The Shepheardes Calender

by Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was born in 1552 in East Smithfield, London. Here we publish The Shepheardes Clendar a much admired work that was first published in 1579. In July of 1580, he departed for Ireland in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. Grey was recalled but Spenser stayed, having now acquired official posts and lands in the Munster Plantation. In 1590, Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The Faerie Queene. Its success enabled him to obtain a life pension of £50 a year from the Queen. In 1596, Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled, A View of the Present State of Ireland. This piece, in the form of a dialogue, circulated in manuscript, argued that Ireland would never be totally 'pacified' by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence. In 1599, Spenser traveled to London, where he died at the age of forty-six. His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey by other poets, who threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave with many tears.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Renaissance, Literature

52 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1579

About the author

Edmund 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.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 1 out of 5]

TO HIS BOOK.
Go, little Book! thyself present,
As child whose parent is unkent,
To him that is the President
Of Nobleness and Chivalry:
And if that Envy bark at thee,
As sure it will, for succour flee
Under the shadow of his wing.
And, asked who thee forth did bring,
A shepheard's swain, say, did thee sing,
All as his straying flock he fed:
And, when his Honour has thee read,
Crave pardon for thy hardyhed.
But, if that any ask thy name,
Say, thou wert base-begot with blame;
Forthy thereof thou takest shame.
And, when thou art past jeopardy,
Come tell me what was said of me,
And I will send more after thee.
IMMERITO.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42607

I didn't add this book to the database so not responsible for that *points up* title mess-up.

[Jacky Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

WARNING: THIS POEM IS UNREADABLE. FOR ALL ITS AESTHETIC QUALITIES, SPENSER'S ENGLISH IS UNREADABLE.

Linguistic quips aside, The Shepheardes Calendar is an extremely ambitious work of poetry--the best kind to study. As Andrew Hadfield aptly notes, it is Spenser's self-inauguration into the literary scene, the 'new Poete' relating 'his own maturation to the primary evolving spheres of teh nation - political, religious, educational, erotic'. Indeed, Spenser's interests are diverse: many of the pastoral scenes are thinly veiled political comments, there are three ecclesiastical ecologues that explicitly explore 16th century religious conflicts, etc. All this is conveyed through formal experimentation, new stanzas and metres as well as reworkings of various traditions, which then point to the way Spenser was also thinking about poetry through his poetry. Virgil's eclogues were often seen as the precedent to Virgil's greatest achievement, the epic Aeneid: Spenser's adoption and reworking of the pastoral form certainly evokes this notion, but his experiments mean that he is also positioning himself as an inheritor and successor of the pastoral tradition, a new poet who above all has subsumed the Virgilian model under 'the cyclical pattern of the Christian calendar and the vertical pattern of Christian salvation' (Hadfield). These intricate patternings are made even more complex because of the breadth of editorial material that canvas the poem, and altogether everything points to a poem (and poet) going through the process of self-definition and emerging successfully.

In that sense, Spenser's work is English Literature with a capital E and L, for if Literature is anything, it is discursive and self-defining.

[max theodore]

poems read: january, april, june, july, august, october, november, december

reading spenser online is nigh impossible for me. if i can't underline that shit i can't comprehend it. i did comprehend enough to note the vergil parallels and feel glad that i've read the eclogues, but i like vergil's poetry better and i can't be assed to read the other poems in this. interesting from a political and literary-history standpoint, but not in itself, imo.

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read as part of Edmund Spenser, The Shorter Poems (Penguin 1999)

[Octavia Cade · Rating 1 out of 5]

Look, I like poetry. I love poetry, actually - even did my PhD on it. And I've come to think that, more than prose, poetry dates. This doesn't have to be a bad thing - the Pearl, for instance, is utterly fantastic and its language is older by far than what's in here. And what's in here isn't all bad - occasionally Spenser comes across a turn of phrase or a sense of narrative that caught my attention, and Walter Crane's illustrations are amazing. I also enjoyed the set-up of it, the matching poem to month and mood. But for the most part, this just feels dated to me, and not in a good way. I was going to call it twee but it isn't really; that's an unfair assessment. But take January's poem: a shepherd boy falls in love with a girl called Rosalind, who doesn't appear to love him back, so he throws himself on the ground and breaks his pipe in pieces so he can't play it anymore, in a sort of emotional tantrum which may well explain why Rosalind is steering clear in the first place. That sort of thing - hysterical melodrama that verges on (what to the modern eye can appear as) the very purplest of purple prose. Very different from today's poetry, which is admittedly far more to my taste.

I dunno. I'm hoping to wade my way through Spenser's Faerie Queene later this year. Here's hoping it's an improvement.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay: there is a brilliant podcast, Occasion of the Season, where academic Kat Addis discusses each chapter with another really fascinating academic, which makes the poem glorious and, if you are reading this along with the podcast, you could probably give this four or even five stars.

It is, to be fair, utterly lovely when read out loud by someone who knows what they're reading.

It is also THE poem which made Spenser into "England's Virgil", "Heir to Chaucer" etc, and three times as many people read this as read any poem (it seems) bar Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in the sixteenth century. Way more read than his Fairie Queene (which is what people read now if they read any Spenser).

But the problem of needing a podcast to explain it is like those people who read Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow with the (three times as long) crib book next to them, and then go "It's really great when you get all the references": yeah, but why do I not get those references anyway? why does it have to be so obscure?

Comparing it to Animal Farm or Gulliver's Travels is instructive: sure, you can look at the footnotes to see that this was "really" about Trotsky or Robert Walpole, but actually the books are brilliant without the notes. Allegory? Satire? But they still work, even when you don't know the immediate targets. This poem has lots of references to struggles between the wings of the Anglican Church (which doesn't hold my interest now, even as an Anglican) or whether Queen Elizabeth should marry (she didn't, so...). We don't need to know who exactly the big-enders and little-enders are to understand Swift's satire; Orwell is still banned in Zimbabwe, because it is too accurate about the Zanu-PF.

The other thing about this poem is the modernist feel of it: sure, it's all in classic rhyme schemes (good) but it has a "gloss"-commentary from a slightly pompous "EK" (who gets details wrong), that reminds me of House of Leaves. And, even 350 years early, this has all the problems of modernism.

And why are all modern editions in the original spelling? Do they only want boffins to read Spenser? The 1932 Everyman edition (in modern spelling) is easier to understand and loses none of the impact. The poetry is just about appreciable in old spelling; the prose is impenetrable.

[Kevin S · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[k · Rating 3 out of 5]

i really liked some of the months () but others less so

[Nora Mackay]

for a class on paratexts. E.K. is less funny than they think they are

[feneo · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 just for the october one

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

#With Spenser in 2024:

Extract: What is most thought-provoking about this poem is the fact that it holds a discernible real-life charm. The love which Colin Clout bears to the scornful Rosalind is Spenser's own love for a woman of that name. Similarly, the poem also contains Spenser's own indignation at the early neglect of his poetry and at the neglect of all poetry in general. The poem articulates also Spenser's strong Puritanical views which lead him to censure the indolent and gratified Roman Catholic archbishops and also the Anglican priests who had turned to nonspiritual desires. Spenser nationalized his eclogues by pungent words borrowed from the old poets of his country and also from provincial vocabularies. The unobtrusive, assured flow of his sentences is a foundation of delight to the advanced reader. Spenser becomes even antiquated in his use of words, but he does so with a very defined inventive purpose. The versification of the poem is even more conspicuous. Spenser's talent in this direction at the very outset of his career is surprising. However, the palpable qualities of the poem are those of style. After an extended wait a poet had appeared in England who wrote neither inaccurately nor arduously. Very sporadic, if any poem has ever appeared in English in which the amalgamations of lines and rhymes were both as genuinely amusing and as innovative as in this one.

Detailed analysis:

Let us first delve into the subject matter and the stylistic merits. This is one of Spenser’s most significant poems. It consists of twelve pastoral eclogues. The principal interlocutors in this long work are the shepherds Colin Clout and Hobbinol. Colin Clout represents Spenser himself, while Hobbinol represents Gabriel Harvey, the academician with whom Spenser had become fairly bosom during his days at the University of Cambridge.

The thread, which connects the twelve ecologies and makes them into a single poem, seems to be rather thin. However, Spenser was the first among the ancients or the moderns to find a way of forming these eclogues into a harmonious whole, each of them corresponding to a month in the year and having a certain apparent fitness to its appropriate atmosphere and season.

There are a number of shepherds in the poem but they all centre round Colin Clout who returns at regular intervals to utter his amorous sighs and who represents Spenser himself.

The principles of unity and of variety are skilfully blended in the poem, the rude eclogues alternating with those which are loftier in tone. The poem has a marked autobiographical character.

The love, which Colin Clout bears to the scornful Rosalind, is Spenser’s own love for a woman of that name. Similarly, the poem also contains Spenser’s own indignation at the early neglect of his poetry and at the neglect of all poetry in general.

The poem couriers also Spenser’s strong Puritanical views, which lead him to condemn the idle and proud Roman Catholic prelates and also the Anglican priests who had turned to secular pleasures.

However, the real merits of the poem are those of style. At -last a poet had appeared in England who wrote neither carelessly nor laboriously. Spenser nationalized his eclogues by pungent words borrowed from the old poets of his country and also from provincial vocabularies.

The silent, unquestionable flow of his sentences is a source of delight to the initiated reader. Spenser becomes even out-dated in his use of words, but he does so with a very precise artistic purpose.

The versification of the poem is even more striking. Spenser’s talent in this direction at the very outset of his career is surprising. Never yet had a poem appeared in English in which the combinations of lines and rhymes were both as variously rich and as novel as in this work.

The Shepherd’s Calendar contains as many as five different forms of stanzas in heroic or ten-syllabled lines.

In the songs, which the poem contains, lines of unequal length are combined in small and quite novel strophes. These songs are the gems of the whole poem. The metres, mentioned above, institute only half of those used in the eclogues.

Another portion of the poem is written in popular metres, which follow no law except that of the four accentual beats.

In the last analysis this part of the poem derives, by way of Chaucer, from the alliterative verse of the Anglo-Saxons.

[J. Alfred · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intentionally archaic when it was written, full of difficult, sometimes self-thwarting allegory, and tough to even parse, let alone scan, this is not the most enjoyable poetry. It is interesting historically on a number of counts, but mostly just a pain. Spenser's Amoretti and Fairy Queene are more than enough for you to appreciate this great writer. The Calendar can be safely ignored.

[faithyintennies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read it in college and read it again recently still doesn't tickle my fancy