The Faerie Queene in Easley Library Bookworms

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Mar 08, 2008 Werner rated it liked it

Shelves: poetry

Note, April 24, 2019: I edited this just now to insert spoiler tags in a couple of places (I don't think Goodreads provided that option at the time I originally wrote the review).

I read this (in a different edition, without notes and which preserved the Elizabethean spellings) as part of my course preparation for teaching British Literature when we were home schooling our girls, and found it a challenging --though not unrewarding-- read. The quaint spellings and archaic diction and vocabulary re Note, April 24, 2019: I edited this just now to insert spoiler tags in a couple of places (I don't think Goodreads provided that option at the time I originally wrote the review).

I read this (in a different edition, without notes and which preserved the Elizabethean spellings) as part of my course preparation for teaching British Literature when we were home schooling our girls, and found it a challenging --though not unrewarding-- read. The quaint spellings and archaic diction and vocabulary require slow and careful reading to mentally translate. Fully enjoying the work as Spenser originally intended is difficult (if not impossible), first because it's only half finished; he completed only six of the projected dozen "books" that make up the whole, which plays havoc with developing a completed storyline. Second, the narrative the poet relates isn't simply an epic story; it's intended as an allegory (his model was the earlier Italian epic Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, which English interpreters of that day misread as an allegory). The various questing knights, for instance, represent assorted cardinal virtues; the title character is easily recognized as a stand-in for Elizabeth I, and so forth (for instance, the Goodreads description above suggests that the Amazon queen, Radigund, (view spoiler), represents Mary Queen of Scots). Full-blown allegory usually works well only if the various symbolizations are easily understood, or explained; that wasn't the case for me, so that aspect was largely over my head.

Despite those defects, though, considered as stories in their own right many of the various episodes here prove to be quite fascinating (once you decipher the language :-)). The setting is Arthurian England, but Spenser treats it as a full-blown fantasy world, where high-medieval knights co-exist with figures from classical mythology, and the human world shares a much-crossed border with Faerie. Consequently, it's a fountain-head of the Arthurian fantasy subgenre, and a treasure trove (which later genre writers undoubtedly used as a grab-bag) of fantasy motifs. For me, one of the best parts was the depiction of Sir Artegall's love interest, Britomartis, a "lady knight" whose own lethal combat skills make her perhaps literature's first action heroine --she rescues him, rather than the other way around, when he gets himself into trouble. (Radigund is no slouch at fighting either; and while Spenser views her as villainess rather than heroine, that's undoubtedly not the way she views herself.) Of course, Spenser had a long way to go in his gender attitudes; the approving description of Britomartis (view spoiler) had me rolling my eyes big time. :-) But her character nevertheless is somewhat subversive of the ideas of that day about gender roles --and both male and female readers certainly must have picked that up. ...more

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Dec 17, 2009 Jacob rated it it was amazing

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