Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599)

Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599)

English poet of the Elizabethan age, known for the misty, languid quality of his poetry, its imaginative appeal, use of allegory, individual diction involving the use of archaic and coined words, and subtlety of sound effects through the combination of alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc., with controlled rhythm and meter.

His works include The Shepherd's Calendar ( 1579), a pastoral and allegorical poem; The Faerie Queene ( 1590, 1596), his most famous work, left incomplete at the time of his death; Complaints ( 1591), containing The Ruins of Time, The Tears of the Muses, Virgil's Gnat, Prosopopoeia, Or Mother Hubberd's Tales, Muiopotmos, Or The Tale of the Butterfly, and other shorter poems; Daphnaïda ( 1591), an elegy on the death of the daughter of Henry, Lord Howard; Colin Clout's Come Home Again ( 1595), an allegorical attack on artistic taste at Elizabeth's court; Astrophel ( 1595), an elegy on the death of Sir Philip Sidney; Amoretti, a sonnet sequence; Epithalamion ( 1595), a poem celebrating his own marriage to Elizabeth Boyle, considered his best lyric work; Four Hymns to Love and Beauty ( 1596); Prothalamion ( 1596), a poem celebrating the double wedding of the two daughters of the Earl of Worcester; A View of the Present State of Ireland, a prose defense of the repressive policy of Lord Grey de Wilton in Ireland, not published until 1633.

Spenser was in the service of the Earl of Leicester at Elizabeth's court and became a close friend of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated The Shepherd's Calendar, and of Gabreil Harvey. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and was later granted an estate, Kilcolman Castle, in Munster, where he wrote The Faërie Queene. In 1598 he was appointed Sheriff of Cork, but in an Irish rebellion soon afterwards Kilcolman Castle was burned, and Spenser and his family were forced to flee to England. Spenser admired Chaucer greatly, and the Chaucerian influence is evident in much of his work.

Because of a certain austerity and "coldness" Which some critics find in his own poetry, and because of its predominant formal perfection, Spenser is sometimes called a "poet's poet." John Keats was an especially enthusiastic admirer of The Faërie Quenne in his early career.