The Faerie Queene Book Five

The Faerie Queene is a scholarly masterpiece that has influenced, inspired, and challenged generations of writers, readers and scholars since its completion in 1596. Hamilton's edition is itself, a masterpiece of scholarship and close reading. It is now the standard edition for all readers of Spenser. The entire work is revised, and the text of The Faerie Queene itself has been freshly edited, the first such edition since the 1930s. This volume also contains additional original material, including a letter to Raleigh, commendatory verses and dedicatory sonnets, chronology of Spenser's life and works and provides a compilation of list of characters and their appearances in The Faerie Queene.

Book Five of The Faerie Queene is Spenser's Legend of Justice. It tells of the knight Artegall's efforts to rid Faerie Land of tyranny and injustice, aided by his sidekick Talus and the timely intervention of his betrothed, the woman warrior Britomart. As allegory, Book Five figures 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. At the same time, as historical allegory, it retells a number of the most important events of early modern England, in particular the controversies surrounding the colonization of Ireland. An integral part of the larger poem, Book Five also stands on its own as one of the most challenging meditations on justice in English literature.

In this accessible introduction to Spenser's poetry and prose, a set of fourteen essays provide extensive commentary on his life and the historical and religious contexts in which he wrote