What do you think?
Rate this book
Amoretti And Epithalamion
Amoretti and Epithalamion is a collection of sonnets and a long poem by Edmund Spenser, a prominent English poet of the Renaissance era. The collection is divided into two Amoretti, which consists of 89 sonnets, and Epithalamion, which is a single long poem. The sonnets in Amoretti are all love poems, written in the Petrarchan tradition. They follow a typical structure, with the first eight lines (the octave) presenting a problem or question, and the final six lines (the sestet) providing an answer or resolution. The sonnets in Amoretti tell the story of Spenser's courtship of his eventual wife, Elizabeth Boyle, and are notable for their use of elaborate imagery and complex wordplay.Epithalamion, on the other hand, is a celebratory poem written to commemorate Spenser's wedding day. It is a long and complex work, consisting of 365 stanzas, each with nine lines. The poem is structured around the progress of the wedding day, beginning with the morning and ending with the consummation of the marriage at night. Along the way, Spenser weaves in a variety of themes and motifs, including the beauty of nature, the power of love, and the importance of marriage.Overall, Amoretti and Epithalamion is a masterful collection of poetry that showcases Spenser's skill as a writer and his ability to capture the complexity of human emotion. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the poetry of the Renaissance era, and a testament to Spenser's enduring legacy as one of England's greatest poets.My Hungry Eyes Through Greedy Couetize, Still To Behold The Obiect Of Their With No Contentment Can Themselues Suffize, But Hauing Pine And Hauing Not Complaine.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
76 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1595
2 people are currently reading
116 people want to read
About the author
Edmund Spenser
1,426 books313 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
Read
October 25, 2023no way was this of all things my 69th read of the year
okay updated review: i find that sonnet collections still escape me. though i'm with my professor that shakespeare's are even harder. if i were more interested in edmund spenser and in sonnet culture in general, i would comb back through these and pull together the Edmund Spenser BDSM Thesis, but i'm not so you'll just have to believe me that there's a lot about getting hurt emotionally... and EROTICALLY (not clickbait).
epithalamion is more daring, and more interesting to me for that reason. did you know there's an insane amount of astronomical bullshit in this poem? like, 24 stanzas for 24 hours and the sundown described in the poem comes exactly at the stanza matching the hour when the sun would have set in ireland in june that year. except really it's maybe 23.5 stanzas for the axial tilt of the earth (since that causes the seasons, and this poem is set on the solstice). that shit's crazy. i can appreciate that kind of obsessive mathematical structuring. even if spenser's writing is still, plainly, just not that fun for me to read.
supplemental reading from class: Catherine Nicholson's "Half-Envying" from Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene; Melissa Sanchez's "The Shame of Conjugal Sex" from Queer Faith
okay updated review: i find that sonnet collections still escape me. though i'm with my professor that shakespeare's are even harder. if i were more interested in edmund spenser and in sonnet culture in general, i would comb back through these and pull together the Edmund Spenser BDSM Thesis, but i'm not so you'll just have to believe me that there's a lot about getting hurt emotionally... and EROTICALLY (not clickbait).
epithalamion is more daring, and more interesting to me for that reason. did you know there's an insane amount of astronomical bullshit in this poem? like, 24 stanzas for 24 hours and the sundown described in the poem comes exactly at the stanza matching the hour when the sun would have set in ireland in june that year. except really it's maybe 23.5 stanzas for the axial tilt of the earth (since that causes the seasons, and this poem is set on the solstice). that shit's crazy. i can appreciate that kind of obsessive mathematical structuring. even if spenser's writing is still, plainly, just not that fun for me to read.
supplemental reading from class: Catherine Nicholson's "Half-Envying" from Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene; Melissa Sanchez's "The Shame of Conjugal Sex" from Queer Faith
March 25, 2017
This is another read for British Literature class. I've read some of Spenser's sonnets before but I have never like reading his work. Which is funny since I love Byron and many scholars say he based his style off of Spenser. I think the issue is many of his sonnets are very sappy, for the time, being written after courting and marrying his second wife. He is one poet I've never really cared about reading, I'm glad the class gave me a reason to delve a bit more into his work, but I will never be a fan.
September 15, 2024
Men will do literally anything but talk about their feelings. Evidently, this has been a thing since at least 1595 when this collection was published. There are a few important things that I want to emphasize about these sequences.
Alright. First, this was allegedly addressed to Spenser's second wife, Elizabeth Boyle (m. 1594-99). If that is actually the case, I feel so sorry for this woman. There are 89 sonnets in Amoretti, 62 that are so mean about how the addressee refuses any advances from the speaker. She's referred to frequently as "cruell fayre" because she's not interested in him. the last 17 are basically about how happy he is to have his liberties halved by this woman.
That being said, there are a few theoretical angles that I'm thinking about with this one. First, there is a clear psychoanalytical investment here. I find myself thinking about this through the lens of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle and his definitions of sadomasochism. Second, I think that there could be an interesting connection to Melanie Klein's conception of the Paranoid-Schizoid position. I also find the early modern conceptions of relationships -- with oneself, with others, with liberty -- to be an incredibly complex facet of this often overlooked sequence.
The Epithalamion (say that 3 times fast) is a lot more optimistic about the concept of love and its effects. Quite literally meaning "bridal song," this collection was presented to Elizabeth Boyle on the day of her marriage to Spenser in 1594. Considerably much shorter, and annoyingly consistent with the Elizabethan sonnet structure we all know and love, I would rather slam my head into a wooden board than read a poem sequence about how ready my partner is to consummate our marriage. Spenser would have loved reddit if he lived today.
Alright. First, this was allegedly addressed to Spenser's second wife, Elizabeth Boyle (m. 1594-99). If that is actually the case, I feel so sorry for this woman. There are 89 sonnets in Amoretti, 62 that are so mean about how the addressee refuses any advances from the speaker. She's referred to frequently as "cruell fayre" because she's not interested in him. the last 17 are basically about how happy he is to have his liberties halved by this woman.
That being said, there are a few theoretical angles that I'm thinking about with this one. First, there is a clear psychoanalytical investment here. I find myself thinking about this through the lens of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle and his definitions of sadomasochism. Second, I think that there could be an interesting connection to Melanie Klein's conception of the Paranoid-Schizoid position. I also find the early modern conceptions of relationships -- with oneself, with others, with liberty -- to be an incredibly complex facet of this often overlooked sequence.
The Epithalamion (say that 3 times fast) is a lot more optimistic about the concept of love and its effects. Quite literally meaning "bridal song," this collection was presented to Elizabeth Boyle on the day of her marriage to Spenser in 1594. Considerably much shorter, and annoyingly consistent with the Elizabethan sonnet structure we all know and love, I would rather slam my head into a wooden board than read a poem sequence about how ready my partner is to consummate our marriage. Spenser would have loved reddit if he lived today.
February 6, 2020
Lovely set of poems that runs the gamut between extreme expressions of love and beauty to ghastly, almost horrific images of violence, hatred, and mourning. The two extremes document both the tradition of love European love poetry and the psychological experiences of unrequitted love.
Spenser's sequence of sonnets is somewhat unique in that it has a "happy' ending. All of the torment the speaker experiences can be chalked up to feelings of unrequited love, but the courtship ends happily in a marriage. The sequence thus resolves, where so many refuse or are unable to.
More than this though, the poems of the Amoretti represent a significant and deeply interesting selection of European literature. The Amoretti not only document the specific courtship of Edmund Spenser to his future wife Elizabeth, they represent a work that subjects the natural world to the literary frame. Spenser relies so heavily on images of nature and animals (and their subsequent growth and decay), that to not view these works as vital texts of ecological poetry would be a disservice. They are excellent, because they present such a vivid image of a natural world in which love and life thrive and struggle to coexist. Spenser figures humanity as coeexisting, and even inhabiting the same natural hierarchies that we struggle so hard to exclude ourselves from.
For Spenser, the human is often animal, and the animal is humane and beautiful. He refigures classical mythology to fit within this frame, and, in doing so, presents a cohesive world of natural love, beauty, and artistry.
Strong recommend to those interested in nature poetry, Renaissance poetry, and poetics more generally. Spenser is a superb craftsman who hammers at the same themes over and over until they are wrought well and consistently.
Spenser's sequence of sonnets is somewhat unique in that it has a "happy' ending. All of the torment the speaker experiences can be chalked up to feelings of unrequited love, but the courtship ends happily in a marriage. The sequence thus resolves, where so many refuse or are unable to.
More than this though, the poems of the Amoretti represent a significant and deeply interesting selection of European literature. The Amoretti not only document the specific courtship of Edmund Spenser to his future wife Elizabeth, they represent a work that subjects the natural world to the literary frame. Spenser relies so heavily on images of nature and animals (and their subsequent growth and decay), that to not view these works as vital texts of ecological poetry would be a disservice. They are excellent, because they present such a vivid image of a natural world in which love and life thrive and struggle to coexist. Spenser figures humanity as coeexisting, and even inhabiting the same natural hierarchies that we struggle so hard to exclude ourselves from.
For Spenser, the human is often animal, and the animal is humane and beautiful. He refigures classical mythology to fit within this frame, and, in doing so, presents a cohesive world of natural love, beauty, and artistry.
Strong recommend to those interested in nature poetry, Renaissance poetry, and poetics more generally. Spenser is a superb craftsman who hammers at the same themes over and over until they are wrought well and consistently.
July 11, 2024
#With Spenser in 2024:
This sonnet sequence celebrates Spenser’s love for Elizabeth Boyle. The 89 sonnets having the title of ‘Amoretti’ were addressed to Elizabeth, with whom he fell in love and whom he eventually married. These sonnets have a place of their own among Spenser’s works. Here he gives countenance to his feelings without recourse to parable. The sonnet had, by Spenser’s time, become a familiar medium of a direct expression of personal emotion. Wyatt and Surrey were the first to use the sonnet-form in England. They were followed by Sidney who made a magnificent impact to the form of the sonnet with his sonnet-sequence called ‘Astrophel and Stella’. Sidney’s sonnet-sequence was followed by Spenser’s ‘Amoretti’. Spenser’s sonnets come between those of Sidney and of Shakespeare, from which they are dissimilar in form as also in sentimentality. In Spenser’s sonnets, we do not find the uneasiness of Sidney in love with the wife of another man, or the distress of Shakespeare whose mistress deceived him with his friend. Spenser’s sonnets are exceptional by their purity. They tell a story of love without debauchery or penitence, the varying fortunes of that love, the lover’s sighs, and the culmination of his love in the beloved’s reception of him. These sonnets show better than anything else that quality in Spenser which Coleridge outstandingly named “maidenliness”, that is, his love of the virginal in woman. The chastity of these sonnets, says is neither bashfulness nor reserve. In many of them the poet lauds his mistress’s gorgeousness with a great sensory wealth of detail and colour, and does not hide the ardour of his requirements. Give it a go. Old or new, this is what the language of Love looks like.
This sonnet sequence celebrates Spenser’s love for Elizabeth Boyle. The 89 sonnets having the title of ‘Amoretti’ were addressed to Elizabeth, with whom he fell in love and whom he eventually married. These sonnets have a place of their own among Spenser’s works. Here he gives countenance to his feelings without recourse to parable. The sonnet had, by Spenser’s time, become a familiar medium of a direct expression of personal emotion. Wyatt and Surrey were the first to use the sonnet-form in England. They were followed by Sidney who made a magnificent impact to the form of the sonnet with his sonnet-sequence called ‘Astrophel and Stella’. Sidney’s sonnet-sequence was followed by Spenser’s ‘Amoretti’. Spenser’s sonnets come between those of Sidney and of Shakespeare, from which they are dissimilar in form as also in sentimentality. In Spenser’s sonnets, we do not find the uneasiness of Sidney in love with the wife of another man, or the distress of Shakespeare whose mistress deceived him with his friend. Spenser’s sonnets are exceptional by their purity. They tell a story of love without debauchery or penitence, the varying fortunes of that love, the lover’s sighs, and the culmination of his love in the beloved’s reception of him. These sonnets show better than anything else that quality in Spenser which Coleridge outstandingly named “maidenliness”, that is, his love of the virginal in woman. The chastity of these sonnets, says is neither bashfulness nor reserve. In many of them the poet lauds his mistress’s gorgeousness with a great sensory wealth of detail and colour, and does not hide the ardour of his requirements. Give it a go. Old or new, this is what the language of Love looks like.
September 20, 2019
To me, the form is good , BUT the content is so problematic : I do not like the ideology, the reiteration by the poet of the empty/conventional/manipulative topics of courtly love in order to achieve the consent of his "lover"... :(
November 23, 2019
Not much of a Spencer fan. Had to read for Literature course and assignment.
January 14, 2022
I really love how he express beauty, modesty and love. His language is beautiful ☺️
December 9, 2023
liked it better than Astrophel and Stella but did this TOO MUCH throughout September 2023-when this is up December 2023 I'm done and don't want to touch this again!!
February 22, 2024
cute poetry, ruined by the fact that he was like 40 years older than her lol
June 29, 2024
he's describing her as if she's some divine being or a flawless doll rather than a human, i dont think dehumanizing your soon to be wife makes a great love poem tbh
March 5, 2025
amoretti: 4/5
epithalamion: 4.5/5
SPENSER MY GOAT
epithalamion: 4.5/5
SPENSER MY GOAT
January 23, 2019
Reading a few of these at a times is pleasant, as Spenser has an obvious command of language and imagery, but reading the full collection was stultifying. They were so homogeneous and so conventional, although I do give Spenser credit for praising his lover's intelligence over her beauty. I was underwhelmed by Amoretti and Epithalamion, especially after re-reading Shakespeare's sonnets, which each say something different and do so in fresh, new ways.
May 10, 2021
Good at biblical references and source survey, thus light in thematic exposition. Anyway the most detailed edition for Amoretti and Epithalamion and a good companion for the 1999 McCabe complete edition.
June 24, 2021
Apr 2021. First summertime book.
Finished the sequence: it's good to be reading Spenser again! I won't teach many of these sonnets, but now I know the context for the often-anthologized Sonnet 68 ("Most glorious Lord of lyfe..."). As with Shakespeare's Sonnets, there is a narrative underneath the poems; it is simpler than his, but not entirely straightforward. After "Amoretti" and before "Epithalamion," there's a little allegorical narrative about Cupid, Venus, and a bee; it is too cute to be meaningful.
Finished the marriage poem, which I've read before as is still wonderful. But I see Edith Hamilton's point about how the beloved in English poetry tends to get lost amongst all the flowers.
Finished the sequence: it's good to be reading Spenser again! I won't teach many of these sonnets, but now I know the context for the often-anthologized Sonnet 68 ("Most glorious Lord of lyfe..."). As with Shakespeare's Sonnets, there is a narrative underneath the poems; it is simpler than his, but not entirely straightforward. After "Amoretti" and before "Epithalamion," there's a little allegorical narrative about Cupid, Venus, and a bee; it is too cute to be meaningful.
Finished the marriage poem, which I've read before as is still wonderful. But I see Edith Hamilton's point about how the beloved in English poetry tends to get lost amongst all the flowers.
April 24, 2014
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Spenser's sonnets. I really enjoyed the complex narrative of the Faerie Queene and wasn't sure if a sonnet sequence would be as good. Some of the lines are really fantastic, and I loved how he turned a lot of the conventions of love poetry on their head. His beloved is a beautiful as the rest of the poets describe, but the qualities that Spenser praises the most are her sharp mind and confidence. Not your usual Petrarchian pretty face.
May 25, 2012
Most people know Spenser through The Faerie Queene, but I prefer Amoretti, Spenser's sonnet sequence. You'll find all the conventions here but with a twist: this poet ends up winning his love, which is why this ends in the Epithalamion - a marriage hymn.
September 23, 2008
I love Amoretti and Epithalamion, especially 67 of Amoretti. These were part of my MA thesis, a choice partly inspired by my own experiences of courtship and marriage.
December 27, 2012
Epithalamion is excellent.
January 15, 2024
3 for Amoretti; 5 for Epithalamion
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews