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Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I

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Title: Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I

Author: Edmund Spenser

Editor: George Armstrong Wauchope

 
Release date: March 7, 2005 [eBook #15272]
 Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15272

Credits: E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPENSER'S THE FAERIE QUEENE, BOOK I ***

E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team

 SPENSER'S
 THE FAERIE QUEENE

 BOOK I

 EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
 BY
 GEORGE ARMSTRONG WAUCHOPE, M.A., Ph.D.

Professor of English in the South Carolina College

 _Velut inter ignes luna minores_

 New York
 The Macmillan Company
 London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
 1921
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1903.

 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION:
 I. The Age which produced the Faerie Queene
 II. The Author of the Faerie Queene
 III. Study of the Faerie Queene:
 1. A Romantic Epic
 2. Influence of the New Learning
 3. Interpretation of the Allegory
 4. The Spenserian Stanza
 5. Versification
 6. Diction and Style
 IV. Chronological Table of Events

THE FAERIE QUEENE. BOOK I:
 Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh
 Sonnet to Sir Walter Raleigh
 Dedication to Queen Elizabeth
 Canto I
 Canto II
 Canto III
 Canto IV
 Canto V
 Canto VI
 Canto VII
 Canto VIII
 Canto IX
 Canto X
 Canto XI
 Canto XII

NOTES

GLOSSARY

 * * * * *

INTRODUCTION

I. THE AGE WHICH PRODUCED THE _FAERIE QUEENE_

The study of the _Faerie Queene_ should be preceded by a review of the
great age in which it was written. An intimate relation exists between the
history of the English nation and the works of English authors. This close
connection between purely external events and literary masterpieces is
especially marked in a study of the Elizabethan Age. To understand the
marvelous outburst of song, the incomparable drama, and the stately prose
of this period, one must enter deeply into the political, social, and
religious life of the times.

The _Faerie Queene_ was the product of certain definite conditions which
existed in England toward the close of the sixteenth century. The first of
these national conditions was the movement known as the _revival of
chivalry_; the second was the _spirit of nationality_ fostered by the
English Reformation; and the third was that phase of the English
Renaissance commonly called the _revival of learning_.

The closing decade of Queen Elizabeth's reign was marked by a strong
reaction toward romanticism. The feudal system with its many imperfections
had become a memory, and had been idealized by the people. The nation felt
pride in its new aristocracy, sprung largely from the middle class, and
based rather on worth than ancestry. The bitterness of the Wars of the
Roses was forgotten, and was succeeded by an era of reconciliation and good
feeling. England was united in a heroic queen whom all sects, ranks, and
parties idolized. The whole country exulting in its new sense of freedom
and power became a fairyland of youth, springtime, and romantic
achievement.

Wise and gallant courtiers, like Sidney, Leicester, and Raleigh, gathered
about the queen, and formed a new chivalry devoted to deeds of adventure
and exploits of mind in her honor. The spirit of the old sea-kings lived
again in Drake and his bold buccaneers, who swept the proud Spaniards from
the seas. With the defeat of the Invincible Armada, the greatest naval
expedition of modern times, the fear of Spanish and Catholic domination
rolled away. The whole land was saturated with an unexpressed poetry, and
the imagination of young and old was so fired with patriotism and noble
endeavor that nothing seemed impossible. Add to this intense delight in
life, with all its mystery, beauty, and power, the keen zest for learning
which filled the air that men breathed, and it is easy to understand that
the time was ripe for a new and brilliant epoch in literature. First among
the poetic geniuses of the Elizabethan period came Edmund Spenser with his
_Faerie Queene_, the allegory of an ideal chivalry.

This poem is one of the fruits of that intellectual awakening which first
fertilized Italian thought in the twelfth century, and, slowly spreading
over Europe, made its way into England in the fifteenth century. The mighty
impulse of this New Learning culminated during the reign of the Virgin
Queen in a profound quickening of the national consciousness, and in
arousing an intense curiosity to know and to imitate the rich treasures of
the classics and romance. Its first phase was the _classical revival_. The
tyrannous authority of ecclesiasticism had long since been broken; a
general reaction from Christian asceticism had set in; and by the side of
the ceremonies of the church had been introduced a semi-pagan religion of
art--the worship of moral and sensuous beauty. Illiteracy was no longer the
style at court. Elizabeth herself set the example in the study of Greek.
Books and manuscripts were eagerly sought after, Scholars became conversant
with Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the great tragic poets Sophocles,
Euripides, and Æschylus; and translations for the many of Vergil, Ovid,
Plautus, Terence, and Seneca poured forth from the printing-presses of
London. The English mind was strongly tempered by the idealistic philosophy
of Plato and Aristotle, and the influence of Latin tragedy and comedy was
strongly felt by the early English drama.

Along with this classical culture came a higher appreciation of the _beauty
of mediævalism_. The romantic tendency of the age fostered the study of the
great epics of chivalry, Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_ and Tasso's _Jerusalem
Delivered_, and of the cycles of French romance. From the Italian poets
especially Spenser borrowed freely. Ariosto's fresh naturalness and magic
machinery influenced him most strongly, but he was indebted to the
semi-classical Tasso for whole scenes. On the whole, therefore, Spenser's
literary affinities were more with the Gothic than the classical.

Spenser was also the spokesman of his time on religious questions. The
violent controversies of the Reformation period were over. Having turned
from the beliefs of ages with passionate rejection, the English people had
achieved religious freedom, and were strongly rooted in Protestantism,
which took on a distinctly national aspect. That Calvinis

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