The Faerie Queene As Children S Literature

Edmund Spenser's vast epic poem The Faerie Queene is the most challenging masterpiece in early modern literature and is praised as the work most representative of the Elizabethan age. In it he fused traditions of medieval romance and classical epic, his religious and political allegory creating a Protestant alternative to the Catholic romances rejected by humanists and Puritans. The poem was later made over as children's literature, retold in lavish volumes and schoolbooks and appreciated in pedagogical studies and literary histories. Distinguished writers for children simplified the stories and noted artists illustrated them. Children were less encouraged to consider the allegory than to be inspired to the moral virtues. This book studies The Faerie Queene's many adaptations for a young audience in order to provide a richer understanding of both the original and adapted texts.

More than three hundred years ago there lived in England a poet named Edmund Spenser. He was brave and true and gentle, and he loved all that was beautiful and good. Edmund Spenser wrote many poems, and the most beautiful of all is the one called 'The Faerie Queen.' He loved so dearly all things that are beautiful and all things that are good, that his eyes could see Fairyland more clearly than the eyes of other men ever could.

More than four hundred years ago there lived in England a poet named Edmund Spenser. He was brave and true and gentle, and he loved all that was beautiful and good. Edmund Spenser wrote many poems, and the most beautiful of all is the one called 'The Faerie Queen.' He loved so dearly all things that are beautiful and all things that are good, that his eyes could see Fairyland more clearly than the eyes of other men ever could. There are many, many stories in 'The Faerie Queen,' and out of them all the author has told you only eight. Maybe some day you will read the others for yourself. In this little book Miss Rose Le Quesne has made one pretty picture for each story. But when you are old enough to read for yourself 'The Faerie Queen' that Edmund Spenser wrote, you will find that there is a picture on every page.

The four-hundred-year story of readers' struggles with a famously unreadable poem—and what they reveal about the history of reading and the future of literary studies "I am now in the country, and reading in Spencer's fairy-queen. Pray what is the matter with me?" The plaint of an anonymous reader in 1712 sounds with endearing frankness a note of consternation that resonates throughout The Faerie Queene's reception history, from its first known reader, Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, who urged him to write anything else instead, to Virginia Woolf, who insisted that if one wants to like the poem, "the first essential is, of course, not to read" it. For more than four centuries critics have sought to counter this strain of readerly resistance, but rather than trying to remedy the frustrations and failures of Spenser's readers, Catherine Nicholson cherishes them as a sensitive barometer of shifts in the culture of reading itself. Indeed, tracking the poem's mixed fortunes in the hands of its bored, baffled, outraged, intoxicated, obsessive, and exhausted readers turns out to be an excellent way of rethinking the past and future prospects of literary study. By examining the responses of readers from Queen Elizabeth and the keepers of Renaissance commonplace books to nineteenth-century undergraduates, Victorian children, and modern scholars, this book offers a compelling new interpretation of the poem and an important new perspective on what it means to read, or not to read, a work of literature.

A masterful retelling of the major stories contained in Edmund Spenser's classic English epic poem, The Faerie Queen. This work is based on the original 1590 book which is one of the longest poems in the English language. The stories were collected by Spenser and rearranged in an allegorical work which represented much of Elizabethan society, focusing on the virtues of several knights and their adventures. As Spenser wrote of his original work, the aim of the poem was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." This edition, aimed primarily at younger readers, takes on the form of a more conventional book, and includes many of the classic stories which have achieved almost legendary status, such as the story of St. George and the Dragon, and Una and the Lion. It is a vital work for anyone seeking a well-rounded classical education. This version has been completely reset and hand-edited and contains all the original illustrations by Rose Le Quesne.

Edmund Spenser (1559-99) has earned the title "the poet's poet" because of the high poetry of his epic and because so many great poets, including Milton, Dryden, Tennyson, and Keats, cut their poetic teeth on The Faerie Queene. The hero of Book II is Sir Guyon, the knight of Temperance. But do not let that throw you. This is not a poem about teetotalism. As C.S. Lewis puts it, The Faerie Queene "demands of us a child's love of marvels and dread of bogies, a boy's thirst for adventures, a young man's passions for physical beauty." Toby Sumpter's modernization follows Roy Maynard's Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves, and includes similar notes that explain obscure vocabulary and references. Eat this book. Devour it. Read it and then reread it. Make its characters and adventures and lessons and images a part of your mental furniture. Be enchanted. Feed your hunger for fantasy. Exercise your faith. Test your judgment. Form your imagination. Enter Faerie Land.