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Edmund Spenser

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Edmund Spenser

"Spenser" redirects here. For the detective novel character, see Spenser (fictional detective). For the Frontier Brain, see Spenser (Pokémon).
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–13 January, 1599) was an English poet and Poet Laureate. Spenser is a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of the Irish culture.

Contents

Life

Spenser was born about 1552, and educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School.

In the 1570's 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 of the Desmond Rebellions. After the defeat of the rebels he was awarded lands in Cork that had been confiscated in the Munster Plantation during the Elizabethan reconquest of Ireland. Among his acquaintances in the area was Walter Raleigh, a fellow colonist.

Through his poetry Spenser hoped to secure a place at court, which he visited in Releigh's company to deliver his most famous work, the Faerie Queene. However, he boldly antagonised the queen's principal secretary, Lord Burghley, and all he received in recognition of his work was a pension in 1591. 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. 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.

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. 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.

Spenser was driven from his home by Irish rebels during the Nine Years War in 1598. His castle at Kilcolman was burned, and it is thought one of his infant children died in the blaze. In the following year Spenser travelled to London, where he died in distressed circumstances, aged forty-six.

Poetry

The first poem to earn Spenser notability was a collection of eclogues called The Shepheardes Calendar, written from the point of view of various shepherds throughout the months of the year. The poem is an allegory symbolizing the state of humanity. The diversity of forms and meters, ranging from accentual-syllabic to purely accentual, and including such departures as the sestina in August, gave Spenser's contemporaries a clue to the range of his powers and won him praise in his day.

The Faerie Queene is his major contribution to English poetry. The poem is a long, dense allegory, in the epic form, of Christian virtues, tied into England's mythology of King Arthur. Spenser intended to complete twelve books of the poem, but managed only six before his death. The work remains the longest epic poem in the English language, and has inspired writers from John Milton and John Keats through James Joyce and Ezra Pound. He devised a verse form for The Faerie Queene that has come to be known as the "Spenserian stanza," and which has since been applied in poetry by the likes of William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The language of his poetry is purposely archaic. It reminds readers of earlier works such as The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, whom Spenser greatly admired.

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. Spenser is often overshadowed by William Shakespeare. For a modern take at Spenser, see Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae.

Poetic Extracts

Let none then blame me, if in discipline
Of vertue and of civill uses lore,
I doe not forme them to the common line
Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore,
But to the antique use which was of yore,
When good was onely for it selfe desyred,
And all men sought their owne, and none no more;
When Justice was not for most meed out-hyred,
But simple Truth did rayne, and was of all admyred.
And as she lookt about, she did behold,
How over that same dore was likewise writ,
Be bold, be bold, and every where be bold,
That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
By any ridling skill, or commune wit.
At last she spyde at that roomes upper end,
Another yron dore, on which was writ,
Be not too bold; whereto though she did bend
Her earnest mind, yet wist not what it might intend.

Trivia

Houses at two well-known English Public Schools are named after Spenser - Merchant Taylors' School, which he attended, and Dulwich College.

List of works

External links

Preceded by:
John Skelton 		English Poet Laureate Succeeded by:
Samuel Daniel

 

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