The Faerie Queene (2 page)

Paul J. Alpers,
The Poetry of The Faerie Queene,
Princeton, 1967.

Paul J. Alpers, ed.,
Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism,
Oxford, 1967.

Paul J. Alpers, ed.,
Edmund Spenser: a Critical Anthology,
Harmondsworth, 1969.

Jane Aptekar,
Icons of Justice: Iconography and Thematic Imagery in
Book V
of The Faerie Queene,
Columbia, 1969.

Augustine,
On Christian Doctrine,
trans. D. W. Robertson, jr, New York, 1958.

John B. Bender,
Spenser and Literary Pictorialism,
Princeton, 1972.

Josephine Waters Bennett,
The Evolution of The Faerie Queene,
Chicago, 1942.

Harry Berger, jr,
The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality in
Book II
of Spenser's Faerie Queene,
New Haven, 1957.

Harry Berger, jr, ed.,
Spenser: a Collection of Critical Essays,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968.

Boethius,
The Consolation of Philosophy,
trans. Richard Green, New York, 1962.

Donald Cheney,
Spenser's Image of Nature: Wild Man and Shepherd in The Faerie Queene,
New Haven, 1966.

Patrick Cullen,
Infernal Triad: The World, the Flesh and the Devil in Spenser and Milton,
Princeton, 1974.

R. M. Cummings, ed.,
Spenser: the Critical Heritage,
London, 1971.

T. K. Dunseath,
Spenser's Allegory of Justice in
Book Five
of The Faerie Queene,
Princeton, 1968.

Robert M. Durling,
The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic,
Cambridge, Mass., 1965.

John R. Elliott, jr, ed.,
The Prince of Poets: Essays on Edmund Spenser,
New York, 1968.

Robert Ellrodt,
Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser,
Geneva, 1960.

Maurice Evans,
Spenser's Anatomy of Heroism: a Commentary on The Faerie Queene,
Cambridge, 1970.

Angus Fletcher,
Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode,
Ithaca, 1964.

Angus Fletcher,
The Prophetic Moment: an Essay on Spenser,
Chicago, 1971.

Alastair Fowler,
Spenser and the Numbers of Time,
London, 1964.

Alastair Fowler,
Triumphal Forms: Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry,
Cambridge, 1970.

Alascair Fowler, ed.,
Silent Poetry: Essays in numerological analysis
, London, 1970.

Rosemary Freeman,
The Faerie Queene: A Companion for Readers, Berkeley
, 1970.

A. Bartlett Giamatti,
The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic
, Princeton, 1966.

A. Bartlett Giamatti,
Play of Double Senses: Spenser's Faerie Queene
, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1975.

E. H. Gombrich,
Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance
, London, 1972.

Thomas M. Greene,
The Descent from Heaven: a Study in Epic Continuity,
New Haven, 1963.

A. C. Hamilton,
The Structure of Allegory in The Faerie Queene,
Oxford, 1961.

A. C. Hamilton, ed.,
Essential Articles for the Study of Edmund Spenser,
Hamden, Connecticut, 1972.

John Erskine Hankins,
Source and Meaning in Spenser's Allegory: A Study of The Faerie Queene,
Oxford, 1971.

S. K. Heninger, jr,
Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics,
San Marino, Cal., 1974.

A. Kent Hieatt,
Chaucer Spenser Milton: Mythopoeic Continuities and Transformations,
Montreal, 1975.

Graham Hough,
A Preface to The Faerie Queene,
London, 1962.

Judith M. Kennedy and James A. Reither, eds.,
A Theatre for Spenserians: Papers of the International Spenser Colloquium,
Fredericton, New Brunswick, October 1969, Toronto, 1973.

C. S. Lewis,
The Allegory of Love,
London, 1936.

C. S. Lewis,
The Discarded Image: an Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature,
Cambridge, 1964.

C. S. Lewis,
Spenser's Images of Life,
ed. Alastair Fowler, Cambridge, 1967.

Isabel G. Maccaffrey,
Spenser's Allegory: the Anatomy of Imagination, Princeton
, 1976.

Waldo F. McNeir and Foster Provost,
Edmund Spenser: an Annotated Bibliography, 1937-1972,
Pittsburgh, 1976.

Michael Murrin,
The Veil of Allegory,
Chicago, 1967.

J. E. Neale,
Queen Elizabeth I,
Harmondsworth, 1960.

William Nelson,
The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: a Study,
Columbia, 1963.

William Nelson, ed.,
Form and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser: Selected Papers from the English Institute,
Columbia, 1961.

James Nohrnberg,
The Analogy of The Faerie Queene,
Princeton, 1976.

Erwin Panofsky,
Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance,
New York, 1962.

James Emerson Phillips,
Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature,
Berkeley, 1964.

D. W. Robertson, jr,
A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives,
Princeton, 1962.

Thomas P. Roche, jr,
The Kindly Flame: A Study of the Third and Fourth Books of Spenser's Faerie Queene,
Princeton, 1964.

Naseeb Shaheen,
Biblical References in The Faerie Queene,
Memphis, 1977.

Charles G. Smith,
Spenser's Proverb Lore,
Cambridge, Mass., 1970.

Herbert W. Sugden,
The Grammar of Spenser's Faerie Queene,
Linguistic Society of America, 1936.

E. M. W. Tillyard,
The Elizabethan World Picture,
London, 1943.

Humphrey Tonkin,
Spenser's Courteous Pastoral:
Book Six
of the Faerie Queene,
Oxford, 1972.

Rosemond Tuve,
Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Posterity,
Princeton, 1966.

Rosemond Tuve,
Seasons and Months: Studies in a Tradition of Middle English Poetry,
Paris, 1933.

Rosemond Tuve,
Essays by Rosemond Tuve: Spenser, Herbert, Milton,
ed. Thomas P. Roche, jr, Princeton, 1970.

D. Douglas Waters,
Duessa as Theological Satire,
Columbia, Missouri, 1970.

William Wells, ed.,
Spenser Allusions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,
Chapel Hill, 1972.

Arnold Williams,
Flower on a Lowly Stalk: The Sixth Book of the Faerie Queene,
Michigan State University Press, 1967.

Kathleen Williams,
Spenser's Faerie Queene: The World of Glass,
London, 1966.

A LETTER OF THE AUTHORS EXPOUNDING HIS

WHOLE INTENTION IN THE COURSE OF THIS

WORKE: WHICH FOR THAT IT GIUETH GREAT

LIGHT TO THE READER, FOR THE BETTER

VNDERSTANDING IS HEREUNTO ANNEXED.

To the Right noble, and Valorous, Sir Walter
Raleigh knight, Lo. Wardein of the Stanneryes, and her Maiesties liefetenaunt of the County of Cornewayll.

Sir knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed, and this booke of mine, which I haue entituled the Faery Queene, being a continued Allegory, or darke conceit, I haue thought good aswell for auoyding of gealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in reading therof, (being so by you commanded,) to discouer vnto you the general intention & meaning, which in the whole course thereof I haue fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes or by accidents therein occasioned. The generall end there fore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline: Which for that I conceiued shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter, then for profite of the ensample: I chose the historye of king Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many mens former workes, and also farthest from the daunger of enuy, and suspition of present time. In which I haue followed all the antique Poets historicall, first Homere, who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Vlysses hath ensampled a good gouernour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis: then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the person of Aeneas: after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando: and lately Tasso disseuered them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of a priuate man, coloured in his Rinaldo: The other named Politice in his Godfredo. By ensample of which excellente Poets, I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a braue knight, perfected in the twelue priuate morall vertues, as Aristotle hath deuised, the which is the purpose of these first twelue bookes: which if I finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged, to frame
the other part of polliticke vertues in his person, after that hee came to be king. To some I know this Methode will seeme displeasaunt, which had rather ham good discipline deliuered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they vse, then thus clowdily enwrapped in Allegoricall deuises. But such, me seeme, should be satisfide with the vse of these dayes seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to commune sence. For this cause is Xenophon preferred be fore Plato, for that the one in the exquisite depth of his iudgement, formed a Commune welth such as it should be, but the other in the person of Cyrus and the Persians fashioned a gouernement such as might best be: So much more profitable and gratious is doctrine by ensample, then by rule. So haue I laboured to doe in the person of Arthure: whome I conceiue after his long education by Timon, to whom he was by Merlin deliuered to be brought vp, so soone as he was borne of the Lady Igrayne, to haue seem in a dream or vision the Faery Queen, with whose excellent beauty rauished, he awaking resolued to seeke her out, and so being by Merlin armed, and by Timon throughly instructed, he went to seeke her forth in Faerye land. In that Faery Queene I meaneglory in my generall intention, but in my particular I conceiue the most excellent and glorious person of our soueraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery land. And yet in some places els, I doe otherwise shadow her. For considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautifall Lady, this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphœbe, fashioning her name according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia, (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana.) So in the person of Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in particular, which vertue for that (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and conteineth in it them all, therefore in the whole course I mention the deedes of Arthure apply able to that vertue, which I write of in that booke. But of the xii. other vertues, I make xii. other knights the patrones, for the more variety of the history: Of which these three bookes contayn three. The first of the knight of die Redcrosse, in whome I expresse Holynes: The seconde of Sir Guyon, in in whome I sette forth Temperaunce: The third of Britomartis a Lady knight, in whome I picture Chastity. But because the beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupte and as depending vpon other antecedents, it needs that ye know the occasion of these three knights seuerall aduentures. For the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an Historiographer. For an Historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions, but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, euen where
it most concemeih him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and diuining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing Analysis of all. The beginning therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an Historiographer should be the twelfth books, which is the last, where I deuise that the Faery Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii. dayes, vppon which xii. seuerall dayes, the occasions of the xii. seuerall aduentures hapned, which being undertaken by xii. seuerall knights, are in these xii books seuerall handled and discoursed. The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownishe younge man, who falling before the Queen of Faries desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee might haue the atchieuement of any aduenture, which during that feaste should happen, that being graunted, he rested him on the floore, vnfitte through his rusticity for a better place. Soone after entred a faire Ladye in mourning weedes, riding on a white Asse, with a dwarfe behind her leading a warlike steed, that bore the Armes of a knight, and his speare in the dwarfes hand. Shee falling before the Queene of Faeries, complayned that her father and mother an ancient King and Queene, had bene by an huge dragon many years shut vp in a brasen Castle, who thence suffred them not to yssew: and therefore besought the Faery Queene to assygne her some one of her knights to take on him that exployt. Presently that clownish person vpstarting, desired that aduenture: whereat the Queene much wondering, and the Lady much gainesaying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire. In the end the Lady told him that vnlesse that armour which she brought, would seme him (that is the armour of a Christian man specified by Saint Paul v. Ephes.) that he could not succeed in that enterprise, which being forthwith put upon him with dewe furnitures thereunto, he seemed the goodliest man in al that company, and was well liked of the Lady. And eftesoones taking on him knighthood, and mounting on that straunge Courser, he went forth with her on that aduenture: where beginneth the first booke
, vz.

A gentle knight was pricking on the playne. &c.

The second day ther came in a Palmer bearing an Infant with bloody hands, whose Parents he complained to haue bene slayn by an Enchaunteresse called Acrasia: and therfore craned of the Faery Queene, to appoint him some knight, to performe that aduenture, which being assigned to Sir Guyon, he presently went forth with that same Palmer: which is the beginning of the second booke and the whole subiect thereof. The third day there came in, a Groome who complained before the Faery Queene, that a vile Enchaunter called Busirane had in hand a most faire Lady called Amoretta, whom he kept in most grieuous torment, because she would not yield him the pleasure
her body. Whereupon Sir Scudamour the louer of that Lady presently tooke
on him that aduenture. But being vnable to performe it by reason oj the hard
Enchauntments, after long sorrow, in the end met with Britomartis, who
succoured him, and reskewed his hue.

But by occasion hereof, many other aduentures are intermedled, but rather as Accidents, then intendments. As the hue oj Britomart, the ouer-throw of Marinell, the misery ojFlorimell, the vertuousnes oj Belphcebe, the lasciuiousnes of Hellenora, and many the like.

Thus much Sir, I haue briefly ouerronne to direct your vnderstanding to the wel-head of the History, that from thence gathering the whole intention of the conceit, ye may as in a handfull gripe al the discourse, which otherwise may happily seeme tedious and confused. So humbly crauing the continuaunce of your honorable fauour towards me, and th'eternall establishment of your happines, I humbly take leaue.

23. January. 1589.

Yours most humbly affectionate.

Ed. Spenser.