SPENSER, EDMUND. - English poet, born in London in 1552, died there on 16 Jan. 1599, after having spent much of his life in Ireland as a colonizer and diplomat.
In him the movements of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation are combined in a vast poetic production, comprising pastoral poetry (The Shepheardes Calendar, 1579), Petrarchan lyric poetry (the sonnets entitled Amoretti [1595], and numerous love lyrics, including a Prothalamion and an Epithalamion), philosophical-religious lyric poetry (Hymnes in honour of Love and Beauty, 1596), and epic poetry. In this latter field his poem (The Faerie Queene, 1590-96), which stands alongside those of Ariosto and Tasso, is allegorical and didactic in character, the poet intending to represent the virtues of Aristotle’s magnanimous man, with the aim of “fashioning a gentleman, that is, a noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” He does so by recounting the deeds of Arthur and the knights of the court of Gloriana (Queen Elizabeth). Of the 24 projected books (each in 12 cantos), only 6 were completed, devoted to the legends of holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice, and courtesy. Contrary to the traditional view, it has recently been maintained that S.’s deviations from orthodox Anglicanism are of Catholic rather than Calvinist origin.