Academic literature on the topic 'Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene (Spenser)'

Throughout the twentieth century, critics of the poet Edmund Spenser wrestled with the question of the presence of Plato as well as Platonic thought in Spenser’s works. Having recently established the profound presence of Platonism in Spenser via Marsilio Ficino and other sources, the field of Spenser studies is now open to a treatment of exactly what kind of Platonism is present in Spenser. Drawing from the work done by researchers in the field of magic and Platonism, in this article I hope to demonstrate the presence of Platonic daemons in Spenser’s Faerie Queene who are found under the name of “sprites” or “sprights” in the poem. An examination of daemons in The Faerie Queene will elucidate some questions on the role of Merlin in the poem as well as Spenser’s own self fashioning as a poet-magus.

ABSTRACT This research looks at Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, one of the earliest and most celebrated pieces of epic poetry in the English language. While it has long been recognized that Spenser's work participates in the agenda of the Protestant Reformation, this research illustrates that Spenser's work is much more than a reflection of the norms of the Elizabethan period. Using the character of Duessa as a focal point, this research illuminates the ways in which Spenser used The Faerie Queene to not just echo but present his idiosyncratic stance on the threat of Catholicism to the English people.

This essay explores how the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser incorporates a zodiac, calendar, and history into his allegory, each based on the twelve signs, and each Christ-centered, In Spenser's historical allegory, Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, symbolically travels through the zodiac, sign by sign, in a quintessentially Christian odyssey. Guyon's Imitation of Christ in the center of Book II of The Faerie Queene marks the structural transition between classical and Christian temperance, reflected in a physical transition from the lunar to the solar signs of the zodiac. By modelling the world of Book II on the zodiac, Spenser epitomizes the Renaissance theory of poetics: To create a poem modelled on the universe was to worship its Creator.

This essay explores how the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser incorporates a zodiac, calendar, and history into his allegory, each based on the twelve signs, and each Christ-centered, In Spenser's historical allegory, Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, symbolically travels through the zodiac, sign by sign, in a quintessentially Christian odyssey. Guyon's Imitation of Christ in the center of Book II of The Faerie Queene marks the structural transition between classical and Christian temperance, reflected in a physical transition from the lunar to the solar signs of the zodiac. By modelling the world of Book II on the zodiac, Spenser epitomizes the Renaissance theory of poetics: To create a poem modelled on the universe was to worship its Creator.

This essay approaches Edmund Spenser’s Renaissance masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, through a hitherto unknown series of twenty-four vignette illustrations that the eighteenth-century painter and book illustrator, Thomas Stothard, contributed to the nowadays little-known annual, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas, in 1794. Apart from making sense of Stothard’s visual interpretation of Spenser’s romance, the article will pay attention to how the painter creates an anthological miniature gallery of moments with which the users of the pocket diary may have been familiar. In other words, these vignettes may have conveyed mnemonically a prior reading experience of The Faerie Queene or have stimulated recall of other engagements with the moments represented. Understanding Stothard’s illustrations as iconic interventions in the reception history of Spenser’s work that, by being included in a disposable, annual pocket diary, were significantly more ephemeral than illustrations issued as part of an edition, I shall investigate how Stothard mediates the text by providing textual excerpts and how these one-line cues evoke a particular allusive experience of the text that affects the reading experience.

Edmund Spenser is a vocal spokesman for the colonization of Ireland. In A View of the Present State of Ireland, he provides one of the most sustained imperialist articulations in Elizabethan England. And in Book V of The Faerie Queene, he promulgates a vision of justice that is necessary for containing individual and social dissent, as well as for consolidating monarchical authority. Spenser wants a similar form of relentless justice applied to controlling the recalcitrant Irish, but discovers that his implacable imperialist policy stands in direct opposition to Queen Elizabeth’s own.

AbstractSixteenth-century history may have been recorded most spectacularly in prestigious folio chronicles, but readers had more ready access to printed books that conveyed this history in epitome. This essay focuses on how Edmund Spenser (1552?– 99) appropriated the rhetoric and form of such printed redactions in his rendition of fairy history found in book 2 of The Faerie Queene (1596). Through his abridged fairy chronicle, Spenser connects to a broadly defined reading public, emphasizes the deeds not only of kings but their imperial and civic deputies, and provides an alternative interpretive pathway through his poem.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003.<br>Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-221). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Renaissance patriarchy maintained very clear distinctions between what was appropriately "masculine" and "feminine." Modern feminist criticism and research have tried to dispel some of the old illusions, and so they offer a fresh approach to evaluating the personal and social implications of gender in the Renaissance. Such perspectives can be specifically applied for enhanced appreciation of Spenser's Faerie Queene, after an initial assessment of Renaissance patriarchy itself.<br>The Faerie Queene, we find, questions many important conventions of gender roles in Renaissance patriarchal society. Spenser crosses the familiar boundaries of appropriate or accepted female social status and options, and situates both males and females in roles which seemingly challenge the existing conventions by advancing the possibility of a new perspective. Spenser examines femininity from a specifically feminine point of view and invites a broadened understanding of the feminine. He portrays many different aspects of femininity and his titular heroine, Britomart, approximates the modern androgyne. The poem suggests a variety of alternative gender roles for both females and males, and also uses symbolic aspects of gender, so that characters ultimately cease to be gender-specific in their significance. That too tends to soften distinctions between males and females, by allegorically representing the self in such a way that it is seen to have both masculine and feminine aspects.<br>Spenser's attempt to broaden his readers' understanding and valuation of the feminine and his suggestions of alternative roles for both genders, helped open the door to new freedom and equality for women by inviting redefinition or revision of culturally received notions of gender and its personal and social implications.

This dissertation focuses on how a series of major characters in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (Prince Arthur, Britomart, Duessa, Artegall, and those characters that figure forth the poet's sovereign, Elizabeth I) enhance a reader's appreciation of the epic's complex topical allegory and its moral implications. By closely interpreting the respective functions and narratives of these characters, and additionally examining some of Spenser's main techniques of character development, I propose that the above figures both articulate and underscore central aspects of the poet's politically encomiastic and critical agendas. These specific techniques of character development include composition, fragmentation, and metamorphosis (both positive, as in the case of Britomart, as well as pejorative, such as in the case of the wicked enchantress Duessa). By thus investigating the topical import of The Faerie Queene 's allegory, I further demonstrate both how the epic's major characters illustrate contemporary Elizabethan moral and political ideals and, in certain cases, exemplify serious perceived threats to those ideals. The dissertation also indicates that the poet consistently and cautiously treads a fine line between allegorically depicting controversial historical issues and events (towards which at least some Elizabethans were ambivalent), and praising Elizabeth and her successful governing abilities. This crucial tension, reflected in the epic's diverse plots, invests the topical aspects of the poem with much of their complexity. Yet, given that Spenser's main aims included portraying his queen as a model monarch, while simultaneously enhancing concepts of English nationhood, his criticisms of her government and policies remain tentative. Loyalty to the Tudor sovereign and to the predominant Protestant faith in England are fundamental to the epic, for the poet assumes they provide his audience with an essential foundation for personal moral "self-fashioning." Eclectica

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2000.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Although The Faerie Queene was written in 1589 as a commentary on and criticism of issues which would concern many sixteenth-century Protestant subjects of Queen Elizabeth of England, Spenser creates in his text worlds which even a twentieth-century reader can find significant. Allegorical representations, mythical, historical and poetical figures and pastoral retreats, for example, not only reflect the harsh realities which sixteenth-century English society experienced, but also offer the possibility of escape to worlds of divine and charitable interaction. Spenser, drawing on Philip Sidney's An Apology for Poetry, constructs an ideal world where there is no strife, only peaceful interaction and stability, as opposed to the problems and fears of the "real" world of sixteenth-century England. The story of Faery Land is, therefore, about a magical world of wish fulfilment, but at the same time it also draws on the concrete reality of sixteenth-century England, which has relevance for a twentieth-century world still concerned with many of the same issues of crime, justice, religion, government, relationships and history. Discussion in this thesis focuses on the different "real" and ideal worlds and the devices used to represent these worlds in the narrative of The Faerie Queene. Chapter 1 deals with allegorical representation and distinguishes between two levels of representation: a "literal" or primary level of signification which reflects the everyday experiences of the sixteenth-century reader, and the allegorical level whereby these experiences and desires are personified. The allegory, in tum, communicates and reveals different doctrines or themes: this chapter shows how Redcrosse represents the struggle of the religious man who finally earns salvation by perseverance and dependence on the grace of God. In this allegorical world, Spenser shows the religious conflicts, doubts and victories of the sixteenth-century Protestant man. Chapter 2 explores a series of allegorical parallels in plot, theme and structure in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene which create the "real" and ideal worlds through which Guyon now runs his race. Here, the discussion focuses on the clues provided by the allegory which lead the reader to a redefinition of the categories of good and evil. The primary purpose of the allegory is, therefore, didactic and the sixteenth-century reader is taught how to interpret the signs and symbols of Spenser's allegorical, historical and mythical worlds. This chapter concludes with an examination of Spenser's mythical devices and an exploration of the historical significance of his fictional characters and plots - all of which help the reader to grasp the significance of Spenser's world of knights and fairies. Chapter 3 focuses on a discussion of Books 3 and 4, in which issues of love and friendship come to shape Spenser's ideal world. The analyses consider how sixteenth-century perceptions of marriage, love and power may have influenced his conceptionalization of such an ideal world. The chapter concludes with an exploration of sixteenth-century concerns with time and discord, and demonstrates how Spenser fmally resolves these issues in his vision of the Garden of Adonis. Chapter 4 deals with Book 5, where Artegall represents the just knight. Here the thesis examines Spenser's political aspirations, and shows how historical events are reflected in the actions of characters and how they may influence Spenser's vision of the ideal society with its just ruler. This discussion also focuses, among other things, on those factors which may have contributed to Spenser's disillusionment with sixteenth-century society. Chapter 5 concludes with Spenser's pastoral ideal of Book 6, which brings the promise of peace and prosperity, as opposed to a life of waste and thwarted ambition at Court. On Mount Acidale, Spenser's alternative worlds coincide, as Calidore, representing the fallen and "real" world of Faery Land, is allowed a glimpse of the poetic and divine worlds which the poet, Colin Clout, already shares with three Graces and his mistress. Chapter 5 examines the poet's autobiographical persona in the figure of Colin Clout and the relevance of his appearance on Mount Acidale in particular, and in the poem in general. It is the intention of this thesis to follow the route which Spenser has marked out, to read and interpret the signs and to finally share in this world of dream and thought, experience and vision.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ten spyte van die feit dat Spenser se Faerie Queene reeds in 1589 geskryfis as 'n kommentaar of kritiek op kwessies wat vir menige sestiende-eeuse Protestantse onderdaan van koningin Elizabeth van Engeland van belang sou wees, is daar in Spenser se teks wêrelde geskep wat selfs vir 'n twintigste eeuse leser waarde sou hê. Allegoriese voorstellings, mitologiese-, historiese-, en poëtiese figure, asook herderstoevlugte byvoorbeeld reflekteer nie net die harde realiteite waaraan 'n sestiende-eeuse Engelse gemeenskap blootgestel is nie, maar bied ook die moontlikheid van ontsnapping na wêrelde van goddelike en mensliewende interaksie. Spenser, wat gebruik maak van Sidney se An Apology for Poetry, konstrueer 'n ideale wêreld waar daar nie konflik of oorlog is nie, slegs vreedsame interaksie en stabiliteit; teenoor die probleme en vrese of "realiteite" wat 'n sestiende-eeuse Engeland gekenmerk het. Die Faerie Queene gaan dus oor 'n verbeeldingryke wêreld van wensvervulling, maar terselfdertyd verwys dit ook na die konkrete realiteit van 'n sestiende-eeuse Engeland wat relevansie het vir 'n twintigste-eeuse gemeenskap nog steeds gemoeid met baie van dieselfde kwessies rakende misdaad, geregtigheid, godsdiens, regering, verhoudings en geskiedenis. Bespreking in hierdie tesis fokus op die verskillende "werklike" en ideale wêrelde asook die tegnieke waarvan daar gebruik gemaak is om hierdie wêrelde in Spenser se gedig voor te stel. Hoofstuk 1 bespreek die allegoriese voorstelling en onderskei tussen twee vlakke van representasie: 'n "letterlike," of primêre vlak van aanduiding wat die alledaagse ervaringe van die sestiende-eeuse leser voorstel en die allegoriese vlak waar hierdie ervaringe en begeertes gepersonifieer word. Die allegorie, op sy beurt, kommunikeer en onthul verskillende leerstellings ofboodskappe: hierdie hoofstuk wys hoe Rederosse die stryd van die gelowige man verteenwoordig wat uiteindelik gered word as gevolg van volharding en erkenning van sy afhanklikheid van God. Hierdie wêreld beeld die konflik, onsekerheid en oorwinning van die sestiende-eeuse Protestant uit. Hoofstuk 2 ondersoek 'n reeks allegoriese paralleie in plot, tema en struktuur in Boek 2 van The Faerie Queene wat die "werklike" en ideale wêrelde skep waardeur Guyon nou sy wedren hardloop. Hier fokus die bespreking op die leidrade wat deur die allegorie voorsien word en waardeur die leser gelei word tot 'n herdefinieering van die kategorieë van goed en sleg. Die primêre doel van die allegorie is dus didakties en die sestiende-eeuse leser word geleer hoe om die tekens en simbole van Spenser se allegoriese, historiese en mitologiese wêrelde te interpreteer. Hierdie hoofstuk sluit af met 'n ondersoek na Spenser se mitologiese tegnieke en die geskiedkundige relevansie van sy fiktiewe karakters en plot - waarvan laasgenoemde die leser help om Spenser se wêreld met sy ridders en feë te kan interpreteer. Hoofstuk 3 fokus op 'n bespreking van Spenser se Boeke 3 en 4 waar liefde en vriendskap bydra tot die skep van Spenser se ideale wêreld. Die hoofstuk ondersoek hoe sestiende-eeuse persepsies van die huwelik, liefde en mag Spenser se konsep van so 'n ideale wêreld kon beïnvloed. Die hoofstuk sluit af met 'n ondersoek na sestiende-eeuse bemoeienis met tyd en wanorde en demonstreer hoe Spenser uiteindelik 'n oplossing vind in sy visie van die Tuin van Adonis. Hoofstuk 4 bespreek Boek 4 waar Artegall die ridder van reg en geregtigheid is. Hier ondersoek die tesis Spenser se politiese aspirasies en wys hoe geskiedkundige gebeure eerstens in die optrede van karakters gereflekteer word en tweedens ook Spenser se visie van die ideale gemeenskap met sy regverdige leier kon beïnvloed. Die bespreking fokus ook onder andere op daardie faktore wat kon bydra tot Spenser se ontnugtering met 'n sestiendeeeuse gemeenskap. Hoofstuk 5 sluit af met Spenser se herders-ideaal in Boek 6 wat die belofte bring van vrede en voorspoed, teenoor 'n lewe van verspeelde en verlore geleenthede of misplaaste ambisie in Elizabeth se hof. Dit is op Mount Acidale dat Spenser se verskillende wêrelde saamkom wanneer Calidore, wat die sondige en "werklike" wêreld verteenwoordig, 'n vlugtige blik in die poëtiese en goddelike wêrelde gegun word. 'n Wêreld waarin die digter, Colin Clout en die drie "Graces" saam met sy geliefde, reeds deel. Hoofstuk 5 ondersoek die digter se outobiografiese persoon in die figuur Colin Clout en die relevansie van sy spesifieke verskyning op Mount Acidale en sy algemene verskyning in die gedig. Dit is die doel van hierdie tesis om die roete te volg wat Spenser uitgelê het, om die tekens te lees en te interpreteer en om ten slotte te deel in hierdie wêreld van droom en gedagtes, ervaring en vISIe.

The study inquires into the dynamic relationship between Protestantism and culture in The Faerie Oueene. The American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr makes penetrating analyses of the relationship between man's cultural potentials and the insights of Protestant Christianity which greatly illuminate how Spenser searches for a comprehensive religious, ethical, political, and social vision for the Christian community of Protestant England. But Spenser maintains the tension between culture and Christianity to the end, refusing to offer a merely coherent system of principles based on the doctrine of Christianity.

This chapter assesses the degree to which Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene not only responds to reading “characterologically” but solicits it, as an offering to and claim upon the reader whose interest Spenser was most anxious to secure. The Faerie Queene is not a tightly plotted prose narrative, and its intended reader was no figment of Spenser's imagination. On the contrary, she was a living ruler on whose favor the poet's livelihood depended and to whom, on at least one occasion, he read parts of his uncompleted poem aloud. These well-known facts are related in nonobvious ways: Queen Elizabeth's engrossment in The Faerie Queene is the poem's motivating and sustaining fiction, as well as the scene of an imagined catastrophe it must labor to forestall. In claiming Elizabeth as inspiration and ideal reader, Spenser's poem participates in a collective fiction of the queen's willing self-subjection to her chastely devoted male subjects, a fiction whose seditious and erotic subtexts were at perpetual risk of contaminating the official narrative.

This chapter considers how Edmund Spenser coordinates the contradictory nature of sleep—its status as something both within and beyond an individual’s control—to religious difference. Spenser associates Protestantism with ‘timely rest’ and Catholicism with a ‘daemonic’ conception of sleep that overtakes Redcrosse and comes to emblematize his alienation from Una, the ‘true faith’. These two conceptions of sleep also form the basis for what Spenser constructs as Catholic and Protestant models of cognition, affect, and embodiment. However, Spenser smudges the differences between these models even as he highlights them, and, in doing so, betrays an anxiety about the potential indistinguishability of error and truth.

Chapter Four follows Braggadochio as he travels through Spenser’s faerie land collecting other men’s ornamenta, a word that describes both the figures of rhetoric and the weapons of war. His story proceeds according to the paradigm of accumulation that underwrote the humanist schoolroom’s central claim to facilitate social mobility. It argues that the early modern simile acted as an engine of accumulation and that its copious productivity resisted the very abstraction upon which humanist theories of reason were predicated. I examine how Spenser casts Braggadochio’s accumulation of comparative images, and the history of composition it implies, as a means of social mobility while also suggesting that simile encodes the time of poetic practice into The Faerie Queene.

This chapter examines the character of Una in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Una was at the epicenter of The Faerie Queene, and the poem's ideal reader was one naturally impervious to any moralizing pretensions: a child, usually but not always a boy, old enough to read independently but not so grown as to have lost a taste for imaginary play or developed a sensitivity to allegory. Today, when nearly all readers of The Faerie Queene encounter the poem in the confines of a classroom or a footnoted scholarly edition, it is hard to appreciate the influence such actual and imagined young readers once had on its critical and popular reception. Far from requiring or fostering the hyperliteracy with which Spenser is now associated, The Faerie Queene was characterized by both admirers and detractors as quintessential children's fare: an almost too effective engine of readerly enchantment and a rich repository of adventures and images. Although this approach to The Faerie Queene ignored or occluded much of what scholarly readers now consider essential, it attended with useful closeness to parts of the poem that now get short shrift: its richly detailed fictive landscape and the characters who populate it, without necessarily having much to do with its meaning.

This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession on each other and on a wide range of classical and romance texts, many of them known to the first audiences of these three poems. The chapter investigates the ways in which Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser used their predecessors and the different effects they achieved from a shared heritage. It examines the ways in which a series of authors used both their immediate predecessors and their sense of a long tradition of epic writing to create something new. The chapter argues that Ariosto aimed to shock and surprise his audience. Tasso reacted to Ariosto by combining a more serious and unified epic on the lines of the Iliad. Spenser's idea of devoting each book to a hero and a virtue presents a structure which is easier to comprehend than Ariosto's, yet looser and more open to surprises than Tasso's.