SPENSER'S THE FAERIE QUEENE, BOOK I***
E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
SPENSER'S THE FAERIE QUEENE
BOOK I
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY GEORGE ARMSTRONG WAUCHOPE, M.A., Ph.D.
Professor of English in the South Carolina College
_Velut inter ignes luna minores_
New York The Macmillan Company London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1921 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1903.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: I. The Age which produced the Faerie Queene II. The Author of the Faerie Queene III. Study of the Faerie Queene: 1. A Romantic Epic 2. Influence of the New Learning 3. Interpretation of the Allegory 4. The Spenserian Stanza 5. Versification 6. Diction and Style IV. Chronological Table of Events
THE FAERIE QUEENE. BOOK I: Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh Sonnet to Sir Walter Raleigh Dedication to Queen Elizabeth Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Canto X Canto XI Canto XII
NOTES
GLOSSARY
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
I. THE AGE WHICH PRODUCED THE _FAERIE QUEENE_
The study of the _Faerie Queene_ should be preceded by a review of the great age in which it was written. An intimate relation exists between the history of the English nation and the works of English authors. This close connection between purely external events and literary masterpieces is especially marked in a study of the Elizabethan Age. To understand the marvelous outburst of song, the incomparable drama, and the stately prose of this period, one must enter deeply into the political, social, and religious life of the times.
The _Faerie Queene_ was the product of certain definite conditions which existed in England toward the close of the sixteenth century. The first of these national conditions was the movement known as the _revival of chivalry_; the second was the _spirit of nationality_ fostered by the English Reformation; and the third was that phase of the English Renaissance commonly called the _revival of learning_.
The closing decade of Queen Elizabeth's reign was marked by a strong reaction toward romanticism. The feudal system with its many imperfections had become a memory, and had been idealized by the people. The nation felt pride in its new aristocracy, sprung largely from the middle class, and based rather on worth than ancestry. The bitterness of the Wars of the Roses was forgotten, and was succeeded by an era of reconciliation and good feeling. England was united in a heroic queen whom all sects, ranks, and parties idolized. The whole country exulting in its new sense of freedom and power became a fairyland of youth, springtime, and romantic achievement.
Wise and gallant courtiers, like Sidney, Leicester, and Raleigh, gathered about the queen, and formed a new chivalry devoted to deeds of adventure and exploits of mind in her honor. The spirit of the old sea-kings lived again in Drake and his bold buccaneers, who swept the proud Spaniards from the seas. With the defeat of the Invincible Armada, the greatest naval expedition of modern times, the fear of Spanish and Catholic domination rolled away. The whole land was saturated with an unexpressed poetry, and the imagination of young and old was so fired with patriotism and noble endeavor that nothing seemed impossible. Add to this intense delight in life, with all its mystery, beauty, and power, the keen zest for learning which filled the air that men breathed, and it is easy to understand that the time was ripe for a new and brilliant epoch in literature. First among the poetic geniuses of the Elizabethan period came Edmund Spenser with his _Faerie Queene_, the allegory of an ideal chivalry.
