Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 - January 13, 1599) was an English poet, and a contemporary of William Shakespeare. Waning in popularity and influence, Spenser is still a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of the Irish culture. Spenser siphoned Ireland's Celtic tradition for poetic source material.

Spenser's Poetry

The first poem to earn him notability was a collection of eclogues called The Shepheardes Calendar, written from the point of view of various shepherds throughout the months of the year. It has been suggested that the poem is an allegory, or at least is meant to symbolize the state of humanity at large in a universal sense, as implied by its cyclical structure. The diversity of forms and meters, ranging from accentual-syllabic to purely accentual, and including such departures as the sestina in "August," gave Spenser's contemporaries a clue to the range of his powers and won him a good deal of praise in his day.

Related Topics:
Eclogues - The Shepheardes Calendar - Shepherds - Sestina

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The Faerie Queene is his major contribution to English poetry. The poem is a long allegory, in the epic form, of Christian virtues, tied into England's mythology of King Arthur. Spenser intended to complete twelve books of the poem, but managed only six before his death.

Related Topics:
The Faerie Queene - Poetry - Allegory - Epic - Christian - England - Mythology - King Arthur

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The language of his poetry is purposely antique. As such, it is supposed to remind readers of such earlier works as The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, whom Spenser greatly admired. It also says much about Spenser's attitude towards the degeneration of the world in time and the moral superiority of England's past compared with its present time. It should be noted, however, that Spenser's language seems much more antique to us than it did to the Elizabethans, for whom standardization was not yet in strict practice.

Related Topics:
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

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