The Faerie Queene (Book 1): Spenser

The Faerie Queene (1590) was one of the most influential poems in the English language. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united Arthurian romance and Italian renaissance epic to celebrate the glory of the Virgin Queen. Each book of the poem recounts the quest of a knight to achieve a virtue: the Red Crosse Knight of Holiness, who must slay a dragon and free himself from the witch Duessa; Sir Guyon, Knight of Temperance, who escapes the Cave of Mammon and destroys Acrasia’s Bower of Bliss; and the lady-knight Britomart’s search for her Sir Artegall, revealed to her in an enchanted mirror. Although composed as a moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene’s magical atmosphere captivated the imaginations of later poets from Milton to the Victorians.

References to The Faerie Queene abide throughout Melville's works (for instance, in the "Extracts" of Moby-Dick and the epigraphs of "The Encantadas"). In addition, Carole Moses notes a number of structural similarities between it and Melville's Mardi: "the climactic meeting between Taji and Hautia echoes" the Bower of Bliss; Yillah "relies heavily on Spenser's Garden of Adonis and Temple of Love" with "details...from Scudamour"; "Spenserian allusion" links Yillah with Una; Media, Yoomy, Babbalanja, and Mohi are delineated ala "Spenser's House of Temperance"; and "Alma seems based on the Spenserian character of the same name."

Book I is centered on the virtue of holiness as embodied in the Redcrosse Knight (later revealed to be Saint George), in which he and his lady Una overcome the perils of the monster Errour, the wizard Archimago, the witch Duessa, the Cave of Despair, and the giant Orgoglio, ultimately slaying a dragon.

Faerie Queene (Book 1): ~107pp

• PDF
• Luminarium
• Google books
• Librivox 5h 22m

Supplemental:

• "St. George And The Dragonet"
• Chad A Haag, Introduction/Summary
• Chad A Haag, Book 1
• Critial Readings podcast
• Stories from the Faerie Queen

Extracts:

• "Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda...is that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale;.... Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale." (M-D, 82)
• "...considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse...it will not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend...to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself.... Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George." (M-D, 82)
• "When sighting first the towers afar / Which girt the object of the war / And votive march—the Saviour’s Tomb, / What made the redcross knights so shy? / And wherefore did they doff the plume / And baldrick, kneel in dust, and sigh?" (Clarel, 1.4)
• "But see: how with a wandering hand, / In absent-mindedness afloat, / And dreaming of his fairy-land, / Nehemiah smooths the ass’s coat." (Clarel, 2.6)
• "Not many cables’-length distant from our Commodore’s cabin lay the frigate President, with the red cross of St. George flying from her peak." (White-Jacket, 64)
• "But over the Admiral floats in light / His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag of the White." ("The Haglets")
• "He was a sort of a sea-Socrates, in his old age “pouring out his last philosophy and life,” as sweet Spenser has it" (White-Jacket, 84)

This meetup is part in a series on Muses and Monsters.