Spenser

[Darcy88]

Why are there no threads on this great poet? I was gonna come in here and find a thread in which I could harangue Spenser but am only confronted with nothing.

Here is a link to an essay in which is detailed Henry Miller's great dislike for Spenser. http://cosmotc.blogspot.ca/2008/10/c...-drop-out.html

I sort of agree with Miller. Maybe its just because I worship Miller so much, I don't know. I just find Spenser really tough reading. I don't mind that flowery exuberant style at all (Milton is one of my most treasured poets). But there is something about his poems that just does not appeal to me. They seem too contrived. There is much beauty and much truth and much in them to get a grip on and savor......but I do not rank him as high as most professors do. When I feel like reading poetry his is one of the last names I go to as I scan the table of contents of one of my massive literary anthologies.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? On Spenser?

[mohammadali]

recently I am reading the Faerie queen of Edmund Spencer, his master piece. I really liked it as a epic. it has love, dragons, religion also the most important feature of this work is the roots of religion and politics in the story. but was a little disappointed because most of the old books are unfinished like this work also canturbary tale by chuacer and some other works.

[OrphanPip]

recently I am reading the Faerie queen of Edmund Spencer, his master piece. I really liked it as a epic. it has love, dragons, religion also the most important feature of this work is the roots of religion and politics in the story. but was a little disappointed because most of the old books are unfinished like this work also canturbary tale by chuacer and some other works.

Only the mutability cantos are unfinished. Some people consider the epic itself to be incomplete, but most Spenser specialist these days seem to agree that Spenser was comically exaggerating his plans for the epic in his letter to Raleigh. He probably never intended a particular ending to the book, he might not have even intended to finish another book despite the handful of extra cantos he wrote. There are good philosophical reasons for the poem to be proleptic in orientation, it always figures towards the pursuit of something that is off-stage. Just as divinity is sort of waiting outside the material world, the characters of the poem move towards an ideal that is always outside the realm of the poem.