Edmund Spenser was born in 1552 or 1553. No documentation exists to establish his exact date of birth, but the year is known in part due to Spenser's own poetry. In Amoretti Sonnet 60, Spenser writes that he is forty-one years old. We know this poem was published in 1594 (and written only shortly prior to its publication), so the year of his birth can be closely guessed.
Spenser matriculated at the University of Cambridge on May 20, 1569. Ten years later he published his first...
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The Faerie Queene Book Two, by Edmund Spenser, is a book entirely devoted to the concept of temperance and moderation. Espoused as a cardinal virtue in Plato's Republic, and referred to similarly in several other influential works from across...
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene features an array of characters that appear briefly, usually to influence Redcrosse in a critical moment along his journey. Fradubio is one such character, given sixteen stanzas in a poem of over 600 stanzas. The...
Despite the wide range of worlds occupied by different fantasy series, a universal theme of the genre is the presence of evil forces working in opposition to a band of heroes. Most often the band of heroes is embarking on a quest to vanquish evil...
“The Faeire Queene” is an epic poem written by Edmund Spenser in 16th century – England Renaissance, but set in the Middle Ages because of its being a chivalric romance. Aside from religious allegories, juxtapositions, and contradictions; Spenser...
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene follows its protagonist Redcrosse on a traditional hero’s journey, all of which is a religious and historical allegory for the conflicts of the church taking place during Spenser’s time. Redcrosse encounters the...
There is little debate that Spenser admired Queen Elizabeth I. When reading through Book One of The Faerie Queene, Gloriana is fashioned in a manner that allows her to as an allusion to the famed maiden queen. In his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh...
During the Elizabethan age, love sonnets traditionally told the story of men in love with unattainable women. However, Spenser's sonnets from his sonnet sequence "Amoretti" defy the general pessimism and give an optimistic look at love. In fact,...
Serene landscapes and seductive relationships are key themes throughout Edmund Spenser’s work and are major assets to the plot and character development in “The Faerie Queene” and “Epithalamion.” Spenser’s early works are all in the pastoral...
Though his poetry was largely ignored and dismissed during his time, John Donne is known today for being one of the best poets of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He gained this reputation by creating poetry that was different, that made...
Though he is by no means a single-minded man, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti focus largely on the beauty and physical form of the woman he addresses these poems to. In seven of these sonnets, he calls this woman’s beauty her “hew”, or in the modern...
In the period of Early Modern English, romantic love was a major subject in literature. From Hoby’s translation of The Courtier to the various sonnets written during this time, everyone seemed to have something to add regarding their opinions on...
Originally used to signify a shield or a coat of arms, the term 'blazon' transformed it meaning through the description of virtues or positive attributes, usually of a woman, in late sixteenth century poetry. 'Blazon' can either denote a noun,...
The relationship between power and love brims with conflict. Introducing a dominant and a surrendering role within the interactions of men and women unequivocally creates opposition between the two. In three different sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt,...
English sonnets often explore the theme of love and the lady’s eternal beauty. Edmund Spenser was one of the best known Elizabethan sonneteers during the 16th century. In 1595, he composed a total of eighty-nine sonnets in his sonnet cycle “...
