The Faerie Queene (Book 5): 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 V contains the "Legend of Artegall, or of Justice", and tells of the knight Artegall's efforts to rid Faerie Land of tyranny and injustice, aided by the timely intervention of his betrothed, the woman warrior Britomart. Book V brings forth ideal concepts of justice and explores how justice may be applied in a real world complicated by social inequality, female rule, political guile, and excessive violence, and is one of the most challenging meditations on justice in English literature.

Faerie Queene (Book 5): ~110pp

• PDF
• Luminarium
• Google books
• Librivox 5h 30m

Supplemental:

• Critial Readings podcast
• Stories from the Faerie Queen

Faerie Queen (modernized, annotated, and abridged):

• Amazon

Extracts:

• "All excellences of all God-made creatures, which served man, were here to receive advancement, and then to be combined in one. Talus was to have been the all-accomplished Helot’s name. Talus, iron slave to Bannadonna, and, through him, to man." ("The Bell Tower")
• "Like Spencer’s Talus with his iron flail / He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail." (Moby-Dick, "Extracts")
• "He went / Like Talus in a foundry cast; / Furrowed his face, with wrinkles massed." (Clarel, 2.1)

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