Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book IThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. 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 Aeschylus; 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 mediaevalism_. 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 |