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The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser
Contents:
Preface and Biographical Sketch by R. E. Neil Dodge
The Shepheardes Calendar
Complaints
The Faerie Queene
Daphnaida
Colin Clouts Come Home Again
Astrophel
Amoretti and Epitahlmion
Fowre Hymnes
Prothalmion
Commenddatory Sonnets
Appendix
A List of Rejected Readings
Notes
Preface and Biographical Sketch by R. E. Neil Dodge
The Shepheardes Calendar
Complaints
The Faerie Queene
Daphnaida
Colin Clouts Come Home Again
Astrophel
Amoretti and Epitahlmion
Fowre Hymnes
Prothalmion
Commenddatory Sonnets
Appendix
A List of Rejected Readings
Notes
852 pages, Hardcover
First published December 17, 1992
22 people are currently reading
571 people want to read
About the author
Edmund Spenser
1,415 books312 followersEdmund Spenser (c. 1552 - 1599) was an important English poet and Poet Laureate best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I.
Though he is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, Spenser is also a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of Irish culture and colonisation of Ireland.
Though he is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, Spenser is also a controversial figure due to his zeal for the destruction of Irish culture and colonisation of Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 26, 2018
...Read for class & not a fan.
Read
January 6, 2025DNF. I read about 17% by reading Book 3 of the Faerie Queene. Maybe I’ll read more of this later
February 24, 2025
Despite Spenser’s EXTREMELY idiosyncratic spelling (which occasionally results in hilarious words like ‘donghill”) , I found this surprisingly readable – although sometimes I had to match up a mystery word with its rhyming pair to figure out what he was talking about. Spenser freely plunders the legends and mythologies of Europe for "The Faerie Queen," a tangled combination of British "history," classic mythology, chivalric romance, faerie legends, and Christian virtues and vices allegorized. Also, while the author is in some ways stylistically looking back towards the Middle Ages, the language is Early Modern English and not totally filled with archaic terms. The majority of this book is his magnum opus, "The Faerie Queen," but also includes all of Spenser's poems (some also fairly long) and sonnets. While I enjoyed "The Faerie Queen" for a while, after a few hundred pages it DOES start to wear on you. Overall I give this collection a low 3 stars.
[Not actually this edition. I couldn't find my copy - published 1903 by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., introduction by William P. Trent- listed on Goodreads.]
[Not actually this edition. I couldn't find my copy - published 1903 by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., introduction by William P. Trent- listed on Goodreads.]
June 5, 2019
When I really read all of the "Faerie Queene"...it reminds me of Xanth without the puns, more than anything else. It's fun once you adjust to quirky spellings and quaint ideas. Somehow it's not hard to understand why he never finished it.
Apart from the unworkable plot in FQ and the invention of Colin Clout, the remaining verses are imitations of earlier European poems. I'm glad I bought the complete collection--if only so I now know I wouldn't have missed much if I'd bought an edition that includes only FQ and "Colin Clout's Come Home Again."
Apart from the unworkable plot in FQ and the invention of Colin Clout, the remaining verses are imitations of earlier European poems. I'm glad I bought the complete collection--if only so I now know I wouldn't have missed much if I'd bought an edition that includes only FQ and "Colin Clout's Come Home Again."
November 20, 2007
Man oh man, what a funky doos affair this is. Put a knight, a maiden, and some strange symbolic creatures together; then, smoke some sweet sweet chiba, and this is what you'd probably end up with; of course, it'd end up being all metered and epic and then you'd have to go around saying, "oh yes, I wrote that little piece--you might have read it--called the Faerie Queen!" Booyaa!
March 8, 2016
*Only read the sonnets/ cantos required for class*
September 7, 2022
I had some obscure old copy that included some of the Shephearde's Calender, the first book of the Faerie Queene + the cantos of Mutabilitie, the two wedding songs, the amoretti sonnets and the Fowre Hymnes. The spelling in this edition is a little modernized; I presume this is about what the standard Spenser collection has.
Spenser's works seem to fall into two modes: (literally) pre-raphaelite fantasies like the Calender, the Queene, and the wedding songs; and the Elizabethan contemplative-metaphysical poetry a la Donne. While, as in the Fowre hymnes and some of the sonnets, he can perform the intellectual arguments of the traditional Anglo style, it is particularly the positive creations of the mythic poems where he is properly successful. To my eye, this is because of the nature of Spenser's prosodic approach: idiosyncratic spelling and diction which permits for optimized arrangement of lines within stanzas, hooked by very meaningful rhymes, usually constituting an atomized mini-poem in each stanza which escalates over time. Thus, his works seem to benefit most from contexts like the Faerie Queene, where his phantastic attitude permits for excessive set designs, emotive tintings, intense episodes, widening scopes, all of which generate an active world -- this, as opposed to something like the Amoretti, where the same approach, minus the active mythos, produces formally tight poems that all the same seem to carry little real poetic gravity.
So ... what of this insistence, on the wonderfully farcical? In the prologue to the second book of the Faerie Queene, Spenser responds to the objection that his work trumpets falsity -- to which he ripostes, that the abstract nature of his Faerie-land and its happenings are just as real as anything else, simply elevated beyond the banality of everyday life. He substantiates this in the Hymnes to Beautie, both in the mortal hymn (that beauty is the emergence of being from seeming) and to heavenly beauty (that the beauty of God manifests ineluctably through such beings as the Faerie Queene, Elizabeth's magical double) ... he is aware of the war between being and seeming, the shadow struggle latent everywhere. The powerful conclusion thereof, in which truth emerges and the latent order of reality becomes clear, is central to Spenser: in the shorter form works, he presents it more like a dream image -- in the two-sided allegories of the Calender, or in the cyclical outlining of the order of nymphs and nature in the wedding songs, but more significantly in the Faerie Queene, where the characters' adventures through Faerie land are privated by malice but overcome by virtue. This analysis may seem heavy-handed and over-philosophic, but this disjunct is the overwhelming conceit of the Faerie Queene, the tension between the false virtue of vile Fidessa/Duessa and the mere semblance of vice in sweet Una, contrasted against the pure being of the satyrs and sisters of holynesse, all with constant reference to seeming, semblance, and illusion ... this is perhaps one of the most meaningful conflicts within arts and culture of all kinds, something which has given rise to a thousand philosophic platitutdes, and for which we can thank Spenser, for approaching it instead by means of radiant, harmonious verse.
Spenser's works seem to fall into two modes: (literally) pre-raphaelite fantasies like the Calender, the Queene, and the wedding songs; and the Elizabethan contemplative-metaphysical poetry a la Donne. While, as in the Fowre hymnes and some of the sonnets, he can perform the intellectual arguments of the traditional Anglo style, it is particularly the positive creations of the mythic poems where he is properly successful. To my eye, this is because of the nature of Spenser's prosodic approach: idiosyncratic spelling and diction which permits for optimized arrangement of lines within stanzas, hooked by very meaningful rhymes, usually constituting an atomized mini-poem in each stanza which escalates over time. Thus, his works seem to benefit most from contexts like the Faerie Queene, where his phantastic attitude permits for excessive set designs, emotive tintings, intense episodes, widening scopes, all of which generate an active world -- this, as opposed to something like the Amoretti, where the same approach, minus the active mythos, produces formally tight poems that all the same seem to carry little real poetic gravity.
So ... what of this insistence, on the wonderfully farcical? In the prologue to the second book of the Faerie Queene, Spenser responds to the objection that his work trumpets falsity -- to which he ripostes, that the abstract nature of his Faerie-land and its happenings are just as real as anything else, simply elevated beyond the banality of everyday life. He substantiates this in the Hymnes to Beautie, both in the mortal hymn (that beauty is the emergence of being from seeming) and to heavenly beauty (that the beauty of God manifests ineluctably through such beings as the Faerie Queene, Elizabeth's magical double) ... he is aware of the war between being and seeming, the shadow struggle latent everywhere. The powerful conclusion thereof, in which truth emerges and the latent order of reality becomes clear, is central to Spenser: in the shorter form works, he presents it more like a dream image -- in the two-sided allegories of the Calender, or in the cyclical outlining of the order of nymphs and nature in the wedding songs, but more significantly in the Faerie Queene, where the characters' adventures through Faerie land are privated by malice but overcome by virtue. This analysis may seem heavy-handed and over-philosophic, but this disjunct is the overwhelming conceit of the Faerie Queene, the tension between the false virtue of vile Fidessa/Duessa and the mere semblance of vice in sweet Una, contrasted against the pure being of the satyrs and sisters of holynesse, all with constant reference to seeming, semblance, and illusion ... this is perhaps one of the most meaningful conflicts within arts and culture of all kinds, something which has given rise to a thousand philosophic platitutdes, and for which we can thank Spenser, for approaching it instead by means of radiant, harmonious verse.
February 19, 2018
Edmund Spenser resides in an area of poetry few readers venture to: Less than a generation before Shakespeare, yet not far from the inventors of English poetry as we know it (Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard and Philip Sidney). The English language and English verse were undergoing revolutionary change and essentially re-establishing their footing since Chaucer’s time. In the century around Spenser, everything from vowel pronunciation to spelling to meaning to versification was upturned.
In the middle of all this sits Spenser. Not modern, but not quite medieval. A close contemporary of Shakespeare, yet an age apart. A revolutionary, yet old fashioned even by Shakespeare’s day.
Few today people read The Fairie Queene, The Shepheardes Calendar or the Fowre Hymnes to find some kind of understanding of the world around them or learn something about the contemporary human condition. Because Spenser’s world was fundamentally a different place.
Perhaps if Spenser would have lived and wrote in the bustling city of London, he would have sensed the nation and the people that the English were rapidly becoming. Perhaps Spenser was the poet Shakespeare wanted to be, but Will was forced upon the stage to write popular dramas for the London masses. It's always hard to say how things work out.
You can see my thoughts on The Faerie Queen here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Overall, it’s different and better than I suspected. But not required reading.
The rest of his poems are nice. If one is interested, it’s fascinating to see the development of the English language and verse. Epithalamion is his best and justifiably his most famous single poem.
So Spenser’s not for everyone. I recommend him for lovers of poetry, English renaissance students, and writers of verse. This Norton Critical Edition does a good job bringing together the best of his work and providing valuable background and glosses.
In the middle of all this sits Spenser. Not modern, but not quite medieval. A close contemporary of Shakespeare, yet an age apart. A revolutionary, yet old fashioned even by Shakespeare’s day.
Few today people read The Fairie Queene, The Shepheardes Calendar or the Fowre Hymnes to find some kind of understanding of the world around them or learn something about the contemporary human condition. Because Spenser’s world was fundamentally a different place.
Perhaps if Spenser would have lived and wrote in the bustling city of London, he would have sensed the nation and the people that the English were rapidly becoming. Perhaps Spenser was the poet Shakespeare wanted to be, but Will was forced upon the stage to write popular dramas for the London masses. It's always hard to say how things work out.
You can see my thoughts on The Faerie Queen here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... Overall, it’s different and better than I suspected. But not required reading.
The rest of his poems are nice. If one is interested, it’s fascinating to see the development of the English language and verse. Epithalamion is his best and justifiably his most famous single poem.
So Spenser’s not for everyone. I recommend him for lovers of poetry, English renaissance students, and writers of verse. This Norton Critical Edition does a good job bringing together the best of his work and providing valuable background and glosses.
July 15, 2021
In my attempt to read widely and add classics that I had not read during previous years, I took on this tome which includes large sections of The Faerie Queen and much of Spenser's other poetry. It also includes some critical commentary by a variety of scholars. This is just excerpts of a selection of scholars, but it does give a flavour of what has been written about it. What I find most interesting and relevant to this time and age is the comparison of the virtues, moral codes and values of these 2 very different ages. I will leave the analysis of the poetic forms, structures, rhythms, etc. to the very able professors of literature. I am also fascinated by the inclusion of and sythesis of both Christian imagery with pagan mythologies (mostly Greek and Roman). Spenser seemingly plays with these disparate strands of thought, worldview and mythic elements...and I do not know if he separated Christian imagery from the rest in terms of recognizing its historicity and veracity. Of course, with medieval analogical thinking, there were certainly excesses and errors included even here.
November 7, 2024
I enjoyed every word of this story! I have wanted to read it for years, and finally I was fed up with being someone who hadn’t read it. As I read, I felt like another pivotal piece of my literary life was clicking into place. This is one that I’m sure I will return to many times.
March 28, 2023
completed: Faerie Queen Book 1, Letter, C.S. Lewis Essay
December 30, 2024
Three stars for being a genocidal maniac. Great poet, though.
November 6, 2024
As I said in my holding comment, before posting this actual review, I hate giving so famous a poet so low a rating, but all but the sonnets were a painful slog. I had read precious little Spenser, despite hearing about his work all my life. I had bought this used paperback decades ago -- it’s very heavily marked up and underlined in both red and blue pen, and I have no idea most of the time why -- and used it to follow up references, but never actually read it.
I’m now trying to read some of the classics I’ve ignored (the complete Chaucer will be next year) but always meant to look into; and going cover-to-cover with them. I’m glad to have done it, in this case, for a better understanding of who was writing what in this period. But I won’t be going back, except to better translate some of the iffy Latin in the letters near the end. Spenser is not my cup of bitter, artificially-aged pseudo-tea.
If you see my reviews of Ariosto, you’ll gather that I’m not a big fan of Romantic Pseudo-Arthurian stuff anyway; and Faerie Queene is just exactly that. While I know many of the players in Elizabeth’s Court, veiled references to them are mostly lost on me. Spenser was also engaged in two contradictory projects, as it were. On the one hand he was trying to get somebody to unify the spelling rules for English, and the poetical form rules for poesy, and punctuation rules for both. On the other hand he was deliberately using archaic forms and inventing pseudo-archaic words and spellings in order to make FQ (and related projects) feel “ancient.” Which means that the experience of reading it today is NOT like reading Middle English, but like reading phony dialect for hundreds of pages.
I did like the line in "Amoretti":
Dark is my day, whyles her fayre light I mis,
but immediately knew where he stole it from. It's nothing but "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone."
My interest did pick up when I got to the sonnets, many of which are first-rate. But they are but a small section of the complete poetic works.
To be read only for historical interest, is my word on Spenser. Otherwise, let us not speak of him again.
I’m now trying to read some of the classics I’ve ignored (the complete Chaucer will be next year) but always meant to look into; and going cover-to-cover with them. I’m glad to have done it, in this case, for a better understanding of who was writing what in this period. But I won’t be going back, except to better translate some of the iffy Latin in the letters near the end. Spenser is not my cup of bitter, artificially-aged pseudo-tea.
If you see my reviews of Ariosto, you’ll gather that I’m not a big fan of Romantic Pseudo-Arthurian stuff anyway; and Faerie Queene is just exactly that. While I know many of the players in Elizabeth’s Court, veiled references to them are mostly lost on me. Spenser was also engaged in two contradictory projects, as it were. On the one hand he was trying to get somebody to unify the spelling rules for English, and the poetical form rules for poesy, and punctuation rules for both. On the other hand he was deliberately using archaic forms and inventing pseudo-archaic words and spellings in order to make FQ (and related projects) feel “ancient.” Which means that the experience of reading it today is NOT like reading Middle English, but like reading phony dialect for hundreds of pages.
I did like the line in "Amoretti":
Dark is my day, whyles her fayre light I mis,
but immediately knew where he stole it from. It's nothing but "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone."
My interest did pick up when I got to the sonnets, many of which are first-rate. But they are but a small section of the complete poetic works.
To be read only for historical interest, is my word on Spenser. Otherwise, let us not speak of him again.
November 15, 2014
Read this for English class; it was really hard to get myself to care about this book, especially because of its difficulty to read/understand what I was reading. Yet, I really did like his style of writing, and how everything read like a fairytale almost. Britomart was probably my favorite character out of the lot, which is probably what's intended because of her being the emblem for chastity and the hero of Book 3. There;s a crazy amount of different plots and characters mashed into it though, that it gets very confusing who is who and who did what. It's a shame he never got to finish the whole Faerie Queene, because I would have liked to know how it finished. Overall okay read!
May 18, 2015
I thoroughly enjoy the poetry I've read of Edmund Spenser. He writes about the tragedies of life without disregarding the reality that there is hope. A life is made up of both the good and the bad. Spenser seems to have artfully mastered and I enjoy it!
September 4, 2007
I heart Britomart.
Currently reading
March 3, 2008I will never be finished with this one.
July 22, 2008
another classic, read it for class
September 23, 2008
A really useful tool. The critical essays are great and include some from the very best Spenser scholars.
May 27, 2010
The beauty of allegorical epics! Norton edition has very useful essays, notes and critical essays.
April 27, 2013
This is an excellent and very serviceable academic edition. I used it as an undergraduate and still turn to it from time to time.
November 23, 2018
This book is very beatifull.
December 8, 2014
Read *most* of books one and two of the Faerie Queene and that's good enough for me.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews