Edmund Spencer :
We are having Elizabethan Age in our syllabus and Dilip Barad sir had given a task to write a blog on it and I have selected Edmund Spencer for writing my blogEdmund Spenser :Edmund Spencer is a famous name in English literature because Spenser was being called as 'Poet's poet' by Charles Lamb in his essay.Spencer introduced his own style of writing which many poets have followed that is why he is known as poet's poet.Biography of Spencer: Spenser's early life and parentage we know little, except that he was born in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, and was poor. His education began at the Merchant Tailors' School in London and was continued in Cambridge, where as a poor sizar and fag for wealthy students he earned a scant living.Here in the glorious world that only a poor scholar knows how to create for himself he read the classics, made acquaintance with the great Italian poets, and wrote countless little poems of his own. Upon his friend Harvey's advice he caxme to London, bringing his poems;and here he met Leicester, then at the height of royal favor, and the latter took him to live at Leicester House.Although Chaucer was his beloved master, his ambition was not to rival the Canterbury Tales, but rather to express the dream of English chivalry, much as Aristo had done for Italy in Orlando Furious to fall in love and to record his melancholy over the lost Rosalind in the Shepherd's Calendar.Here he finished the Shepherd's Calendar, and here he met Sidney and all the queen's favorites. Here is an introduction of Edmund Spencer in this link.In 1580, through Leicester's influence, Spenser, who was utterly tired of his dependent position, was made secretary to Lord Grey, the queen's deputy in Ireland, and the third period of his life began. He accompanied his chief through one campaign of savage brutality in putting down an Irish rebellion, and was given an immense estate with the castle of Kilcolman, in Munster, which had been confused chatted from Earl Desmond, one of the Irish leaders. His life here, where according to the terms of his grant he must reside as an English settler, he regarded as lonely exile.
That banished had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where William J long was quite forgotten
Spenser's Works :
The Faery Queen is the great work upon which the poet's fame chiefly rests.The original plan of the poem included twenty-four books, each of which was to recount the adventure and triumph of a knight who represented a moral virtue. Spenser's purpose, as indicated in a letter to Raleigh which introduces the poem, is as follows:
To portrait in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave Knight, perfected in the twelve private Morall Virtues, as Aristotle hath devised; which is the purpose of these first twelve bookes: which if I finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other 1 part of Political Virtues in his person, after that he came to be king.
Each of the Virtues appears as a knight, fighting his opposite vice, and the poem tells the story of the conflicts. It is therefore purely allegorical, not only in its personified virtues but also in its representation of life as a struggle between good and evil. In its strong moral element the poem differs radically from Orlando Furioso, upon which it was modelled.
Spenser completed only six books, celebrating Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. We have also a fragment of the seventh, treating of Constancy; but the rest of this book was not written, or else was lost in the fire at Kilcolman. The first three books are by far the best;and judging by the way the interest lags and the allegory grows incomprehensible, it is perhaps as well for Spenser's reputation that the other eighteen books remained a dream.
Importance of the Shepherd's Calendar :
The publication of this work, in 1579, by an unknown writer who signed himself modestly "Immerito," marks an important epoch in our literature. We shall appreciate this better if we remember the long years during which England had been without a great poet. Chaucer and Spenser are often studied together as poets of the Renaissance period, and the idea prevails that they were almost contemporary. In fact, nearly two centuries passed after Chaucer's death, years of enormous political and intellectual development, and not only did Chaucer have no successor but our language had changed so rapidly that Englishmen had lost the ability to read his lines correctly.!
This first published work of Spenser is noteworthy in at least four respects :
First, it marks the appearance of the first national poet in two centuries; second, it shows again the variety and melody of English verse, which had been largely a tradition since Chaucer; third, it was our first pastoral, the beginning of a long series of English pastoral compositions modelled on Spenser, and as such exerted a strong influence on subsequent literature; and fourth, it marks the real beginning of the outburst of great Elizabethan poetry.
In this below link there is an introduction of Edmund Spencer
It is Spenser's idealism, his love of beauty, and his ex quisite melody which have caused him to be known as "the poets' poet." Nearly all our subsequent singers acknowledge their delight in him and their indebtedness. Macaulay alone among critics voices a fault which all who are not poets quickly feel, namely that, with all Spenser's excellences, he is difficult to read. The modern man loses himself in the con fused allegory of the Faery Queen, skips all but the marked passages, and softly closes the book in gentle weariness. Even the best of his longer poems, while of exquisite workmanship and delightfully melodious, generally fail to hold the reader's attention. The movement is languid; There is little dramatic interest,The very melody of his verses sometimes grows monotonous, like a Strauss waltz too long continued. We shall best appreciate Spenser by reading at first only a few well-chosen selections from the Faery Queen and the Shepherd's Calendar, and a few of the minor poems which exemplify h dreadful melody. At the outset.
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