Spenser
Spenser names 5 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Spenser EDMUND was excluded from court
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EDMUND was excluded from court; Spenser, seeking to aid Leicester, "overshot himself" and was exiled to Ireland, in 1580, as secretary to Lord Grey. Of Spenser's life in Ireland during the next few years we know little. He took with him some part of the "Faerie Queene," his greatest poem, and in 1589 he came in contact with Raleigh, read to him part of his poem, and was persuaded by him to go to London and present it to the Queen. In 1590 the first three books, one-fourth the poem as he had planned it, were published, and immediately won fame. The poem was planned as the epic of the new England, celebrating the return of the old British line through the Welsh house of Tudor; th interpreting certain cardinal events of the time; and pointing out England's destiny. This part of Spenser's design comes out in the chronicle passages, in the love of Arthur (the spirit of England, at times identified with Leicester) for Gloriana, the Faerie Queen (Elizabeth); and and in such passages as the defense of Elizabeth's policy in the fifth book, the legend of Justice. Some of the great knights are to be identified with famous Englishmen, as Artegal for Lord Grey, Calidore for Sidney, and the like. Besides this historical and contemporary matter, the poem was to be a treatise on "the brave courtier," the Renaissance cou ideal of education. Arthur typifies Magnificence, or greatness of mind; Redcross on for Temstands for Holiness; Guyon perance; Calidore for Courtesy, and the like. By this means all the virtues and qualities of the ideal man were to be represented. Finally, the poem is a treasury of romance. England is fairyland, as in the old romance of Malory, and men and their deeds, and the policies of imperial England are seen through the gla glass of enchantment. The poem might, therefore, be read as a moral allegory, as a political allegory, or simply as a treasury of romance. The long stanza lent itself to every variety of pictorial effect and of mood. Spenser can be dramatic, languorous, lyrical. He can be ster stern with moral fervor or sensuous and seductive. He has been called the painter of the English poets. The extraordinary richness and variety of his epic is seen not only in its poetical qualities, which have never been surpassed, but also in the way in which it sums up the thought and ideals of an epoch. Love of travel, of conquest, of science, of every form of philosophy; theories of the state and of conduct; the learning of a time when learning was held to be one of the highest ideals of the man of affairs as well as of the recluse all these are found in combina-
Spenser EDMUND extensive
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EDMUND extensive. and he had thorough command of French and Italian. In his time learning was regarded as a supreme test of a poet, and Spenser's mind was unusually sensitive to all intellectual influences: education, statecraft, theories of poetry, religious ideas, the Platonism that was at the foundation of Renaissance thought, mediæval romance and allegory, history and antiquities, to say nothing of the adventurous and colorful life about him. His friends were men like Raleigh and Sidney; his sympathies were with the progressive party, headed by Leicester and later by Essex, who urged that England's destinies were bound up in curbing the power of Spain, in establishing an English dominion in America, and in gaining the mastery of the sea. All these interests, literary, philosophical, and political, are reflected in his poetry. He left Cambridge in 1576. For some time he was secretary to the Bishop of Rochester, and became interested in the political aspects of Puritanism. By 1579 he was in London, intimate with Sidney, planning to enter the service of the Earl of Leicester, with a considerable body of poetry ready for publication, and with plans already made for the writing of his great epic. In this year he published his first important poetical work, the "Shepheard's Calender," a collection of twelve pastoral eclogues, one for each month of the year. Some of the eclogues deal with the abuses in the church and constitute a defense of political Puritanism; others ; there are also ; tell a poetical love love story examples of the singing-match, of the dirge, of the panegyric, and other forms The familiar to the pastoral genre. learning, the variety of theme, the exquisite melody of his verse, proved that in the "new poet" England was hearing the first authentic voice of a muse that had been silent since the death of Chaucer. At about the same time, Spenser wrote a satire in the form of a beast epic, "Mother Hubberd's Tale." This is a rogue's progress of Fox and Ape. He satirizes the ignorance of the clergy, the folly of the upstart courtier, the newfangleness of court life. He praises the brave courtier in lines that constitute a famous portrait of Sidney. He also introduces an episode in which the rogues steal the crown of the lion and bring the realm to destruction, identifying the fox-ape conspiracy with the plan of Burghley and Simier to bring about a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. The Puritans looked with horror upon the proposed alliance. Sidney wrote in denunciation of it and
Spenser EDMUND tions of the utmost subtlety and variation
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EDMUND tions of the utmost subtlety and variation. At times the allegory is confusing to the lay reader, and the narrative seems inconsequent. It is not a poem that can be read continuously, but is rather for times and seasons. So read, one realizes the influence it has had on every great English poet since its publication. After his great success, Spenser collected some earlier poems in a small anthology, wrote a cha charming pastoral called "Colin Clout's Come Home Againe," in which he told of his London experiences and paid tribute to Raleigh, and continued his epic. The second section of the poem, containing books IV-VI appeared in 1596. A fragment consisting of two cantos of Mutability was not printed until after his death; the design was only half finished. Besides the works already named there are many shorter poems, chief among them two marriage hymns of enduring beauty, a sonnet sequence addressed to the lady whom he married in 1595, and four hymns in which he expressed in perfect verse the mystical and Platonic philosophy with which his name is inseparably linked. He died in London in 1599.
Spenser EDMUND, one of the major English poets
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EDMUND, one of the major English poets, born in London in 1552; educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. His parents were in moderate circumstances, and he owed his education to certain charitable foundations. EDMUND SPENSER His preparation for college was directed by Richard Mulcaster, one of the most famous schoolmasters of his time, who believed in educating not the mind alone, or the body alone, but "the whole man.' Spenser's knowledge of the classics was
Spenser EDMUND judge of the 8th Judicial Circuit of Missouri
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EDMUND judge of the 8th Judicial Circuit of Missouri, from 1897 to 1903. He was a successful candidate for the United States Senate in 1905, and was elected in 1918 to fill the unexpired term of William J. Stone.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 treats Spenser's move to Ireland in 1580 as an exile, a nine-year blank in which "we know little," and reads the Faerie Queene largely by decoding its allegory (Artegall as Lord Grey, Calidore as Sidney). Modern scholarship has inverted that emphasis: Ireland is now central rather than incidental, with Spenser studied as a working colonial official who served Lord Grey de Wilton during the Smerwick massacre, held the confiscated estate of Kilcolman in the Munster plantation, and argued in his prose A View of the Present State of Ireland for the coercive subjugation of the Irish. The one-to-one identifications of knights with courtiers are now handled far more warily, as suggestive rather than settled. The scholarly apparatus has also been transformed by the multi-volume Johns Hopkins Variorum edition of the works, completed in the decades after this account was written, and Spenser remains firmly in the canon after a mid-century dip in fashion.
Written for this edition, 2026.