16th Century : Edmund Spenser

"Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 - January 13, 1599) was an English poet and Poet Laureate. Spenser is a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of the Irish culture" (wikipedia). You should be familar with The Shepheardes Calendar, The Faerie Queen, and Amoretti. You should associate him with the Pastoral and ecologues and be able to identify a Spenserian Sonnet and a Spenserian Stanza. You should know that The Faerie Queen is an allegory. You should know that the Amoretti is a sonnet cycle.

• Biography
• Significance
• Essays on Spenser
• Works
  • The Shepheardes Calender
    • Overview
    • Spenser’s literary obligations to Mantuan, Vergil and Marot.
  • • E-text
  • The Faerie Queen
    • Overview, Characters, and Background
    • E-text
    • Form: Spenserian Stanza = nine-line stanza rhymes ababbcbcC, where the capital "C" means the last verse is an Alexandrine (it has six feet instead of five, which is to say, it's a hexameter instead of pentameter).
  • Amoretti
    • Overview
    • E-text
    • Form: most of the Amoretti sonnets rhyme ababbcbccdcdee. This form is called the "Spenserian Sonnet."
      

• " 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." (Faerie Queene. Book v. Proem. St. 3.)