“John Milton” and “Edmund Spenser,”
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Lecture_Spenser.pptxEdmund Spenser
Life
Edmund Spenser was born in 1552 in London.
Between 1561 and 1569 he attended the Merchant Taylors’ School. That year he matriculated at Cambridge.
In 1573 he earned his Bachelor’s degree, and in 1576 his master’s.
In 1579 he married his first wife, Maccabaeus Chylde.
In 1580 Spenser joined the service of Lord Arthur Grey, as his secretary.
Grey was Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Spenser accompanied him to Munster.
Ireland was in the midst of a rebellion against the English colonials.
Grey was recalled to England in 1582, but Spenser remained in Munster until 1589.
Spenser was granted an estate at Kilcolman, as well as a fifty pound annual pension. He returned to Ireland to stay in 1591.
In 1594 Spenser married Elizabeth Boyle.
In 1598, an uprising at his estate forced Spenser to flee to England. The Irish burned the Kilcolman castle, and Spenser died in 1599, destitute.
Writings
Spenser wrote copiously throughout his life – mainly poetry.
Among his best known works are: “The Shepheardes Calendar,” “Epithalamion,” and A View of the State of Ireland.
His most monumental work is The Faerie Queene, which he modelled after Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is 6 books long, although Spenser intended the work to have 12 books in total. He died before the work was complete.
Each book has a different theme and main character; the first book features Redcrosse Knight and follows the theme of “Holinesse.”
The Faerie Queene was published in two separate parts; books I-III were published in 1590, and books IV-IV were published in 1596.
Much of this work features a search for a different land, a desire for return, and hope for a good leader. These themes correspond to Spenser’s social and political context.
The “Faerie Queene” herself is thought to be Queen Elizabeth, whose favor Spenser sought all his life.
Conclusions
Edmund Spenser lived a challenging life, spending most of it as a hated leader in a foreign country. He grew to hate the Irish and consider them a savage people, as is evident in A View of the State of Ireland.
Living in Ireland, he would have encountered resistance to Protestantism, his chosen sect, as the Irish remained staunchly Catholic.
His poetry reflects his struggles to cope with constant conflict and to merely survive in a land he did not consider his own, and among people whose values and beliefs he considered very foreign indeed.
