Sidney C In The Shepheardes Calender Spenser example essay topic

EDMUND SPENSER. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) the Great English Poet. A. Edmund Spenser began, intentionally and calculatingly, to become the master English poet of his age. B. Unlike such poets as Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, born to advantage and upper-social class, Spenser was born of moderate means and class, in London, possibly in 1552. C. He received a notable education, first at the Merchant Taylor's School, then at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was registered as a "sizar" (meaning impoverished) scholar. D. Spenser started as a poet by translating some poems for a volume of anti-Catholic propaganda. E. He received a B.A. degree in 1573 and the M.A. in 1576 II. Influences and Vocations. A. He began his friendship with Gabriel Harvey, an eccentric Cambridge don, humanist, and pamphleteer. Their correspondence shows that both men were passionately interested in theories of poetry and in experiments in quantitative versification in English. B. Spenser served as personal secretary and aide to several prominent men, including Dr. John Young, bishop of Rochester; and the earl of Leicester, the queen's principal favorite. C. During his employment in Leicester's household he came to know Sir Philip Sidney and his friend Sir Edward Dyer, courtiers who sought to promote a new English poetry.. Contributions to Poetry. A. Spenser's contribution to the movement was The Shepheardes Calender, published in 1 5 79 and dedicated to Sidney. B. Spenser's contribution to the movement was The Shepheardes Calender, published in 1 5 79 and dedicated to Sidney. C. In The Shepheardes Calender Spenser used a deliberately archaic language, partly in homage to Chaucer, whose work he praised as a "well of English undefiled", and partly to achieve a rustic effect, in keeping with the feigned simplicity of pastoral poetry's shepherd singers. D. Sidney did not approve; in his Defense of Poesy he wrote, "The Shepheardes Calender hath much poetry in his eclogues, indeed worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. (That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazzaro in Italian did affect it.) "E. There are thirteen different meters in The Shepheardes Calender.

Some of these Spenser invented, some adapted, but most of them were novel; only three or four were at all common in 1579. F. Spenser a prolific experimenter made further innovations in his later poems. The special rhyme scheme of the Spenserian sonnet. The remarkably beautiful adaptation of the Italian canzone forms for the Epithalamion and Prothalamion and the nine-line stanza of The Faerie Queene, with its hexameter (six-stress) line at the end, are known best. G. Spenser is sometimes called the "poet's poet" because so many later English poets learned the art of versification from him. In the nineteenth century alone his influence may be seen in Shelley's Revolt of Islam, Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Kcats's Eve of St. Agnes, and Tennyson's The Lotus-Eaters. H. Published, in 1590, the first three books of The Faerie Queene. Soon after, Spenser published a volume of poems called Complaints and a pastoral called Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (I 595). I. The Faerie Queene six-book volume published in 1596, with modifications in the first part and a changed ending to Book 3. This imparts a bridge to the added books, the two so-called Variability cantos and two stanzas of a third-perhaps part of a proposed seventh book, emerged posthumously in the edition of 1609.

IV. The Poet's final Contribution. A. Spenser cannot be put into neatly labeled categories. His work is steeped in Renaissance Neoplatonism but is 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. B. He is a poet of sensuous images yet also something of an iconoclast, deeply suspicious of the power of images (material and verbal) to turn into idols. He is an idealist, drawn to courtesy, gentleness, and exquisite moral refinement, yet also a celebrant of English nationalism, empire, and martial power. C. Yet as a British epic poet and poet-prophet, he points forward to the poetry of the Romantics and especially Milton-who himself paid homage to the "sage and serious" Spenser as "a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas". Because it was a deliberate choice on Spenser's part that his language should seem antique, his poetry is always printed in the original spelling and punctuation; a few of the most confusing punctuation marks have, however, been altered in the present text. D. He died in Westminster on January 13, 1599, and was buried near his beloved Chaucer in what is now called the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. V. The Faerie Queene synopses. A. In 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene, Spenser describes his exuberant, multifaceted poem as an allegory-an extended metaphor or "dark conceit"-and invites us to interpret the characters and adventures in the several books in terms of the particular virtues and vices they enact or come to embody. B. Which begins with the following narration Redcrosse Knight in Book I is the knight of Holiness (St. George, patron saint of England).

Sir Guyon of Book 2 is the knight of Temperance. The female Knight Brito mart in Book 3 is the knight of Chastity (chastity here meaning chaste love leading to marriage). The heroes of Books 4, 5, and 6 represent Friendship, justice, and Courtesy. The poem's general end, Spenser writes, is "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline", and the individual moral qualities, taken together, constitute the ideal human being. C. The adventures of the characters in the poem take the form of mortal combat with sworn enemies.

That's why the Redcrosse Knight of Holiness smites the "Saracen" (that is, Muslim) Sansfoy (literally, "without faith"). The enemies revealed are more often than not to be bizarrely divorced facets of the knights themselves. When he encounters Sansfoy, Redcrosse has been unfaithful to his lady Una, and his treacherous enemy ultimately attests to be his own anguish. Accordingly, the meaning of the various characters, episodes, and places is richly complex, revealed to us (and to the characters themselves) only by degrees. D. Spenser's characters identified by conventional symbols and attributes that would have been obvious to every reader of his time. For example, a reader would know immediately that a woman who wears a miter and scarlet clothes and who dwells near the river Tiber represents the Roman Catholic Church. Spenser's poem can be enjoyed as a fascinating story with multiple meanings, a story that relates on several levels at once and continually eludes the full and definitive allegorical explanation it constantly promises to deliver. E. A classic epic poem.

The Faerie Queene herself is consigned to the margins of the poem that bears her name, she nonetheless is the symbolic embodiment of a shared national destiny, a destiny that reaches beyond mere political success to participate in the ultimate, millennial triumph of good over evil. To some degree a lack of closure characterizes all of The Faerie Queene in that Spenser's knights never quite reach the sanctuary they seek may reflect irresolvable tensions to which we owe much of the power and beauty of this great, unfinished work..