will be getting paper topics soon
essay is due before spring break
midterm on 23rd

edmund spenser 1552-1599
born to parents of modest means and station
impressive education: sizar (scholarship for the poor)
aid to earl of Leicester
his works: the shepheardes calendar, published in 1579, deliberately used archaic lang, homage to chaucer/rustic effect, at least 13 metrical schemes, generally unliked, complex
ireland: moved here after the calendar, rewarded with a castle (Kilcolman), spenser's oak, war criminal?
spenserian sonnet: mix of petrarchan and shakespearean, rhyme scheme, 3 quatrains and a couplet, abab .....
faerie queene, 6 books, unfinished, complex meanings, christian struggles against evil and temptations
many characters

courtier, soldier, political player, poet, considered the greatest poet after....
not prof writer, not main src of income
educated at merchant taylor's school and went to cambridge
went to ireland as assistant
believed ireland should be disciplined by violent marshall law
given irish estate
wrote faerie queene to win favor with court, got him a small pension
life of disappointment
his castle burned with wife and child
died at 46 in london
great poem and manual of courtesy
devotion to court, bow to regal greatness
dedicates poem and 12 books to queen
6 great virtues in 6 books, each is LONG
redcrosse is st george
moral virtues are incarnated in knightly neroes like an arthurian legend
originally arthur was going to appear in poem

knights in poem
warriors with virtues, morals
fight good causes
life is often too complex for knight to know if what he is doing is right
wore armor for his lord, book of holiness, looking to right wrongs
3 major literary devices: allegory, irony, ambiguity
redcrosse is humble
knight fights the dragon, not real dragon, half monster/woman, must use faith to defeat it
poetic diction
established that the lang of poetry is not lang of people
poetry reaints its own diction, revitalizes our lang, poets like spenser remake english lang, loves ornamentation
spenser leaves love for poetic diction with us, changed poetry and mapped out for others to follow for 500 years to come

cantos 1-3
knight with red cross, holy knight
he and his group come upon cave of error, una begs him not to go in
innkeeper stuff
tricks redcrosse and una
redcrosse leaves, una tricked into thinking he's still there
tempted by love, lust, pride, and physical prowess

spencer sets out to create a poem that is part of a lineage