- Edmund Spenser is considered the most representative poet of the Elizabethan Age.
- He was born in 1552,
- he went to the Merchant Taylors School in London as ‘pore scholars’.
- education at school was subsidized by a wealthy Lancashire family.
- At school, a powerful influence of Spenser’s genius was Richard Mulcaster, the headmaster.
- Spenser’s attitude towards and use of the English language and poetic technique in The Faerie Queene.
- At Cambridge he studied from 1569-1576, believed that chronic ill-health probably encouraged the dreamy and reflective side of his nature.
- But it did not affect his avid [having a strong interest or enthusiasm for something] reading of wide-ranging scholarly works and so he has come to be known as
- the most learned of English poets. The Faerie Queene was intended not for the average but for a sophisticated [having a lot of experience, being able to understand difficult ideas, or being clever and complicated]. and learned reader.
- Spenser’s mind was influenced by the works of Greek writers’ chiefly Plato and Aristotle, and Virgil and Ovid among the Romans. The Italian epic poets of the Renaissance, Ariosto and Tasso,
- Among the English poets were Chaucer and the little known writers of the medieval romances.
- student of Greek thought and language,
- Spenser was genuinely impressed by the neoplatonic philosophy[ the world comes from a single source, and that the soul can be reunited with this source through ecstasy. ] and Aristotelian ethics.
- He also loved and used Greek and Roman mythology lavishly, while the Bible was his mainstay.
The Faerie Queene, therefore, is a rich and impressive combination of a variety of
ideas, images and symbols derived from books, tapestries, emblems, paintings, woodcuts, pageant and tournament.
- The first three books of the poem were dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.