Knight of Courtesy, the hero of Bk VI of Spenser's *Faerie Queene. He pursues and chains the *Blatant Beast. One of Keats's earliest poems, the fragment 'Young Calidore is paddling o'er the lake' (1816) was inspired by him.

Blatant Beast, in Spenser's *Faerie Queene, Bk VI, a monster, the personification of the calumnious voice of the world, begotten of Envy and Detraction. Sir *Calidore pursues it, finds it despoiling monasteries and defiling the church, overcomes it, and chains it up. But finally it breaks the chain, 'So now he raungeth through the world againe.' Cf. *Questing Beast. (Glatysaunt Beast, the creature in Malory's *Morte D'Arthur which is the original of *Spenser's 'blatant beast'. The word is from an Old French term meaning 'baying', 'barking'. In Malory it is pursued by Palomydes the Saracen).

There is also a fragment on *Mutabilitie, being the sixth and seventh cantos of the legend of Constancie, which was to have formed the seventh Book. This fragment contains a charming description of the seasons and the months.

'Mutabilitie Cantos', name given to the fragmentary 'Book VII' of Spenser's *Faerie Queene: two cantos only, first published with the folio edition of The Faerie Queene in 1609. They describe the challenge of the Titaness Mutabilitie to the cosmic government of Jove. (The first canto includes the charming topographical fable of Faunus and Molanna, which reflects Spenser's affection for his Irish home.) The goddess Nautre vindicates Jove's rule, displaying its orderly beauty in a procession of Seasons and Months, asserting finally that natural things 'are not changed from their first estate / but by their change their being doe dilate'. The cantos can be seen as an epilogue to The Faerie Queene, ending with the poet's prayer. 

The work as a whole, modelled to some extent on the *Orlando furioso of Ariosto, suffers from a certain monotony, and its chief beauties lie in the particular episodes with which the allegory is varied and in descriptions, such as those of the Cave of Mammon and the temptation of Sir Guyon by the Lady of the Idle Lake, in Bk. II. The meaning of many of the allusions, which must have added to the interest of the work for contemporaries, is now lost. The poem is written in the stanza invented by Spenser (and since utilized by James *Thomson, *Keats, *Shelley, and *Byron), in which a ninth line of twelve syllables is added to eight lines of ten syllables, rhyming  a b a b b c b c c.

Edmund Spenser

—oOo—

Retropost (5 de enero de 2009): Entierro en Westminster

Entierro en Westminster

Capítulo 3 de 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, de James Shapiro ( Londres: Faber and Faber, 2005).

(Capítulo 2: A Great Blow in Ireland)

3. Burial at Westminster. El entierro de Spenser, poeta cortesano regresado de Irlanda

En 1598 y 1599 se sucedían en Inglaterra reclutamientos para las campañas de Irlanda, y también deserciones entre los reclutados a la fuerza. Huellas de estos episodios, y críticas, se ven en las escenas de militares de baja vida en las obras de Shakespeare: aprovechados y ladrones que presentan la otra cara del honor militar (pero también es significativo que por despreciables que sean estos personajes siempre son los cómicos en Shakespeare, y se les contempla con cierta complicidad).

En Henry IV (II) hay una escena de reclutamiento donde el simpático Falstaff se deja sobornar y hace gala de corrupción en lugar de patriotismo:

"Only Feeble doesn't understand that a bribe is obligatory and his last chance to avoid impressment. The irony of watching this frail old man explaining why he wants to fight for his country, offrering up bits and pieces of the patriotic propaganda he has swallowed whole, would not have been lost on contemporary audiences" (Shapiro 75, traduzco).

También había colectas para apoyar la campaña irlandesa, cosas todas que tenían a la gente en actitud ambivalente, y tanto a caballeros como a ciudadanos con un sentimiento de vigilancia mutua ante las actitudes de los otros frente a la política del gobierno.

Spenser, autor del poema de caballerías al gusto de la reina, The Faerie Queene, era un colono en Munster, de los muchos que se habían instalado expulsando de su tierra a los irlandeses. Llevaba en Irlanda desde 1580. En 1598, con la rebelión contra los ingleses, había habido una matanza, y muchos colonos que no huyeron murieron. Spenser perdió una hija recién nacida.  Había escrito A View of the Present State of Ireland, recomendando aplicar una política cruel de matar de hambre a  los irlandeses para acabar con la rebelión. Ahora, de vuelta a Londres y resentido con los irlandeses, le añadió "A Brief Note of Ireland", insistiendo en la combinación de fuerza militar y hambre masiva—una joya de poeta, vamos, Spenser: un auténtico nazi isabelino.

Murió a mediados de febrero de 1599. Es posible que asistiese Shakespeare al funeral, pero no escribió ningún homenaje al respecto. "It's hard not to conclude that, for Shakespeare, Spenser had built on sand" (81). En 1599 reescribiría Shakespeare dos géneros donde reinaba Spenser, la épica (con Henry V) y la poesía pastoral (con As You Like It). Un drama universitario contemporáneo de 1599 compara favorablemente al moderno Shakespeare con Chaucer y Spenser.

Quizá en esta ocasión (o en otra) visitase Shakespeare la tumba de Enrique V y su esposa Katherine en la abadía de Westminster: un triste espectáculo, con la efigie del glorioso rey decapitada, y su esposa momificada a la vista del público (allí seguía setenta años más tarde, cuando cogió la momia Samuel Pepys y la besó en la boca, por decir que había besado a una reina…). Las hazañas reales de Henry o las fantásticas de los caballeros artúricos de Spenser no suenan convincentes a quien pasea entre las tumbas de reyes y poetas.

Aunque el tema de su tumba es una constante en los poemas de homenaje que le dedicaron Jonson o Milton, Shakespeare no tenía ningún interés en ser enterrado en Westminster Abbey. Y de hecho (quizás para impedirlo...) se escribió a sí mismo como epitafio una maldición para quien "moviera sus huesos" de su tumba en la iglesia de Stratford.

Capítulo 4: Un sermón en Richmond

—oOo—

The Poetry of Spenser

(From The Short Cambridge History of English Literature, by George Sampson, 3rd ed.)

XI. THE POETRY OF SPENSER

After a lapse of almost two centuries we reach the first English major poet since Chaucer. Edmund Spenser (1552-99) was born in London, and was related to the great family of his name. At Cambridge he not only wrote his earliest sonnets, but came under three profound influences. The first was his friendship with Gabriel Harvey, a powerful and controversial scholar, to whom justice has yet to be done. The second was teh refined and cultured "Puritanism", which, like that of Milton, was a revolt from coarseness and materialism in life and in religion. The third was the study of Platonic philosophy—not the Christianized neo-Platonism of the first Reformers, but the pure Platonism of the Timaeus and the Symposium. To the imagination of Spenser this proved exceedingly congenial, and confirmed him in his allegorical habit of conception and expression. His early Hymnes, the first in honour of Love, the second in honour of Beautie, though not published till 1596 (Foure Hymnes made by Edm. Spenser), were inspired by his first experience of love, and written in the spirit of Plato.

He was brought by Harvey into the service of the Earl of Leicester, and met Philip Sidney, whose ardent imagination and lofty spirit greatly stimulated him. After toying, under Harvey's influence, with the possibilities of using in English a system of quantitative prosody (that ignis fatuus of English poets) he began to consider the forms in which he could express himself most naturally, and he turned instinctively to the pastoral and the romance, with their stock figures, the shepherd and the knight.  The pastoral, as we have seen, was a popular form, offering an abundance of models. The extent of Spenser's debt to any of these is not really important. All that matters in a poem is what it is, not what it may have come from. Upon the "XII Aeglogues proportioned to  . . . the XII monethes" forming The Shepheards Calendar (1579) the impress of a creative, originating poetic genius is clearly discernible. The book was dedicated to Sidney, who praised it highly, but objected, rather pedantically, to one of its greatest charms, namely "the olde rusticke language". Sidney, a typical figure of the Renascence, disliked Spenser's archaism, not in itself, but because it was unwarranted by classical originals. This kind of criticism was to have a long run. A more serious objection would have been that the pastoral, as Spenser wrote it, was a literary exercise with little hold on life. Spenser uses all varieties of the form, amatory, moral, religious, courtly, rustic, lyric, elegiac, and shows himself at once master of an old convention and herald of a new spirit in poetry. His language was deliberately archaic. Ben Jonson said that Spenser, in affecting the obsolete, "writ no language". The answer is that Spenser used the language in which Spenser could write. Every true poet creates his own idiom. What The Shepheards Calendar clearly reveals is the arrival of a great poet-musician, who excelled all his predecessors in a sense of the capacity of the English language in which Spenser could write. Every true poet creates his own idiom. What The Shepheards Calendar clearly reveals is the arrival of a great poet-musician, who excelled all his predecessors in a sense of the capacity of the English language for harmonious combinations of sound. To turn from the flatness of [George Gascoygne's] The Steele Glas to The Shepheards Calendar is to pass fro honest and well-meant effort into a new world of absolute mastery.

From the pastoral Spenser proceeded naturally to romance. In 1580 he went to ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy, and there at Kilcolman Castle he continued his Faerie Queene, the first three books of which were published in 1590 on his return to England. As, in any creative sense, the poem shows no progress, but is at the end what it was in the beginning, some consideration of it may be given at once. The poem, as planned in twelve books, was never completed. Spenser himself has clearly stated his own intentions in the prefatory letter addressed to Ralegh, and to this the reader is referred. Like other great poets he felt himself called to teach; and desiring to set forth a picture of a perfect knight, he chose King Arthur as hero, rather than any person of his own time. Further, he desired to glorify his own dear country and its "most royal Queen". In much of his intention he was successful, but he was not completely successful. Spenser failed because he refused to follow his natural instinct for allegory and romance, the forms that most readily released his creative powers—in The Allegory of Love (1936) C. S. Lewis traced their history from Le Roman de la Rose—but turned aside to be instructive, and, in seeking to make the allegory edifying, forgot to tell the story. But if an allegory does not survive as a stroy, it does not survive as an allegory. [John Bunyan's] The Pilgrim's Progress is, first of all, an excellent story; The Faerie Queene is not. Like every great poem, The Faerie Queene is entitled to its own imaginative life; but it must continue to be true to that life. Spenser, to use a common phrase, lets us down, when we are left wondering whether the false Duessa is a poetical character, or Theological Falsehood, or Mary Queen of Scots. He tried to do too many things at once; and, in elaborating intellectually the allegorical plot he has confused the imaginative substance of the poetic narrative. Homer, says Aristotle, tells lies as he ought; that is, he makes us believe his stories. Spenser tried to tell his lies while clinging to a disabling kind of truth; and so he does not convince his readers. Thus it is neither as an allegorist nor as a narrator that the author of The Faerie Queene holds his place. He lives as an exquisite word-painter of widely differing scenes, and as supreme poet-musician using with unrivalled skill a noble stanza of his invention, unparalleled in any other language [the Spenserian stanza].

As the years advanced, Spenser seems to have felt that his conception of chivalry had little correspondence with the facts of life. Sidney was dead, and his own hopes of preferment were frustratedd. In 1591 a volume of his collected poets was published with the significant title Complaints, including such works as Tthe Ruines of Time, The Teares of the Muses and Prosopopoia or Mother Hubbard's Tale, in which the Ape and the Fox serve to satirize the customs of the court. In 1591 he returned to his exile in Ireland, and there, in the form of an allegorical pastoral, called Colin Clout Come Home Againe (1595), he gave expression to his views about the general state of manners and poetry In his Prothalamion, and still more, in his Epithalamion, he carries the lyrical style, first attempted in The Shepheards Calendar, to an unequalled height of harmony, splendour and enthusiasm. In 1595, he again came over to England, bringing with him the second part of The Faerie Queene, which was licensed for publication in January 1595-6. Finding still no place at court, he returned to Ireland in 1597; but, in a rising, Kilcolman Castle was taken and burned, and ad Spenser barely escaped with his life. His spirit was broken, and after suffering the afflictions of poverty, he died in January 1599. His posthumous prose dialogue, A Veue of the Present State of Ireland, written in 1596, is discussed in a later chapter. Spenser is the poets' poet, and his greatness cannot be diminished by the jeers of the tough-minded who find his poetic music and his poetic virtue too delicate for their manly taste.



XII. THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET

The sonnet, which was the invention of thirteenth-century Italy, was slow in winning the favour of English poets. Neither the word nor the thing reached England until the sixteenth century, when, as we have seen, the first English sonnets were written, in imitation of the Italian, by Wyatt and Surrey. But these primary efforts set no fashion. The Elizabethan sequences came long after the gentle effusion of Tottel's poets, and were not influenced by them. But when the writing of sonnets began in earnest it soon became a fashionable literary habit and no poetic aspirant between 1590 and 1600 failed to try his skill in this form. The results are not inspiring. Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare alone achieved substantial success; and their sonnets, with some rare and isolated triumphs by Drayton, Daniel, Constable and others, are the sole enduring survivals. Tottel's Miscellany contained sixty sonnets, for the most part primitive copies of Petrarch; but though the name "sonnet" is commonly used for poems in the succeeding anthologies, the actual sonnet form is rare. Gascoigne's Certayne Notes of Instruction not only described the Elizabethan sonnet accurately, but noted the general misuse of the term. It was contemporary French rather than older Italian influence that moved the Elizabethan mind to sonnet-writing. The first inspiration came from Marot (1495-1544); though the sonnet was not naturalized in France until Ronsard (1525-85) and Du Bellay (1525-60), who, with five others, formed the constellation of poets called La Pléiade, deliberately resolved to adapt to the French language the finest fruit of foreign literature. Philippe Desportes (1546-1606), a less important poet, was specially admired and imitated by the Elizabethans.

Spenser is the true father of the Elizabethan sonnet. He first appeared as a poet with the twenty-six youthful sonnets of 1569. His indebtedness to Du Bellay is declared in the title of one group of sonnets. The Visions of Bellay, and of another, The Ruines of Rome by Bellay. Another set, The Visions of Petrarch, he translates from Marot. These and the other sonnets of Spenser in Amoretti (1595) have his characteristic sweetness of versification. Spenser, it should be noted, uses the English and not the Italian form of the sonnet. Two of the sonnets in the Amoretti refer to the Platonic "Idea" of beauty which outshines any mortal embodiment. The "Idea", found also in numerous French writers, became a theme of later English sonnets, especially those of Drayton, who borrowed his very title from a sonnet-sequence by a minor French poet, Claude de Pontoux. The first Elizabethan sonneteer to make a popular reputation, however, was not Spenser, but Thomas Watson (1557-92), who was hailed as the successor of Petrarch and the English Ronsard after the appearance in 1582 of The Hekatompathia or Passionate Centurie of Love. But nearly all the hundered "Passions" are in a pleasing metre of eighteen lines (three sixes. Watson uses the norman Elizabethan form in the sixty sonnets of The Teares of Fancie, or, Love Disdained (1593). Neither these nor the "Passions" have much poetic value.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), who follows Watson, is a prince among Elizabethan lyric writers and sonneteers, and, Shakespeare apart, is easily the best. The collection known as Astrophel and Stella was written between 1580-4 and though widely circulated in manuscript was not published till 1591 (piratically) and 1598 (regularly). With Sideny we come to the first real English "sonnet sequence", a collection of sonnets telling a story of love, like that of Petrarch for his Laura. The "hopeless love" of the sonnets must not be taken literally. Readers sometimes fail to distinguish between the truth of a poem and the truth of an affidavit, and are too often encouraged by critics who ought to know better. The sonnets of Shakespeare and of Sidney are as "true" as Hamlet or Arcadia; they are not required to have a different kind of truth. Sideny was indebted to foreign models, though he was much more original than his contemporaries. His sonnets are real contributions to English poetry. They have grace, ease and sincerity, and a genuine character reflecting the admirable spirit of the writer.

Of the numerous sonneteers who followed Sidney few need be mentioned. Shakespeare will be considered in his own place. Henry Constable's Diana (1592) and Thomas Lodge's Phillis (1593), all of which borrowed extensively from abroad, have each contributed something to the English anthologies. Michael Drayton's Ideas Mirrour, first printed in 1595 and steadily revised in several editions till 1619, gives us, in its final form, the one sonnet of its time worthy to be set by Shakespeare's, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part". Richard Barnfield's "If music and sweet poetry agree" deservedly survives. Barnabe Barnes, in Parthenophil and Parthenope (1593), is voluminous, but says little. Later, came two Scottish writers, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (1567-1640) who reaches a respectable level, and William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) whose "For the Baptist" is the one religious sonnet which has survived as a poem. With them may be mentioned Sideny's friend, that strange genius, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628), whose Caelica sequence (not all sonnets) may be held to close the story. Sonneteering fell into disrepute and perished of its own insincerity. When Milton revived the true sonnet form it took a note which cannot be heard in any of the Elizabethan collections.

Deep-brained sonnets

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'Another game in vew': The Representation of the Poet in 'The Faerie Queene'

Many recent critics of 'The Faerie Queene' have established an artificial distinction between the narrator of 'The Faerie Queene' and Spenser, one which posits an olympian detachment of the author from the work, and of both from the historical circumstances in which the work was written. An analysis of the poem reveals the limited sense in which a distinction between the narrator and the implied author may be drawn, and shows how the incompleteness of the work and some of its structural and thematic tensions are due to its changing significance as a political project undertaken by Spenser. 

 

"Another game in vew": 

The representation of the poet in The Faerie Queene

http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6RK4B

Author(s):

José Angel García Landa (see profile)

Date:

1989

Group(s):

Narrative theory and Narratology

Subject(s):

English literature, Elizabethan literature, Epic poetry, Narratology, Spenser, Renaissance literature

Item Type:

Article

Tag(s):

Elizabethan poetry

Permanent URL:

http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6RK4B

 

 

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Online PDF at RUA: Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Alicante.*

         DOI: 10.14198/raei.1989.2.07

http://hdl.handle.net/10045/5533

2010

Dialnet

http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2791938

2014

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Academia 26 April 2010.*

         https://www.academia.edu/231378/

         2014 (+AI podcast, 2026)

         https://www.academia.edu/83763809/

         https://doi.org/10.14198/RAEI.1989.2.07

         2022

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Online PDF at SSRN 28 April 2010.*

         http://ssrn.com/abstract=1597086

         2010

         Cognition & the Arts eJournal 28 April 2010.*

         http://www.ssrn.com/link/Cognition-Arts.html

         2013

English & Commonwealth Literature eJournal 28 April 2010.*

http://www.ssrn.com/link/English-Commonwealth-Lit.html

2012

Poetry & Poetics eJournal 28 April 2010.*

http://www.ssrn.com/link/English-Poetry-Poetics.html

2013

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Online PDF at Zaguán 28 April 2010.*

         http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/4566

         2010

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Online PDF at ResearchGate 12 Dec. 2011.*

         http://www.researchgate.net/publication/39439081

         2011

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Humanities Commons 22 March 2018.*

         http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6RK4B

         https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:18659/

         2018

_____. "'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Vanity Fea 22 March 2018.*

         https://vanityfea.blogspot.com/2018/03/another-game-in-vew-representation-of.html

         2026

_____. "Another Game in Vew: The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene." Semantic Scholar.*

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/'Another-Game-in-Vew'%3A-The-Representation-of-the-in-Landa/e979df0475d8fc43ff07f7a3cfc63a449b3766d4

         2019

_____. "Another Game in Vew (Thinking Out Loud)." In García Landa, Vanity Fea 13 Feb. 2026.*

         https://blogdenotasvanityfea.blogspot.com/2026/02/another-game-in-view-thinking-out-loud.html

         2026

 

The Poetry of Spenser

From The Short Cambridge History of English Literature, by George Sampson (1972 ed.).


After a lapse of almost two centuries we reach the first English major poet since Chaucer. Edmund Spenser (1552-99) was born in London, and was related to the great family of his name. At Cambridge he not only wrote his earliest sonnets, but came under three profound influences. The first was his frienship with Gabriel Harvey, a powerful and controversial scholar, to whom justice has yet to be done. The second was the refined and cultured "Puritanism", which, like that of Milton, was a revolt from coarseness and materialism in life and in religion. The third was the study of Platonic philosophy—not the Christianized neo-Platonism of the Reformers, but the pure Platonism of the Timaeus and the Symposium. To the imagination of Spenser this proved exceedingly congenial, and confirmed him in his allegorical habit of conception and expression. His early Hymnes, the first in honour of Love, the second in honour of Beautie, though not published till 1596 (Foure Hymnes made by Edm. Spenser), were inspired by his first experience of love, and written in the spirit of Plato.

He was brought by Harvey into the service of the Earl of Leicester, and met Philip Sidney, whose ardent imagination and lofty spirit greatly stimulated him. After toying, under Harvey's influence, with the possibilities of using in English a system of quantitative prosody (that ignis fatuus of English poets) he began to consider the forms in which he could express himself most naturally, and he turned instinctively to the pastoral and the romance, with their stock figures, the shepherd and the knight. The pastoral, as we have seen, was a popular form, offering an abundance of models. The extent of Spenser's debt to any of these is not really important. All that matters in a poem is what it is, not what it may have come from. Upon the "XII Aeglogues proportioned to. . . the XII monethes" forming The Shepheards Calendar (1579) the impress of a creative, originating poetic genius is clearly discernible. The book was dedicated to Sidney, who praised it highly, but objected, rather pedantically, to one of its greatest charms, namely "the olde rusticke language". Sidney, a typical figure of the Renascence, disliked Spenser's archaism, not in itself, but because it was unwarranted by classical originals. This kind of criticism was to have a long run. A more serious objection would have been that the pastoral, as Spenser wrote it, was a literary exercise with little hold on life. Spenser uses all varieties of the form, amatory, moral, religious, courtly, rustic, lyric, elegiac, and shows himself at once master of an old convention and herald of a new spirit in poetry. His language was deliberately archaic. Ben Jonson said that Spenser, in affecting the obsolete, "writ no language". The answer is that Spenser used the language in which Spenser could write. Every true poet creates his own idiom. What The Shepheards Calendar clearly reveals is the arrival of a great poet-musician, who excelled all his predecessors in a sense of the capacity of the English language for harmonious combinations of sound. To turn from the flatness of [George Gascoigne's] The Steele Glas to The Shepheardes Calendar is to pass from honest and well-meant effort into a new world of absolute mastery.

From the pastoral Spenser proceeded naturally to romance. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy, and there at Kilcolman Castle he continued his Faerie Queene, the first three books of which were published in 1590 on his return to England. As, in any creative sense, the poem shows no progress, but is at the end what it was in the beginning, some consideration of it may be given at once. The poem, as planned in twelve books, was never completed. Spenser himself has clearly stated his own intentions in the prefatory letter addressed to Ralegh, and to this the reader is referred. Like other great poets he felt himself called to teach; and desiring to set forth a picture of a perfect knight, he chose King Arthur as hero, rather than any person of his own time. Further, he desired to glorify his own dear country and its "most royal Queen". In much of his intention he was successful, but he was not completely successful. Spenser failed because he refused to follow his natural instinct for allegory and romance, the forms that most readily released his creative powers—in The Allegory of Love (1936) C. S. Lewis traced their history from Le Roman de la Rose—but turned aside to be instructive, and, in seeking to make the allegory edifying, forgot to tell the story. But if an allegory does not survive as a story, it does not survive as an allegory. The Pilgrim's Progress [by John Bunyan] is, first of all, an excellent story; The Faerie Queene is not. Like every great poem, The Faerie Queene is entitled to its own imaginative life; but it must continue to be true to that life. Spenser, to use a common phrase, lets us down, when we are left wondering whether the false Duessa is a poetical character, or Theological Falsehood, or Mary Queen of Scots. He tried to do too many things at once; and, in elaborating intellectually the allegorical plot he has confused the imaginative substance of the poetic narrative. Homer, says Aristotle, tells lies as he ought; that is, he makes us believe his stories. Spenser tried to tell his lies while clingling to a disabling kind of truth; and so he does not convince his readers. Thus it is neither as an allegorist not as a narrator that the author of The Faeire Queene holds his place. He lives us an exquisite word-painter of widely differing scenes, and as supreme poet-musician using with unrivalled skill a noble stanza of his own invention, unparalleled in any other language.

As the years advanced, Spenser seems to have felt that his conception of chivalry had little correspondence with the facts of life. Sidnay was dead, and his own hopes of preferment were frustrated. In 1591 a volume of his collected poems was published with the significant title Complaints, including such works as The Rines of Time, The Teares of the Muses and Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberd's Tale, in which the Ape and the Fox serve to satirize the customs of the court. In 1591 he returned to his exile in Ireland, and there, in the form of an allegorical pastoral, called Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), he gave expression to his views about the general state of manners and poetry. In his Prothalamion, and still more, in his Epithalamion, he carries his lyrical style, first attempted in The Shepheards Calendar, to an unequalled height of harmony, splendour and enthusiasm. In 1595, he again came over to England, bringing with him the second part of The Farie Queene, which was licensed for publication in January 1595-6. Finding still no place at court, he returned to Ireland in 1597; but, in a rising, Kilcolman Castle was taken and burned, and Spenser barely escaped with his life. His spirit was broken, and after suffering the afflictions of poverty, he died in January 1599. His posthumous prose dialogue, A Veue of the Present State of Ireland, written in 1596, is discussed in a later chapter. Spenser is the poets' poet, and his greatness cannot be diminished by the jeers of the tough-minded who find his poetic music and his poetic virtue too delicate for their manly taste.


....

Spenser is the true father of the Elizabethan sonnet. He first appeared as a poet with the twenty-six youthful sonnets of 1569. His indebtedness to Du Bellay is declared in the title of one group of sonnets, The Visions of Bellay. Another set, The Visions of Petrarch, he translates from Marot. These and the other sonnets of Spenser in Amoretti (1595) have his characteristic sweetness of versification. Spenser, it should be noted, uses the English and not the Italian form of the sonnet. Two of the sonnets in the Amoretti refer to the Platonic "Idea" of beauty which outshines any mortal embodiment. The "Idea", found also in numerous French writers, became a theme of later English sonnets, especially those of Drayton (...).

Entierro en Westminster

Entierro en Westminster

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Lecture on Spenser and The Faerie Queene (Adam Crowley)

9 more minutes on TFQ

I Wrote Her Name upon the Strand

El soneto 75 de los Amoretti de Spenser:

Edmund Spenser: A Life

'Another game in vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble:

SPENSER, Edmund (c. 1552-99), the elder son of John Spenser, who was probably related to the Spencers of Althorp, and was described as a journeyman in the art of cloth-making. Edmund Spenser was probably born in East Smithfield, London, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, under Mulcaster, and Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. In 1569, while still at Cambridge, he contributed a number of 'Visions' and sonnets, from Petrarch and du Bellay, to van der Noodt's Theatre for Worldlings. To the 'greener times' of his youth belong also the 'Hymne in Honour of Love' and that of 'Beautie' (not published until 1596), which reflect his study of Neoplatonism. After possibly spending some time in the north, he became secretary to John Young, bishop of Rochester, in 1578, and in 1579, through his college friend Gabriel Harvey, obtained a place in [the Earl of] Leicester's household. There he became acquainted with Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated his Shepheardes Calender (1579). He probably married Machabyas Chylde in the same year, and also began to write The Faerie Queene. In 1580 he was appointed secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, then going to Ireland as lord deputy. In 1588 or 1589 he became one of the 'undertakers' for the settlement of Munster, and acquired Kilcolman Castle in Co. Cork. Here he settled and occupied himself with literary work, writing his elegy 'Astrophel', on Sidney, and preparing 'The Faerie Queene'  for the press. The first three books of it were entrusted to the publisher during his visit to London in 1589. He returned reluctantly to Kilcolman, which he liked to regard as a place of exile, in 1591, recording his visit to London and return in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (printed 1595). The success of The Faerie Queene led the publisher, Ponsonby, to issue his minor verse and juvenilia, in part rewritten, as Complaints, Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie (1591). This volume included 'The Ruines of Time', which was a further elegy on Sidney, dedicated to Sidney's sister, the countess of Pembroke, 'Mother Hubberds Tale', Muiopotmos, 'The Tears of the Muses', and 'Virgils Gnat'. Also in 1591 Daphnaïda was published, an elegy on Douglas Howard, the daughter of Lord Byndon and wife of Sir A. Gorges. In 1594 he married Elizabeth Boyle, whom he had wooed in his Amoretti, and celebrated the marriage in his superb Epithalamion: the works were printed together in 1595. He published Books IV-VI of The Faerie Queene and his Fowre Hymnes in 1596, being in London for the purpose at the house of his friend the earl of Essex, where he wrote his Prothalamion and also his well-informed though propagandist View of the Present State of Ireland. He returned to Ireland, depressed both in mind and health, in 1596 or 1597. His castle of Kilcolman was burnt in October 1598, in a sudden insurrection of the natives, chiefly O'Neills, under the earl of Desmond; he was compelled to flee to Cork with his wife and three children. We do not know what works, if any, were lost at Kilcolman, but Ponsonby in 1591 had mentioned other works by Spenser which are not now extant, and in The Shepheardes Calender reference is made to his discourse of the 'English Poet'. He died in London in distress, if not actual destitution, at a lodging in King Street, Westminster. His funeral expenses were borne by the earl of Essex, and he was buried near his favourite Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. His monument, set up some 20 years later by Lady Anne Clifford, describes him as 'THE PRINCE OF POETS IN HIS TYME': there have been few later periods in which he has not been admired, and the poetry of both Milton and Keats had its origins in the reading of Spenser.

See the Variorum edition of his works, with a biography and full critical commentary, ed. E. Greenlaw, C. G. Osgood, F. M. Padelford, et al. (10 vols, 1932-57).

'Another Game in Vew': The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene

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Eventos consuetudinarios que acontecen en la RUA

En el Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Alicante, RUA, acabo de descubrir unos pocos artículos míos (o en colaboración) que no sabía que andaban ya por la red. Un artículo sobre Samuel Beckett, una bibliografía de las obras del mismo (incluyendo UPTHEREPUBLIC!), y una comunicación sobre lexicología computacional, en la que aparecía yo de "artista invitado".

Ah, y un artículo más, sobre The Faerie Queene de Edmund Spenser: "'Another Game in Vew: The Representation of the Poet in The Faerie Queene". Este poema épico me lo leí en los años ochenta (y Orlando Furioso, y la Jerusalén Liberada, y la Divina Comedia, y el Paraíso Perdido, y la Eneida, y... ) —y el artículo lo escribí en Brown University. Todos los añado a mi página de publicaciones.

Aparte, en la rúa he estado tocando la guitarra al sol, y luego a la sombra, que hacía muy buen día y muy buena tarde. Aún está la Plaza de los Sitios llena de tenderetes de la fiesta de San Jorge. Los niños se han ido con Rosa de cinecena; como les cuidó tanto de pequeños, les encanta cuando reaparece por su vida, que ya va siendo pocas veces. Y ahora nos vamos a ver Más allá del tiempo, una romantic comedy. Al Elíseos, hablando de épica clásica.

Republican

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