It has been said of Edmund Spenser that ‘no poet has made so many other men into poets’ (Harold Bloom). Milton and Shelley are certainly among them. His greatest work is The Faerie Queene, the longest English poem, though unfinished. It takes place in ‘that happy land of Faery’ (II. Proem. 1) – fairyland, a term he coined – but also simultaneously in the Britain of romance. Bloom states that ‘Spenser conceived of his poetic function as being a uniquely national one’, and The Faerie Queene is dedicated to Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth I. Each book concerns the adventures of one of her knights and the virtue he represents, beginning with the Redcrosse Knight (St George) and the virtue of holiness (the Anglican Church):
A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, The cruell markes of many’ a bloody field[.] (I. i. 1)
The knight is accompanied by the Lady Una (true religion) and a dwarf, and the first thing the trio do is to shelter from a storm in some woods, which is the occasion for Spenser’s ‘sylva’ or catalogue of trees:
The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall, The vine-propp Elme, the Poplar neuer dry, The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all, The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall. The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still, The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours, The Eugh obedient to the benders will, The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill, The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill, The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round, The caruer Holme… (I. i. 8–9)
How many can you identify in sylvan Parkleys, and how did Eric Lyons know to build Spenser Court next to the holm oak?
I'm madly in love with poetry, English poetry feels like a dream you never want to wake up from. I truly enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing✨