Product Description

The Faerie Queene was the first epic in English and one of the most influential poems in the language for later poets from Milton to Tennyson. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united medieval romance and renaissance epic to expound the glory of the Virgin Queen. The poem recounts the quests of knights including Sir Guyon, Knight of Constance, who resists temptation, and Artegall, Knight of Justice, whose story alludes to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Composed as an overt moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene, with its dramatic episodes of chivalry, pageantry and courtly love, is also a supreme work of atmosphere, colour and sensuous description.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68417 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1248 pages

About the Author
Edmund Spenser (1552-99) is best known for The Faerie Queene, dedicated to Elizabeth I, and his sonnet sequence Amoretti and Epithalamion dedicated to his wife Elizabeth Boyle. Secretary to the Lord Deputy to Ireland, Spenser moved there in 1580 and remained there until near the end of his life, when he fled the Tyrone Rebellion in 1598. T.P. Roche is Professor of English at Princeton University and author of many books on Renaissance literature.

Customer Reviews

A Masterpiece
The literature of Spenser, unlike that of Shakespeare or other contemporaries, is almost always printed with the exact spelling found at at time. I guess this could throw a lot of people off course, but it really is just one of the many amazing elements of this book. As well as the fantastic and fabulous content, the reader becomes aware and synchronised with the linguistic element of such poetic beauty as well.

As an English student, I'm probably slightly biased about the accessibility of the book, but I'd only read a handful of plays from the late 1500s and early 1600s before launching into it. Although being vaguely familar with the syntax of the period, it was unlike anything I'd looked at previously.

But whether you intend to read the whole book from front to cover, or just dip into a few pages to experience the sheer poetic genius and brilliance, you'll experience great pleasure in doing so. It's also great to see this as a paperback version - although it's relatively large, it is portable (if that makes sense).

Amazing. Worth the effort.
The Faerie Queene is, to my mind, the finest single work of literature in English. It's a huge, encyclopaedia poem that draws in and represents the whole psychological landcape of a highly-educated early modern individual with an extraordinarily fertile imagination. Its allegory tries to incorporate everything - from major cultural structures like the seven deadly sins and the myth of British descent from the Trojans to contemporary political intrigues and theories on the workings of the human mind and body. The poem goes from the heights of religious exultation to brutal representations of colonial power and imperial violence.

No review here is going to do it justice; I've read it several times and written about it a fair bit, but still can't imagine really feeling on top of it. Not everyone will like its dreamlike atmosphere and its frequently slow pace. Even the biggest fan will probably admit that long stretches of it are pretty tedious, particularly in the later stages. But the neglect it's fallen into is unforgiveable. Far too many undergraduates never get made to study the thing, and probably many who don't study literature at university won't ever try it. They should. There's nothing else like it and on its own ground nothing else can come close. In terms of density and richness of meaning, and of sheer proliferation of stories, it's an amazing work of genius that puts Spenser up there with Dante, Shakespeare and the rest of the world's very best writers. It's long and you need to put in a fair bit of effort, but it's worth it.

One of the greatest fantasy novels ever - seriously!
Literature was never this easy! If you enjoyed Lord of the Rings or similar, this is the book for you. The Olde Englishe takes a little getting used to, but it's easier to read than Shakespeare, and the poetry only adds to the vividness of description. All of the standard fantasy elements: giants, dragons, knights, temptations, virtues etc. are present, but in unconventional forms in wonderfully original stories. It really is great fun, and a real treat for the regular fantasy reader. I wish we'd done it at school.