Edmund Spenser and his Faerie Queen

A romantic epic.
• Like Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, full of adventures and marvels, dragons, witches, enchanted trees, giants, jousting knights, and castles. • It fulfills the expectation that a romance will produce wonder, that it will enthrall us with its intricate plots, amazing episodes, heroic characters, elaborate descriptions. • It also fulfills the common Elizabethan expectation that poetry should teach by delighting.
Edmund Spenser and his The Faerie Queen
Introduction
• Edmund Spenser(1552--1599) • the greatest nondramatic poet of the Elizabethan era. • poet's poet : 诗人的诗人 • Amoretti 《小爱神》 • The Shepheardes Calender 《牧人月历》 • The Faerie Queen 《仙后》
• He is a poet of sensuous images yet also something of an iconoclast, deeply suspicious of the power of images to turn into idols. • He is an idealist, yet also a celebrant of English nationalism, empire, and martial power. • He paid homage to Chaucer, used archaic language
Spenserian sonnet
special ryhme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee. • Shakespeare sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg • the remarkably beautiful adaption of the Italian canzone forms for the Epithalamion (《婚曲》)and Prothalamion, and the nineline stanza of The Faerie Queen , with its extraordinary six-foot line at the end.
• The Faerie Queen’s subjects in Faerie Land are called Faeries or elves. They are human beings, and undergo the trials and tribulations people undergo in the ordinary world. • Faerie Land is also inhabited by knights and ladies who are not Faeries but Байду номын сангаасritons － Redcrosse, Britomart, and Prince Arthur. • The bad creatures, people and monsters, represent various vices, evils, and temptations.
• The various books are composed on different structural principles. • Book 1 is almost self-contained, ----a miniature epic in itself, centering on the adventures of one principal hero, Redcrosse, who at length achieves the quest he undertakes at Una’s behest－ killing the dragon who has imprisoned her parents; and winning her as his bride. • Spiritual allegory
A national epic
• it celebrates the Tudors, Queen Elizabeth, and the English nation. • The Redcrosse Knight in book 1 is the knight of Holiness, and also St. George, the patron saint of England. • Sir Guyon in book 2 is the knight of Temperance. • The female knight Britomart in book 3 is the knight of Chastity, alludes for Queen Elizabeth.
• He was strongly influenced by Renaissance neoplatonism, but was also earthy and practical. • He is a lover and celebrator of physical beauty, yet also a profound analyst of good and evil in all their perplexing shapes and complexities. • He was strongly influenced by Puritanism in his early days, remained a thoroughgoing Protestant all his life, and portrayed the Roman Catholic church as a villain in The Faerie Queene; yet his understanding of faith and of sin owns much to Catholic thinkers.
Virgil and Spenser
• Virgil, pastoral poetry to epic. • Aeneid----- epic heroism, “Arms and the man” • Spenser: move from The Shepheardes Calender to The Faerie Queen • The organization of each book into 12 cantons also imitates the 12 books of Virgil’s Aeneid. • The Faerie Queen, more romantic, “Fierce warres and faithful loves” • The scenery is romantic: plains and forests and caves and castles and magical trees and springs, where one meets dwarfs and giants and lions and pilgrims and magicians.
The Faerie Queen
• Courtesy book: like Castiglione's Courtier, intend to "fashion a gentleman or noble person" by exhibiting the qualities such a person should have. • The six books that Spenser completed exhibit the virtues of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy.
• Persistent allusion to personages, events, and issues in Spenser’s England and Ireland－e.g. The queen, the English Reformation, the Continental religious wars, the iconoclastic controversies, and colonialism－the poem incorporates historical allegory.
The Shepheardes Calender
• 13 different meters. • some of these Spenser invented, some he adopted, but most of them were novel; only three or four were at all common in 1579.