Works
In his work, Spenser uses old-fashioned language on purpose. He wanted his language to seem old-fashioned, because he wanted it to resemble the language of Chaucer. In his opinion, Chaucer’s language was a source of pure English, a “well of English undefiled”3. Not everyone agreed with him. His friend and colleague, Philip Sidney, wrote that Spenser exaggerated in his use of old-fashioned language because none of his classical models had used it: “That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazzaro in Italian did affect it.”4
The Shepheardes Calender
The Shepheardes Calender is an example of pastoral poetry. The Calender has twelve poems, one for each month of the year. Each month also contains an illustration that shows the characters and/or the theme of the poem. The illustrations have the sign of the zodiac for that month, depicted somewhere in the clouds. Each poem not only represents a month within a year, but also symbolizes an aspect of the whole of human life. The models that Spenser used for these poems came from the Roman authors Virgil and Theocritus. But he was also influenced by Chaucer.
Stars and fortune
In every illustration in this calendar there is a sign of the zodiac. In the Elizabethan age, many people believed in the influence of the stars on their daily lives. Every sign of the zodiac had its own property, its own way in which it influenced the world. The stars caused the instability and uncertainty of all things on the earth, so of plants and animals as well as humans. However, the chaos that the stars created in nature was not contradictory to the providence of God. It was the Fall of mankind (the entrance of sin into the world) that was responsible for the influence of the stars. Despite the fact that the stars were influential, a human being was never simply a puppet and a victim. It was highly dependent on your physical state (theory of the 4 humours) how much the stars could affect you. A melancholic person for example could be much more influenced than a person that was in well-balanced physical state. Moreover, the fate that the stars brought could be resisted.
The Faerie Queene
This enormous work of poetry was Spenser’s main work. It consists of 6 books. Each book is divided into 12 cantos and each canto consists of about 40-50 stanzas, each of 9 lines. Spenser is famous for this 9 line stanza, because he invented it. It is called the “Spenserian stanza” (ababbcbcc).
The setting of the poem is a fairy land that is ruled by a fairy queen. Each book deals with the adventures of a different knight who goes on a quest in which he has to fulfill a certain task.
Spenser gave directions on how to interpret this work in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh that was attached to the first edition of The Faerie Queene. Spenser writes that this large poem is an allegory. So, the knights and heroes that we meet in the books actually stand for virtues. They represent Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy. Spenser’s goal was to represent and describe moral qualities and show how all these qualities together can form the ideal human being. Besides a moral allegory, The Faerie Queene is also an historical allegory. The characters and events in the books are references to real historical people and events. For the modern reader, these references are not always easy to discover and to understand. The Faerie Queene can be seen as a national epic. The English nation, the Church of England and of course the Virgin Queen are glorified in this work.
Amoretti
Spenser also wrote his own sonnet cycle called Amoretti, which means “little loves”. The sonnets reflect Spenser’s courtship and marriage with Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. The traditional outlook of a sonnet, introduced by Petrarch, was an unattainable love. What makes Spenser’s sonnets stand apart is that he describes a “happy and successful love”5.