The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene

Author: Edmund Spenser

Publisher: Standard Ebooks

Published: 2022-12-22T07:23:36Z

Total Pages: 1253

ISBN-13:

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The Faerie Queene is Edmund Spenser’s magnum opus, composed for Queen Elizabeth I. The epic poem is incomplete, as only six of the intended twelve books were published before his death. Despite that, it stands as one of the longest poems in the English language. During its composition, Spenser invented a new type of verse form: the Spenserian stanza. The form consists of eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a line in iambic hexameter, with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. He purposely included archaic language and spelling to make the work feel comparable to the Arthurian myths written during the Middle Ages. Spenser used Aristotle’s list of virtues as the foundation for his work. Each of the six books follows a different knight who symbolize a unique virtue: the Knight of the Redcross for Holiness, Guyon for Temperance, Britomartis for Chastity, Cambell and Telamond for Friendship, Artegall for Justice, and Calidore for Courtesy. Fragments of an unfinished seventh book—the “Cantos of Mutability”—would have centered on the virtue of Constancy. In a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Spenser reveals that King Arthur represents the virtue of Magnificence, “the perfection of all the rest.” The first book opens with the Redcross Knight on a quest ordered by Queen Gloriana to defeat a horrible dragon. Traveling with him is Lady Una and her dwarf servant, who are leading the knight to the land where the dragon dwells. A terrible storm forces the travelers to shelter in the nearest cave—and a monster’s den. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Spenser: The Faerie Queene
Spenser: The Faerie Queene

Author: A. C. Hamilton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 810

ISBN-13: 1317865642

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The Faerie Queene is a scholarly masterpiece that has influenced, inspired, and challenged generations of writers, readers and scholars since its completion in 1596. Hamilton's edition is itself, a masterpiece of scholarship and close reading. It is now the standard edition for all readers of Spenser. The entire work is revised, and the text of The Faerie Queene itself has been freshly edited, the first such edition since the 1930s. This volume also contains additional original material, including a letter to Raleigh, commendatory verses and dedicatory sonnets, chronology of Spenser's life and works and provides a compilation of list of characters and their appearances in The Faerie Queene.

The Faerie Queene: A Reader's Guide
The Faerie Queene: A Reader's Guide

Author: Elizabeth Heale

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-03-28

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0521654688

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The Faerie Queene is the first great epic poem in the English language. It is a long and complex allegory, which presents the first-time reader with many difficulties of allusion and interpretation. This book is the only convenient and up-to-date guide to Spenser's poem, and is designed as a handbook to be consulted by students while reading the poem. Each chapter is devoted to a separate book of the poem, and sub-sections treat particular episodes or sequences of episodes in detail. Dr Heale considers fully the religious and political context, and pays due attention to the variety of Spenser's literary techniques. She encourages close reading of the poem and a lively awareness of both its rich detail and the intricate interrelation of its episodes. This revised edition takes account of recent developments in Spenserian criticism, and brings the guidance on further reading up to date.

Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene
Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene

Author: Catherine Nicholson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0691201595

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The four-hundred-year story of readers' struggles with a famously unreadable poem—and what they reveal about the history of reading and the future of literary studies "I am now in the country, and reading in Spencer's fairy-queen. Pray what is the matter with me?" The plaint of an anonymous reader in 1712 sounds with endearing frankness a note of consternation that resonates throughout The Faerie Queene's reception history, from its first known reader, Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, who urged him to write anything else instead, to Virginia Woolf, who insisted that if one wants to like the poem, "the first essential is, of course, not to read" it. For more than four centuries critics have sought to counter this strain of readerly resistance, but rather than trying to remedy the frustrations and failures of Spenser's readers, Catherine Nicholson cherishes them as a sensitive barometer of shifts in the culture of reading itself. Indeed, tracking the poem's mixed fortunes in the hands of its bored, baffled, outraged, intoxicated, obsessive, and exhausted readers turns out to be an excellent way of rethinking the past and future prospects of literary study. By examining the responses of readers from Queen Elizabeth and the keepers of Renaissance commonplace books to nineteenth-century undergraduates, Victorian children, and modern scholars, this book offers a compelling new interpretation of the poem and an important new perspective on what it means to read, or not to read, a work of literature.

Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves
Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves

Author: Edmund Spenser

Publisher: Canon Press & Book Service

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1885767390

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Despite all of his acknowledged greatness, almost no one reads Edmund Spenser (1552-99) anymore. Roy Maynard takes the first book of the 'Faerie Queene, ' exploring the concept of Holiness with the character of the Redcross Knight, and makes Spenser accessible again. He does this not by dumbing it down, but by deftly modernizing the spelling, explaining the obscurities in clever asides, and cuing the reader towards the right response. In today's cultural, aesthetic, and educational wars, Spenser is a mighty ally for twenty-first century Christians. Maynard proves himself a worthy mediator between Spenser's time and ours. (Gene Edward Veith)

The Warrior Princess: Book 3 of Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'
The Warrior Princess: Book 3 of Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'

Author: Roy Maynard

Publisher: Canon Press & Book Service

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1591280958

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Edmund Spenser's tomb at Westminster Abbey has the inscription, the Prince of Poets. If you've read Books I and II of his unfinished English epic, The Faerie Queene, you know why by now. Book III is one of the most unique books, written from the perspective of the heroic Britomart, a warrior princess in search of her true love. Along the way she encounters wizards, monsters, braggarts, sea gods, cheats, and at the end, a deathly palace.

Edmund Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'
Edmund Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'

Author: Andrew Zurcher

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2011-05-16

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0748646310

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Introduces a Renaissance masterpiece to a modern audience. This guide will help new readers to understand and enjoy The Faerie Queene, drawing attention to its various ironies, its self-reflexive construction, its visual emphasis and the timeless ethical, political, and literary questions that it asks of all of us. The book includes key selections from the poem (each accompanied by a headnote, commentary and glosses), historical and critical discussions, teaching and learning plans and a guide to further resources in electronic and print media.

The Mutabilitie Cantos
The Mutabilitie Cantos

Author: Edmund Spenser

Publisher:

Published: 1968

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13:

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These cantos, published posthumously, are general agreed to contain some of the finest poetry in "The Faerie Queene", and are of central importance in the study of philosophic and religious beliefs in the late sixteenth century.