Faerie queene
1590
- epic poetry
- knights and knighthood
- poetry
- virtues
- english epic poetry
- poetry & poets: 16th to 18th centuries
- literature - classics / criticism
- english, irish, scottish, welsh
- textbooks
- english
The story
The Faerie Queene was one of the most influential poems in the English language. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united Arthurian romance and Italian renaissance epic to celebrate the glory of the Virgin Queen. Each book of the poem recounts the quest of a knight to achieve a virtue: the Red Crosse Knight of Holinesse, who must slay a dragon and free himself from the witch Duessa; Sir Guyon, Knight of Temperance, who escapes the Cave of Mammon and destroys Acrasia’s Bowre of Bliss; and the lady-knight Britomart’s search for her Sir Artegall, revealed to her in an enchanted mirror. Although composed as a moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene’s magical atmosphere captivated the imaginations of later poets from Milton to the Victorians.
What it’s like
Long, unhurried stanzas of nine lines, each closing on a slow alexandrine, that drift through a green and gilded fairyland of forests, castles, and sunlit meadows, with the archaic diction and rich sound of late Elizabethan verse. The mood is dreamlike and ornate, with a wistful, chivalric glow that turns dusky in the mirror-lit and cave-haunted passages. The pace is leisurely and digressive, so it suits a slow afternoon, a long evening with a candle, or reading a canto at a time before sleep. Violence is present but mostly formal: battles, a dragon fight, and some wounds described with moral weight rather than gore, and the sensual temptations of the Bower of Bliss are lush but allegorically moralised. Fear comes from enchantment and wicked sorcery more than from brutality. It rewards readers who enjoy allegory, language for its own sake, and the sense of entering an older world of virtue tested through trial and wandering.
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