 |
| Queen Elizabeth 1 |
The Elizabethan Age (1579-1602)
Spenser’s genius was fed by the Reformation on well as by the love of medieval romance and the culture of the Renaissance, and unlike his brilliant Italian master, Ariosto, who wrote only to amuse, his own great work is inspired by a high moral and religion aim. In other words, The Fairy Queen is not simply a romance, it is a didactic romance. The poet carries out his purpose by turning romance into allegory. His twelve knight- errant’s are types of the twelve cardinal virtues of Aristotle’s philosophy, and the adventure of each knight is arranged to body forth symbolically the experiences, conflicts , and temptations of each such virtue in the turmoil of the world, and its ultimate triumph, with the aid of Arthur, the incarnation of Divine power, over all its foes. The defects of ‘The Fairy Queen’ are very obvious. It suffers from extreme artificiality. Spenser is rather dull story teller. But, on the other hand, his merits are very many and very striking. He has a wonderful sense of beauty. He has splendid pictorial power. His work is filled with a noble moral spirit; the quality of pure poetry is to be felt on almost every page. Which enables us to understand why Spenser has been called ‘the poet’ and why he exercised such a stimulating influence on the literature of the eighteenth century romantic revival.