Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 - 13 January, 1599) was an English poet and Poet Laureate. Spenser is a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of the Irish culture.
Life
Spenser was born circa 1552, and educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School. He went to Ireland in the 1570s, during the Elizabethan reconquest of the country, to acquire land and wealth there.
From 1579 to 1580, he served with the English forces during the second of the Desmond Rebellions, and afterwards was awarded lands in Cork that had been confiscated from the rebels in the Munster Plantation. Amongst his acquaintances in the area was Walter Raleigh who, like Spenser, had been granted land in Munster.
Edmund Spenser, through his poetry hoped to achieve a secure place in court but (partly as a result of foolishly antagonising Lord Burghley) all he received in recognition for his work was a pension in 1591. For most of his life he lived in Ireland, bitter toward not only the English court but to his neighbors, the Irish, whose culture Spenser disliked.
In the early 1590s he wrote a prose pamphlet titled, A View on the Present State of Ireland. This piece has become quite famous since it was published in the mid seventeenth century, although it was not published in Spenser's lifetime, being thought too inflammatory. The pamphlet argued Ireland would never be totally 'pacified' until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence.
He recommended using scorched earth tactics, such as he had seen used in the Desmond Rebellions, to create famine. Although it has been highly regarded as a polemical piece of prose and valued as a historical source on 16th century Ireland, the "View" is seen today as genocidal in intent. He also siphoned Ireland's Celtic tradition for poetic source material. Spenser was driven from his home by Irish rebels during the Nine Years War in 1598. He died in 1599, aged approximately 46.
Poetry
The first poem to earn Spenser notability was a collection of eclogues called The Shepheardes Calendar, written from the point of view of various shepherds throughout the months of the year. The poem is an allegory symbolizing the state of humanity. The diversity of forms and meters, ranging from accentual-syllabic to purely accentual, and including such departures as the sestina in "August," gave Spenser's contemporaries a clue to the range of his powers and won him praise in his day.
The Faerie Queene is his major contribution to English poetry. The poem is a long, dense allegory, in the epic form, of Christian virtues, tied into England's mythology of King Arthur.
Spenser intended to complete twelve books of the poem, but managed only six before his death. The work remains the longest epic poem in the English language, and has inspired writers from John Milton and John Keats through James Joyce and Ezra Pound. He devised a verse form for The Faerie Queene that has come to be known as the "Spenserian stanza," and which has since been applied in poetry by the likes of William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The language of his poetry is purposely archaic. It reminds readers of earlier works as The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, whom Spenser greatly admired. Spenser's Epithalamion is the most admired of its type in the English language. It was written for his wedding to his young bride, Elizabeth Boyle. Spenser is often overshadowed by William Shakespeare. For a modern take at Spenser, see Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae.
Poetic Extracts
Faerie Queene. Book v. Proem. St. 3.
- Let none then blame me, if in discipline
- Of vertue and of civill uses lore,
- I doe not forme them to the common line
- Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore,
- But to the antique use which was of yore,
- When good was onely for it selfe desyred,
- And all men sought their owne, and none no more;
- When Justice was not for most meed out-hyred,
- But simple Truth did rayne, and was of all admyred.
Faerie Queene. Book iii. Canto xi. St. 54.
- And as she lookt about, she did behold,
- How over that same dore was likewise writ,
- Be bold, be bold, and every where be bold,
- That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
- By any ridling skill, or commune wit.
- At last she spyde at that roomes upper end,
- Another yron dore, on which was writ,
- Be not too bold; whereto though she did bend
- Her earnest mind, yet wist not what it might intend.
Trivia
- Blatant Beast was a phrase Spenser coined for the ignorant, slanderous, clamour of the mob. However, the Blatant Beast from The Faerie Queene is clearly shown to indicate slander in general, and a large part of the final complete book (Book VI, although the Blatant Beast first appears towards the end of Book V) is showing how thoroughly the Blatant Beast ravages the world, first spreading from the Court (not the villages or slums) and causing havoc everywhere it goes until it even penetrates into the monasteries and causes great distress there. Only Calidore, the most courteous of knights, was able to tame, chain, and imprison the Blatant Beast, which eventually would break free and, as The Faerie Queene concludes by saying, still ravages the world today since only two Arthurian knights ever even came close to doing what Calidore did and even The Faerie Queene, the text asserts, shall become a target for the Blatant Beast.
External links
- Works by Edmund Spenser. Project Gutenberg
- The Edmund Spenser Home Page
- Project Gutenberg edition of Biography of Edmund Spenser by John W. Hales
- Poetry Archive: 154 poems of Edmund Spenser
| Preceded by: John Skelton |
English Poet Laureate | Succeeded by: Samuel Daniel |
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