The Faerie Queene

by Edmund Spenser, Thomas P. Roche (Editor), C. Patrick O'Donnell (Editor)

Overview

‘Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light
Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine’

The Faerie Queene was one of the most influential poems in the English language. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united Arthurian romance and Italian renaissance epic to celebrate the glory of the Virgin Queen. Each book of the poem recounts the quest of a knight to achieve a virtue: the Red Crosse Knight of Holinesse, who must slay a dragon and free himself from the witch Duessa; Sir Guyon, Knight of Temperance, who escapes the Cave of Mammon and destroys Acrasia’s Bowre of Bliss; and the lady-knight Britomart’s search for her Sir Artegall, revealed to her in an enchanted mirror. Although composed as a moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene’s magical atmosphere captivated the imaginations of later poets from Milton to the Victorians.

This edition includes the letter to Raleigh, in which Spenser declares his intentions for his poem, the commendatory verses by Spenser’s contemporaries and his dedicatory sonnets to the Elizabethan court, and is supplemented by a table of dates and a glossary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140422078
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/25/1979
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	1248
Sales rank:	96,848
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 2.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edmund Spenser was born in London in 1552, and was educated at the Merchant Taylor’s School from which he proceeded to Cambridge. He wrote his first poem, The Shepheardes Calender, in 1579. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and stayed there most of his remaining life. While at his estate in County Cork, Spenser acquainted himself with his neighbor, Sir Walter Ralegh, who in 1589 brought him to London to present three books of The Faerie Queene (1590) to its dedicatee, Queen Elizabeth. After his return to Ireland in 1591, his two volumes Complaints and Daphnaida were published in London. His marriage to Elizabeth Boyle was celebrated in his sonnet sequence Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595), and in the same year his pastoral eclogue, Colin Clouts Come Home Again also appeared. In 1596 he brought out the second three books of The Faerie Queene as well as his Fowre Hymnes and Prothalamion. In 1598 his estate was burned during the Tyrone rebellion, and he fled to Cork and thence to London where he died in 1599. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. He is considered to be the great precursor of Milton, and his fame, denied him in life, has endured to this day.

Thomas P. Roche, Jr., Professor of English at Princeton University, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1931 and was educated at Yale, Cambridge, and Princeton and has taught at Princeton since 1960. He is the author of The Kindly Flame: a Study of the Third and Fourth Books of the Faerie Queene (1964) and Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences (1989). He has edited the essays of Rosemond Tuve and is co-editor with Patrick Cullen of Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual. He has also published on Sidney, Shakespeare, Petrarch, Anosto and Tasso.

Table of Contents

The Faerie QueeneA Note on the Text
Table of Dates
Further Reading
A Letter of the Authors
Commendatory Verses
Dedicatory Sonnets

Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Two Cantos of Mutabilitie

Textual Appendix
Notes
Common Words

Editorial Reviews

Books one and five (two, three, and four are coming later--figure that one out) of Spenser's opus get the red-carpet treatment. Each volume has an introduction, annotations, bibliography, glossary to get you through the old English, character index, and more. Footnotes mercifully appear at the bottom of each page so you don't have to flip constantly to the back. Nice for the academics. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Spenser’s long but incomplete epic, allegorically instructive and linguistically archaic, is also a fantasy romp among knights, monsters, witches, and beautiful damsels. David Timson both conveys the fun and actually makes the poem easier to understand (though perhaps still daunting for newcomers) by interpreting it through his narration. He uses his voice richly and well to convey both the emotion and thought of the text with clarity and intelligence. He skillfully distinguishes and characterizes, especially, the male personae, sometimes using class and regional accents. His females are less convincing, and his voice for the heroine, Britomart, is oddly unpleasant. But Timson’s fine reading rescues the poem from academic dryness and renders it as the pleasurable entertainment it was, at least in part, meant to be. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

MAY 2016 - AudioFile