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Edmund Spenser

OccupationPoet Laureate

Edmund Spenser (c. Employment is a Contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. A Poet Laureate is a Poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events 1552 – 13 January 1599) was an important English poet and Poet Laureate best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Events 532 - Nika riots in Constantinople. 888 - Odo Count of Paris becomes King of the Franks England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland A poet is a person who writes Poetry. Etymology From the Ancient greek: ποιέω, poieō: "I make or compose" A Poet Laureate is a Poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser, published first in three books in 1590 and later in six books in 1596 The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was an English royal Dynasty that lasted 118 years from 1485 to 1603 a period known as the Tudor period

Although he is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, Spenser is also a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of Irish culture and colonization of Ireland. The culture of the people living on the island of Ireland is far from monolithic

Contents

Life

Edmund Spenser was born in around 1552. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Merchant Taylors' School ( MTS) is a British boys' independent, Day school, originally located in the City of London, and since A sizar formerly referred to students of limited means at the universities of Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin, who were charged lower fees and obtained free Pembroke College is a college of the University of Cambridge, home to over six hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest of the colleges [1]

In the 1570s Spenser went to Ireland, probably in the service of the newly appointed lord deputy, Arthur Grey. From 1579 to 1580, he served with the English forces during the Second Desmond Rebellion. The Second Desmond rebellion (1579-1583 was the more widespread and bloody of the two Desmond Rebellions launched by the Fitzgerald dynasty of Desmond After the defeat of the rebels he was awarded lands in County Cork that had been confiscated in the Munster Plantation during the Elizabethan reconquest of Ireland. County Cork (Contae Chorcaí is the most southerly and the largest of the modern counties of Ireland. Plantations in 16th and 17th century Ireland were established throughout the country by the confiscation of lands occupied by Gaelic clans and Hiberno-Norman dynasties Among his acquaintances in the area was Walter Raleigh, a fellow colonist. Sir Walter Raleigh or Ralegh (c 1552 – 29 October 1618 was a famed English writer Poet, Soldier, Courtier and Explorer

Through his poetry Spenser hoped to secure a place at court, which he visited in Raleigh's company to deliver his most famous work, the Faerie Queene. The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser, published first in three books in 1590 and later in six books in 1596 However, he boldly antagonized the queen's principal secretary, Lord Burghley, and all he received in recognition of his work was a pension in 1591. William Cecil may refer to Lord William Cecil (1854-1943 British royal courtier William Cecil 1st Baron Burghley (1520-1598 English When it was proposed that he receive payment of 100 pounds for his epic poem, Burghley remarked, "What, all this for a song!"

In the early 1590s, Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled, A View of the Present State of Ireland. This piece remained in manuscript form until its publication in print in the mid-seventeenth century. As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar It is probable that it was kept out of print during the author's lifetime because of its inflammatory content. The pamphlet argued that Ireland would never be totally 'pacified' by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence. Spenser recommended scorched earth tactics, such as he had seen used in the Desmond Rebellions, to create famine. A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method (possibly more often referred to as a tactic but this is not entirely correct as there is a difference between The Desmond Rebellions occurred in between 1569-1573 and 1579-1583 in Munster in southern Ireland ('Desmond' is the English language name given to the Gaelic 'Deasmumhain'

The paradox proposed by Spenser was that only by methods that overrode the rule of law could the conditions be created for the true establishment of the rule of law. 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. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction in whole or in part of an ethnic racial religious or national group Spenser did express some praise for the Gaelic poetic tradition, but also used much tendentious and bogus analysis to demonstrate that the Irish were descended from barbarian Scythian stock. The Scythians or Scyths (Σκύθες Σκύθοι were an Iranian speaking people of horse-riding Nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic

Spenser was driven from his home by Irish rebels during the Nine Years War in 1598. The Nine Years War (Cogadh na Naoi mBliana in Ireland took place from 1594 to 1603 and is also known as Tyrone's Rebellion. His castle at Kilcolman, near Doneraile in North Cork was burned, and it is thought one of his infant children died in the blaze - though local legend has it that his wife also died. Doneraile (Dún ar Aill is a town in County Cork, Province of Munster, Ireland. He possessed a second holding to the south, at Rennie, on a rock overlooking the river Blackwater in North Cork. The ruins of it are still visible today. A short distance away grew a tree, locally known as "Spenser's Oak" until it was destroyed in a lightning strike in the 1960s. Local legend has it that he penned some or all of "the Faerie Queene" under this tree. Queen Victoria is said to have visited the tree while staying in nearby Convamore House during her state visit to Ireland before she died. In the following year Spenser traveled to London, where he died in distressed circumstances, aged forty-six. It was arranged for his coffin to be carried by other poets, upon which they threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave with many tears.

Spenser was admired by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron and Alfred Lord Tennyson, among others. Alfred Tennyson 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and remains one of the most popular English poets The language of his poetry is purposely archaic, reminiscent of earlier works such as The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, whom Spenser greatly admired. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in Prose, the rest in verse) Geoffrey Chaucer (c 1343 – 25 October 1400? was an English author poet Philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and Diplomat.

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. The poem is comprised of 365 long lines, corresponding to the days of the year; 68 short lines, representing the sum of the 52 weeks, 12 months, and 4 seasons of the annual cycle; and 24 stanzas, corresponding to the diurnal and sidereal hours.

Structure of The Spenserian Stanza and Sonnet

Spenser used a distinctive verse form, called the Spenserian stanza, in several works, including The Faerie Queene. The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene. The stanza's main meter is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a b a b b c b c c [c]. The final line is an hexameter line which has 6 feet or stresses. Such a line is known as an Alexandrine. An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 Syllables Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and

The Spenserian Sonnet is based on a fusion of elements of both the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet. In one sense, it is similar to the Shakespearan sonnet in the sense that it is set up based more on the 3 quatrain and a couplet system set up by Shakespeare; however it is more like the Petrarchan tradition in the fact that the conclusion follows from the argument or issue set up in the earlier quatrains. There is also a great use of the parody of the blazon and the idealization or praise of the mistress, a literary device used by many poets. It is a way to look at a woman through the appraisal of her features in comparison to other things. In this description, the mistress's body is described part by part, i. e. , much more of a scientific way of seeing one. As William Johnson states in his article "Gender Fashioning and Dynamics of Mutuality in Spenser's Amoretti," the poet-love in the scenes of the Spenser's sonnets in Amoretti, is able to see his lover in an objectified manner by moving her to another, or more clearly, an item. The purpose of Spenser doing this is to bring the woman from the "transcendental ideal" to a woman in everyday life. "Through his use of metonymy and metaphor, by describing the lady not as a whole being but as bodily parts, by alluding to centuries of topoi which remove her in time as well as space, the poet transforms the woman into a text, the living 'other' into an inanimate object" (503). The opposite of this also occurs in The Faerie Queen. The counter-blazon, or the opposition of appraisal, is used to describe Duessa. She is not objectified, but instead all of her flaws are highlighted.

Works Cited

Rust, Jennifer. "Spenser's The Faerie Queen. " Saint Louis University, St. Louis. 10 Oct. 2007.

Johnson, William. "The struggle between good and evil in the first book of "The Faerie Queene". English Studies, Vol. 74, No. 6. (Dec. 1993) p. 507-519.

List of works

References

  1. ^ The Edmund Spenser Home Page: Biography

External links

 

Preceded by:
John Skelton		English Poet LaureateSucceeded by:
Samuel Daniel
John Skelton, also known as John Shelton (c 1460 &ndash June 21, 1529) English Poet, was born at Diss in Norfolk A Poet Laureate is a Poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events Samuel Daniel (1562 &ndash October 14, 1619) was an English poet and historian.
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