Una and Arthur help the Redcrosse Knight recover in the House of Holiness, with the House's ruler Caelia and her three daughters joining them there the Redcrosse Knight sees a vision of his future. Meanwhile, Una overcomes peril, meets Arthur, and finally finds the Redcrosse Knight and rescues him from his capture, from Duessa, and from Despair. Duessa leads the Redcrosse Knight to captivity by the giant Orgoglio. After he leaves, the Redcrosse Knight meets Duessa, who feigns distress in order to entrap him. The Redcrosse Knight and his lady Una travel together as he fights the monster Errour, then separately after the wizard Archimago tricks the Redcrosse Knight into thinking that Una is unchaste using a false dream. Largely self-contained, Book I can be understood to be its own miniature epic. Holiness defeats Error: an illustration from Book I, Part l of an 1895–1897 editionīook I is centered on the virtue of holiness as embodied in the Redcrosse Knight. This royal patronage elevated the poem to a level of success that made it Spenser's defining work. The poem was a clear effort to gain court favour, and as a reward Elizabeth granted Spenser a pension for life amounting to £50 a year, though there is no further evidence that Elizabeth I ever read any of the poem.
Spenser presented the first three books of The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth I in 1589, probably sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. In Spenser's "Letter of the Authors", he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices", and that the aim of publishing The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline". On a literal level, the poem follows several knights as a means to examine different virtues, and though the text is primarily an allegorical work, it can be read on several levels of allegory, including as praise (or, later, criticism) of Queen Elizabeth I. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 stanzas it is one of the longest poems in the English language it is also the work in which Spenser invented the verse form known as the Spenserian stanza. Books I–III were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IV–VI. The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Title page of The Faerie Queene, circa 1590
0 kommentar(er)
