Spensers The Faerie Queene | Page 2

poetic
geniuses of the Elizabethan period came Edmund Spenser with his
Faerie Queene, the allegory of an ideal chivalry.
This poem is one of the fruits of that intellectual awakening which first

fertilized Italian thought in the twelfth century, and, slowly spreading
over Europe, made its way into England in the fifteenth century. The
mighty impulse of this New Learning culminated during the reign of
the Virgin Queen in a profound quickening of the national
consciousness, and in arousing an intense curiosity to know and to
imitate the rich treasures of the classics and romance. Its first phase was
the classical revival. The tyrannous authority of ecclesiasticism had
long since been broken; a general reaction from Christian asceticism
had set in; and by the side of the ceremonies of the church had been
introduced a semi-pagan religion of art--the worship of moral and
sensuous beauty. Illiteracy was no longer the style at court. Elizabeth
herself set the example in the study of Greek. Books and manuscripts
were eagerly sought after, Scholars became conversant with Homer,
Plato, Aristotle, and the great tragic poets Sophocles, Euripides, and
Æschylus; and translations for the many of Vergil, Ovid, Plautus,
Terence, and Seneca poured forth from the printing-presses of London.
The English mind was strongly tempered by the idealistic philosophy
of Plato and Aristotle, and the influence of Latin tragedy and comedy
was strongly felt by the early English drama.
Along with this classical culture came a higher appreciation of the
_beauty of mediævalism_. The romantic tendency of the age fostered
the study of the great epics of chivalry, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso_ and
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered_, and of the cycles of French romance.
From the Italian poets especially Spenser borrowed freely. Ariosto's
fresh naturalness and magic machinery influenced him most strongly,
but he was indebted to the semi-classical Tasso for whole scenes. On
the whole, therefore, Spenser's literary affinities were more with the
Gothic than the classical.
Spenser was also the spokesman of his time on religious questions. The
violent controversies of the Reformation period were over. Having
turned from the beliefs of ages with passionate rejection, the English
people had achieved religious freedom, and were strongly rooted in
Protestantism, which took on a distinctly national aspect. That
Calvinism was at that time the popular and aristocratic form of
Protestantism is evident from references in the Faerie Queene.

Spenser lived in the afterglow of the great age of chivalry. The passing
glories of knighthood in its flower impressed his imagination like a
gorgeous dream, and he was thus inspired to catch and crystallize into
permanent art its romantic spirit and heroic deeds. Into the framework
of his romance of chivalry he inserted a veiled picture of the struggles
and sufferings of his own people in Ireland. The Faerie Queene might
almost be called the epic of the English conquest of Ireland. The poet
himself and many of his friends were in that unhappy island as
representatives of the queen's government, trying to pacify the natives,
and establish law and order out of discontent and anarchy. Spenser's
poem was written for the most part amidst all these scenes of misery
and disorder, and the courage, justice, and energy shown by his
countrymen were aptly portrayed under the allegory of a mighty
spiritual warfare of the knights of old against the power of evil.
Spenser's essay on A View of the Present State of Ireland shows that,
far from shutting himself up in a fool's paradise of fancy, he was fully
awake to the social and political condition of that turbulent island, and
that it furnished him with concrete examples of those vices and virtues,
bold encounters and hair-breadth escapes, strange wanderings and
deeds of violence, with which he has crowded the allegory of the
Faerie Queene.
II. THE AUTHOR OF THE FAERIE QUEENE
Edmund Spenser was born in London near the Tower in the year 1552.
His parents were poor, though they were probably connected with the
Lancashire branch of the old family of Le Despensers, "an house of
ancient fame," from which the Northampton Spencers were also
descended. The poet's familiarity with the rural life and dialect of the
north country supports the theory that as a boy he spent some time in
Lancashire. Beyond two or three facts, nothing is known with certainty
of his early years. He himself tells us that his mother's name was
Elizabeth, and that London was his "most kindly nurse." His name is
mentioned as one of six poor pupils of the Merchant Taylors' School,
who received assistance from a generous country squire.
At the age of seventeen, Master Edmund became a student in Pembroke

Hall, one of the colleges of the great University of Cambridge. His
position was that of a sizar, or paid scholar, who was exempt from the
payment