Edmund Spenser as a poet

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (c.1552 - 13 January 1599) was an English poet and poet Laureate. Spenser is a controversial figure due to his Zeal for the destruction of Irish culture and colonization of Ireland, yet he is one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy.

• Life

Edmund Spenser was born in Smithfield, London, around the year 1552; however, there is still some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the merchant Taylor's school and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1570 Spenser went to Ireland probably in the service of the newly appointed lord deputy, Arthur Grey. from 1579 to 1580, he served with the English force during the Second Desmond Rebellion.

In1590 Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The Faerie Queene, having travelled to London to publish and promote the work, with the likely assistance of Raleigh. And through his poetry, Spenser hoped to secure a place at court, with he visited Raleigh's company to deliver his most famous work, The Faerie Queene. However, he boldly antagonized the queen's principal secretary, Lord Burghley, and all he received in 1591. When it was proposed that he receive payment of 100 pounds for his epic poem, Burghley remarked, "what, all this for a song!"

In 1598, during the Nine year's war, Spenser was driven from his home by the native Irish forces of Aodh o' Neil, His castle at Kilcolman was burned, and Ben Jonson who may have had private information asserted that one of his infant children died in the blaze. though local legend has it that his wife also died. He possessed a second holding to the south, at Rennie, on a rock overlooking the river Blackwater in North cork. The ruins of it are still visible today. A short distance away grew a tree, locally known as " Spenser 's Oak" until it was destroyed in a lightning strike in 1960. Local legend has it that he penned some or all of " the Faerie Queene " under this tree. Queen Victoria is said to have visited the tree while staying in a nearby convamore House during her state visit to Ireland before she died. In the following year Spenser travelled to London,  where he died in distressed circumstances, aged forty-six, It was arranged for his coffin to be carried by other poets, upon which they there many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave with many tears.

The Spenserian stanza and sonnet :

  Spenser used a distinctive verse form, called the Spenserian stanza in several works, including The Faerie Queene. The stanza's main meter is iambic pentameter with a final line in iambic hexameter and the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. He also used his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet. In a Spenserian sonnet, the last line of every quatrain is linked with the first line of the next one, yielding the rhyme scheme ababbcbccdcdee. " Men call you fayre " is a fine sonnet from Amoretti. The poet presents the concept of true beauty in the spiritual beauty in the poem. In the end, the poet praises her spiritual beauty and he worships her because of her Divine soul. 

Shorter poems :

                Spenser published numerous relatively short poems in the last decade of the sixteenth century, almost all of which consider love or sorrow, in 1591. He published complaints, a collection of poems that expresses complaints, in mournful or making tones. Four years later in 1995, Spenser published Amoretti and Epithalamion. This volume contains eighty-eight sonnets commemorating his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. In the following year, Spenser released prothalamion. A wedding song was written for the daughter of a duke, allegedly in hopes to gain favour in the court.

Learned and Well Versed in Literature 

Spenser is a learned man, well-versed in literature and Mythology of Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in the literature of his own age. Spenser has read widely ancient literature and in his own works reference to Ovid, Homer, Aristo, Ronsard, Petrarch, Tasso, etc. are frequent. No one, therefore, can hope to understand and enjoy the poetry of Spenser who is not familiar with 

(1) the classical mythology 

(2) classical literature 

(3) pastoral tradition of Greece and Rome, and 

(4) the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato. 

Spenser as The poet's poet :

It was Charles Lamb who called Spenser ‘The Poets’ Poet’. At least there are two reasons why Spenser is regarded as the poets’ poet and the second father of English Poetry. Firstly, Spenser rendered incalculable service to English poetry in a variety of ways and left behind him models of poetic excellence to be imitated and followed by a host of poets who came in his wake. He is also called the “Prince of Poets of his time”. He coached more poets and more eminent ones than any other poets. Besides, he is the poets’ poet because he is not the poet of the common man, but only of the scholars and poets with well-versed in the classical tradition and humanistic studies. During the Renaissance, Spenser’s poetry could really be appreciated by those who were familiar with classical writers and authors of the Renaissance. Since only scholars and poets had that necessary equipment to understand Spenser, and the common man had not that facility to understand him, Spenser is called the poet of poets and not the poet of the ordinary man. Throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a host of poets followed him, called him their master, and exalted him as their guide and mentor. Dryden acknowledged him as his master and added that “No man was ever born with a greater genius or more knowledge to support it”. Pope is all praises for him, and James Thomson referred to him as “my master Spenser”, Shelley, Byron and Keats wrote their best poems in the Spenserian stanza (a long stanza of nine lines with the rhyme a-b-a-b-b-a-b-a-a). He is the poets’ poet in the true sense for he is the fountainhead of all those excellencies and beauties which are scattered in the works of subsequent poets, and for which they expressed their indebtedness to him and called him their master.

His Famous Work 

• The Shepherd's calendar (1579) 
• The Faerie Queene ( 1590, 1596, 1609) 
• Virgin's Gnat (1590) 
• Amoretti (1595
• Epithalamion (1595)
• Four Hymns (1596)
• 
  

Let's discuss about 'The Faerie Queene' 


The Faerie Queene

Spenser's masterpiece is the epic poem The Faerie Queene. The first three books of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and the second set of three books was published in 1596. 
The Faerie Queene is an epic poem by  Edmund Spenser, which follows the adventures of a number of mediaeval knights. The poem, written in a deliberately archaic style, draws on history and myth, particularly the legend of Arthur. Each book follows the adventures of a knight who represents a particular virtue (holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship,  justice and courtesy) and who has that quality in him or herself tested by the plot. The Faerie Queene is an allegorical work in praise of Elizabeth - 1 and of Elizabethan notions of virtue. The poem employs frequent allusions to recent history and contemporary politics in its celebration and critique of the Tudor dynasty, such as the religious controversies and reforms under Mary and Elizabeth, Spenser wrote that one of his intentions was that the reading of this work should ' fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle disciple Spenser invented a new verse from his epic. that is now known as the Spenserian stanza. 
The poem is unfinished Spenser's original plan was for 12 books, but we have just seven the last being incomplete. The first three books were published in.1590 and the second three in 1596. 

Theme of Faerie Queene 

• The Importance of a virtuous life  
• Disguises, false, identities and Hypocrisy 
• Love and its power 
• Protestantism 

The Faerie Queene as a source for King Lear 

           In book 2, the knight Guyon reads an old history of Faerie land, which gives  Spenser the opportunity to recount a  chronicle of British rulers. In canto 10, stanzas 27 -32. Spenser tells the story of Lear, The story is similar to that found in Holinshed and Geoffrey of Monmouth. However, in Spenser's version, Leyr is looking to retire in his old age. After the love test and division of the realm, he weds Gonorill to the king of Scotland and Regan to the king of Cambria. Cordell/Cordelia is sent dowerless to Aganip of Celtica. In an ending very similar to Holinshed's, cordeill restores Leyr to crown and end later inherits it only to be overthrown by her nephew. In Spenser's version, Cordell hangs rather than stabs or slays herself which may be the source for the method of Cordelia's murder in Shakespeare's play. 

Warrior women in The Faerie Queene 

         In book 5, canto 5, sir Terpin tells the knight Artegall of an Amazon queen called Radigund who defeated and enslaved him. Ridgid is described as proud, lustful and skilled at arms, she is reported both to kill men and make them do housework such as cleaning and sewing . Artegall fights Redigund and is himself made captive. 
     In canto 7, Britomart goes to rescue Artegall, with whom she is in love. She seeks out Radigund and kills her in a fight, releasing Artegall dressed in women's clothes, she asks him,  ' what my - game hath misfortune made of you ? ' relating this inversion gender role to the topsy-turvy world of festive license and misrule.  
Britomart and Radigund represent two different types of warrior women: Radigund the Amazon is a renegade who operates outside of the social control of men, Whereas Britomart upholds patriarchy. In this way, Spenser is able to criticize the idea of female rule without necessarily criticising Elizabeth - 1 herself. He explicitly excludes ' lawful sovereignties ' in his condemnation of the liberty of women: 

         Such is cruelties of womankynd,

 When they have shaken off the shamefast band, 

With which wise Nature did them strongly bynd, 

T'obay  the heasts of man's well ruling hand, 

That then all rule and reason they withstand, 

To purchase a licentious libertie, 

But virtuous woman wisely understand, 

That they were borne ti base humilitie, 

Unless the heavens them lift to lawful soveraintie .

Conclusion : 

Spenser is rendered as poet's poet because of his influential writing style but he is not The price of poet's, but The price of poet's of his age.

(:-1761: words)