Edmund Spenser as a Renaissance Poet.

Edmund Spenser was one of the famous Elizabethan poet and a sonneteer. He was called as a “Poet’s Poet” by Charles Lamb and also known as a Protestant poet. He is mostly famous for his unfinished work “The Faerie queene”. He wrote 89 sonnets while dedicating to Elizabeth Boyle. and the couple eventually married in 1594 and is celebrated in his poem “Epithalamion”.

He shows influences from Homer and Virgil. There is also a spirit of Reformation which gripped the Renaissance Period and sought discipline, chastity and morality. He used allegorical devices to showcase morality and invokes the spirit of Protestantism. In addition to this, he invented Spenserian Sonnets and Spenserian stanzas influenced the later poets of the ages. He captured the spirit of Renaissance and Humanism and hence he can be considered as a Renaissance poet.

Spenser was heavily influenced by the classical writers. He imitated and refashioned their style and sublimity. His famous work “The Faerie Queene” draws many classical allusions which gives a new taste in his work. The classical elements interpolated within the story and is filled with supernatural elements which gives an atmosphere of ideal world. There are stories within a story and every story connects to the other stories that shrouds the themes of conflict between evil and good as well moral structures. He captured the medieval spirit of the Knights and represented courtly love, chivalry, holiness and honor in his epic.

Spenser projected the contemporary spirit of Reformation in England.
Reformation was the ultimate result of King Henry VIII breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church. It sought to diminish the immoral practices of the Church and shows the new rise of Protestant Church. “The Faerie Queene” in Book 1 shows the spirit of Reformation where King Arthur is an allegory of Spenser himself and fought the dragon, an allegory of Catholic Church or Pope at the end. Hence the Book clearly shows the rise of Protestantism during the age an sought for moral discipline and chastity.

The important writing style he adapted was the allegory. An allegory is a device which pertains to moral lesson where the characters are given an abstract moral qualities. “The Faerie Queene” is an allegory where the characters represent different tenets of moral quality. King Arthur represents Honor, Sir Guyon represents Temperance , Britomart represents Chastity , Cambell and Telamond represents Friendship , Sir Artegall represents Justice and Sir Calidore represents Courtesy. The Book III shows Britomart who represents chastity and she is also a representation of Queen Elizabeth I. The Book shows the resistance towards evil and lustful desires. The Book is all about Chastity and hence it is the adventure of Britomart who was finding Sir Artegall whom she was supposed to get married and many events took place where the other supernatural entities try to seduce or destroy the chastity while evoking the battle of good and evil.

The Spirit of Renaissance sought for sensuousness . Spenser’s “Amoretti” tone of the sonnets are sensuous and Spenser combines with the Spirit of Reformation and Renaissance. There are elements of glorification and a strict adherence to morality governance given by Reformation. The elements of humanism can be found in the sonnets. Humanism sought for the celebration of worldly entities and given much importance to the existence of human beings. It includes the elements of love, immortality, mortality, time, youth , beauty and others. Sonnet 79 combines the sensual elements with the spirit of Reformation where the beauty of a lady is born out of “heavenly seed” which is immortal and the physical beauty fades away with time.

Lastly, Spenser refashioned the Petrachan sonnet of fourteen lines. Spenserian sonnets consists of fourteen lines but the rhyme scheme and divison deviates from Petrarchan style. The Petrarchan sonnets are divided into octave and sestet whereas Spenserian sonnets are divided into quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Spenserian sonnets are known as linking sonnets. The rhyme scheme are ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. Spenserian Stanza are generally nine line stanza with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbcc written in eight iambic pentameter and ends with a single alexandrine line in iambic hexameter.The famous epic “The Faerie Queene” was written in Spenserian stanzas. It also influenced the later Romantic poets which includes Lord Byron , John Keats and PB Shelley who treated some of their poems with Spenserian Stanzas.

Allegory in Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene Book 1

John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress as an Allegory