Is Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" Really That Hard to Read?

[astrum]

I heard that "The Faerie Queene" is one of the most challenging works of English literature. Do you agree? Did you find it hard to read?


Is it harder than, say, Milton or Shakespeare?

[JBI]

It is quite difficult, though the Annotated edition - http://www.amazon.ca/Spenser-Faerie-Queene-Edmund/dp/1405832819/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1377011997&sr=8-8&keywords=the+faerie+queen - is far easier - the depth of it though is quite immense, so the good Longman annotated edition is totally worth the money if you intend on reading it.

I believe there is also an encyclopedia which helps if I can recall. I seriously studied it years ago during my university education, where I took a course taught by a Spenser specialist. The Encyclopedia should be available from most online libraries.

As for difficulty - it is equally if not harder than Milton, and more challenging linguistically than either of the two. Each book is also modeled on a genre and other book, so it takes a lot of renaissance knowledge. It's actually quite a brilliant feat - something akin to a Renaissance Ulysses.

[PeterL]

I haven't found it all that difficult to read, but the parts that I read were boring, and that was the challenge. There are people who love it, and I would think that they found it easy and pleasant to read.

[Hal]

There are a couple of things that make it a difficult read. First, the symbolism. If you don't understand the symbolism you are going to be lost. The biblical allusions are vital to understanding the text. Another thing that can make it a difficult read is the style. If you've been reading modernist texts for months on end and then flip open the Faerie Queene or Milton's "Paradise Lost" it's going to be difficult to adjust to the style.

[JBI]

I haven't found it all that difficult to read, but the parts that I read were boring, and that was the challenge. There are people who love it, and I would think that they found it easy and pleasant to read.

Maybe realizing its difficulty would have made it "less"boring. It's not a flip through book - it is dense, and most people miss this.

[wreade1872]

Maybe realizing its difficulty would have made it "less"boring. It's not a flip through book - it is dense, and most people miss this.

I didn't really analysis much so maybe thats why i didn't find it that difficult, i think you can adjust pretty quickly to the language especially with some notes but many words have an obvious meaning due to context.

I didn't find it boring it all although i did think the first half was better than the second. Theres plenty of filth, violence and action which i don't think many people would associate with poetry :lol . And its also surprisingly realistic in places aswell, for example a knight gets captured and after he's rescued i was expecting him to be fine and yet he's all gaunt and lost all his muscles, its good stuff.

The other issue apart from language, is the convoluted nature of the stories, this isn't one story but about two dozens with different people and sometimes you leave people for quite awhile before going back to them so i got a little confused with who was who on occasion but i didn't let that bother me.

Overall due to its poetic nature i would actually say this is EASIER to read page to page than a normal book.

There's just something about the writing which really flows and i found i wasn't even processing it properly, it seemed to go straight from page to creating pictures in my mind without the usual parsing. Like it was bypassing my forebrain, i don't really know how to explain it properly.

[bluosean]

I'll agree that it really isn't that bad. I haven't read Milton but I had more trouble understanding Shakespeare's plays than Spenser. Iv'e just started "The Faerie Queene" now, and I am about half way through. It really does flow rather smoothly, and you get used to the language and spellings almost immediately. As JBI points out, the poem is dense. I have the edition he recommended. I looked for a long time on amazon, and it seemed the only choice for the complete poem with good glosses (especially for a one volume or reasonably priced book).

But keep in mind that many that read "The Faerie Queene" do not have access to the frequently referenced Spenser Encyclopedia (can it indeed be found online JBI?), and are not taking a class with a Spenser expert. I'm reading the poem, while probably missing at least 95%, and I'm still really liking it. You'll miss most of it by reading it through without reading the footnotes, but it will flow better and I think you will like it more. Besides, it is so dense that you will need to read it again to understand it well. Sacrifice understanding for enjoyment the first time around.

[Mr.lucifer]

In my opinion, the footnotes are for the second time. You'll have more drive to understand it more, because you actually cared enough to want to read it again.

[MorpheusSandman]

Pretty much +1 to what JBI said. I really enjoyed The Faerie Queen, but it hasn't stuck with me as much as Milton and Shakespeare or Chaucer.

[JBI]

The encyclopedia can be found on most university or public libraries' online resources. For free, I do not know, probably not.

[astrum]

I'm reading the poem, while probably missing at least 95%, and I'm still really liking it. You'll miss most of it by reading it through without reading the footnotes, but it will flow better and I think you will like it more. Besides, it is so dense that you will need to read it again to understand it well. Sacrifice understanding for enjoyment the first time around.


What kind of things do Spenser readers often miss?

[WICKES]

Pretty much +1 to what JBI said. I really enjoyed The Faerie Queen, but it hasn't stuck with me as much as Milton and Shakespeare or Chaucer.

I once heard someone say something similar. Maybe that is why Spenser has never enjoyed the fame of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare? Even people who don't read have usually heard of those three, but they never know who Spenser was.

[MorpheusSandman]

Maybe that is why Spenser has never enjoyed the fame of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare? Probably so, though I'd be hard-pressed to put my finger on the exact difference. There's no denying Spenser's talent or brilliance and the enormous breadth and depth of The Faerie Queen, but, at the end of the day, perhaps what I missed most was the depth of humanity that's found in The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare's characters, or even Milton's Satan. There are many beautiful passages and several of the books are certainly masterpieces, but I also think he was less consistent than those three.

[JBI]

I once heard someone say something similar. Maybe that is why Spenser has never enjoyed the fame of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare? Even people who don't read have usually heard of those three, but they never know who Spenser was.

It probably has something to do with the fact as readers of English literature, we are used to the late-renaissance development of characters as full "real" characters, that is, a projection of a real person, whereas Spenser, like other authors coming out of the Medieval and Romance tradition wrote their characters as allegorical figures, not real full fledged human beings. In that sense, most people cannot really relate to anyone in his book, and therefore are dismissive, as they are not allegorical readers, and take no joy in allegory, and religious, political, cultural, and cultural debates.

[bluosean]

"What kind of things do Spenser readers often miss?"

Well, as JBI said, the poem is an allegory. To use the academic cliche, the poem must be read on several levels to understand it fully. According to A. C. Hamilton, in his introduction to my copy, it has been read as historic-religious allegory (or horizontally across the earth), as a spiritual or moral allegory (vertically), etc. The horizontal readings interpret the poem as it fits into the world, and the vertical readings interpret the poem as the soul's, or man's, relationship to God. I'm sure I got his names for these readings wrong, but then they seem to be often combined anyway. In book five, Hamilton writes, Spenser writes obviously of things that were happening in his time, and if I understand correctly, it is not even allegory in this place (and in many other places). Modern readers try to find historical readings for the entire poem, and some readers take the poem as psychological allegory.

Even more important, when reading the poem there are many words that I do not understand. There are also many words that have changed meanings. In places, I very poorly understand stanzas even or groups of stanzas. But I don't really care. I still rarely look at the glosses, and I still understand what is happening (even missing parts). There is really nothing wrong with reading the poem as:

A knight was running on a field
He met a lady
A storm was coming
And, they ran into a wood because
They were afraid of getting wet
They took the path at the center
It led to a monster etc.

This way the poem is fun to read. Trying to read into the allegory at first with the notes will probably hurt more than anything else. It will be too tiresome. Besides, the literal reading (reading the poem as a romance) is as important as any other. You can always come back to allegorical interpretations later.

Spenser wrote his poem about "Faerie Warld" more than five hundred years ago. His archaic words and grammar, his religious allegory, his references to alchemy and chivalry, etc. all make the poem very foreign. It's really not that bad to read, but as far as understanding it, I'd venture that you should be happy if your understanding and appreciation increases every time that you read it. I usually take academics for their word because I sure don't know. But they say it really is a hard poem.

[MorpheusSandman]

In that sense, most people cannot really relate to anyone in his book, and therefore are dismissive, as they are not allegorical readers, and take no joy in allegory, and religious, political, cultural, and cultural debates.Doesn't explain it in my case since I love allegorical writings. There aren't exactly any relatable characters in the late works of William Blake, or Dante for that matter, and I love both, and they're quite popular.

[JBI]

Dante has one great character, that of Dante.

But you miss my point. Every book of the Faerie Queene, even including the ode to mutability, has a virtue, which is drawn out as an allegory throughout the book as a frame. Likewise, every book seems to be playing with the conventions of another tradition, the second one focusing on the Romance, and playing with Ariosto being the best example.

Likewise, the idea of Britain is an allegory throughout, and the idea of the Tutor - English - way, is very apparent as an ideological background. If we look at Spenser as an author, we can see he is trying to be a somewhat Virgil - first he writes the Shepherds Calendar, to mirror Virgil, then goes on to write The Epic - the national, or ideological epic is central - as Rome is to Virgil, England is to Spenser.

Now with that as a frame work, taking book two as an example - if we have not Ariosto, can we really appreciate the playing of Ariosto's tropes? if we do not need the romance, is the romantic allegory as potent? These are important ideas.

We think of the renaissance generally as the theatrical world of high Shakespearean tragedy, but we miss a lot of the other side - the romantic, classical side of Spenser, or Sidney's Arcadia, or even Shakespeare's As You Like It.

[MorpheusSandman]

I get what you're saying, JBI, about TFQ being an allegory without the allure of great characters as in Shakespeare, but all I was saying is that doesn't explain my relative ambivalence, nor does it explain the disparity in popularity between Dante, Virgil, and Spenser, as The Comedy and Aeneid are highly allegorical as well and don't have characters on the level of those in Shakespeare. I also mentioned Blake, and there certainly aren't Shakespearean characters in Blake.

[JBI]

I get what you're saying, JBI, about TFQ being an allegory without the allure of great characters as in Shakespeare, but all I was saying is that doesn't explain my relative ambivalence, nor does it explain the disparity in popularity between Dante, Virgil, and Spenser, as The Comedy and Aeneid are highly allegorical as well and don't have characters on the level of those in Shakespeare. I also mentioned Blake, and there certainly aren't Shakespearean characters in Blake.
I am not about to try to describe why your personal taste does not suite Spenser - that was not the point of my post.

My post is simple - why do people even like Blake? The truth is, most of them take him as a mystic, and therefore like his aphorism-like poems. Others like a lyric poet, and like his Innocence and Experience. Yet how many read The Marriage between Heaven and Hell - how many read the longer, prophetic poems. In truth, they are seldom read, and more seldom before Northrop Frye decoded them.

Now, with Spenser, many, many people read his sonnets, which are great and well known. Yet the Faerie Queene is off-putting for a single reason - linguistically dense, allegorically heavy, more so than Virgil or Dante, and simply it is massive. It is easily as impressive a work as Paradise Lost. It just happens to have been relatively hard to understand, and takes a specific knowledge - it is the summary of Tudor England to an extent, with all its national, royal propaganda, and its theory.

Such expression is also viewed in Spenser's Hymns, which I have yet to see anybody mention. They are quite dense.

So in a sense, I do not know exactly what you like about Blake - I would assume, given that I have yet to see you mention any of his later works, that you probably like the early works that every child is familiar with. Either way, in lyric, persona is relatively restricted to the speaker of the poem, in narrative, generally characters are limited to their brief mention Oh Solitary Lass, etc. This preoccupation with "round" characters is more or less a later development in literature, and stems from drama being transformed into novels. While reading about the Red Crosse Knight for instance, we are certain to note he goes on a "quest" yet is hollow as a character. We read of him for a hundred odd-pages and though we notice he changes, his character is still as flat and hollow as at the beginning of the work. Duessa etc. are even flatter. There is no identity with them, whatsoever.

This is what pushes people away - there is no depth to the character but rather the depth of the character is in its interpretive range. Allegory in a sense is a form of metonymy, which in this case is highly layered - it allows one to interpret however they want, most notably using the graded rule of biblical interpretation.

It is strange that you mention both Blake and Spenser in the same breath, given that these two poets are perhaps the most alike. Even innocence and Experience have been read on the "biblical" levels of interpretation. However, I think Spenser in that sense did it better.

Now, that being said. We need to figure how we identify to a work before we learn how to appreciate it. Most of us probably do not respect its religious message much. Certainly most do not respect its historical propaganda, or its political messages, and fewer respect its virtuous.

Yet when we remove our own expectations, and instead rationalize it in a context, the complexity and layers of meaning seem incredibly clever, and allow for a great amount of pleasure in understanding.

Most people who read Renaissance English works know nothing of the Renaissance, most only read the specific works partaining to a handful of poets and playwrights, and only grasp the dramatic "humanist" values, rather than approach the social level of the text.

In that sense, as to the question, is it hard to read Spenser, yes it is. To get into the Renaissance you need to put yourself there. To read Ulysses you need to have a map of London and a knowledge of the Odyssey to really get what is going on. Spenser is like the Ulysses of Tudor England.

That being said, the same criticism can be said of John Donne - that most only read a select handful of works. Once we consider his lyrics outside of his Sonnets (the first removal) we see a more smug, self-righteous sort of man. Then we delve deeper in to his Elegies, and we see a political form of allegory both rude and abrasive, all made for the comical joke of it all. Most people stop with Break Blow and Burn, and will never progress further.

[MorpheusSandman]

A few points, JBI:

1. I didn't say my personal tastes didn't suit Spenser. I quite liked him, and I appreciated him even more than I liked him (meaning that I can recognize his brilliance, even if that brilliance didn't always make an emotional connection). I merely said that TFQ did not stick with me as much as Milton, Shakespeare, Blake, Chaucer, et al, and I don't think the reason has anything to do with it being an allegory, linguistically dense, or not having Shakespearean characters.

2. Regarding Blake, I actually was thinking of the late works. While I love his Songs and Augeries, I feel his Milton, Jerusalem, and Four Zoas are amongst the greatest masterpieces in the language and are largely responsible for him being my favorite English poet next to Milton, Merrill, and Yeats. If I haven't talked about his later works, it's only because I haven't found anyone to talk about them with because it's almost required that someone read Frye, Bloom, and maybe Erdman's commentary on them to get them at all.

3. I agree that there are many similarities between Spenser and Blake, which is why I find it strange that I love Blake and merely like Spenser. Perhaps it has to do with my discovering Blake at an earlier, more impressionable age? Maybe it has to do with Blake being more overtly psychological and archetypal ala Jung? I don't know.

4. Reflecting more on 3., perhaps it's just that there's not as much that's universally appealing in Spenser that would lead one to care about all of the contextual stuff. In Blake, the fact that I am interested in, eg, Jung's theories of psychological archetypes probably lead me to being interested in the other contexts inherent in Blake (the political, social, even biographical). Similar in Shakespeare, my love for his humanist drama made me interested in the other social contexts. It seems in Spenser that if one doesn't have an inherent interest in the social aspects then there's less there to pull them in. I love his density of language, just like I love the same quality in Milton, but that wasn't enough to make me as interested in the rest.

5. I think the connection you're making with Donne is rather tentative, but we've already been over it before regarding Donne.

[JBI]

Well, let me then ask a different question, if the study of Blake requires those 3 works, to really get into the great Prophesies, which three Spenser books did you read?

The place and difficulty of any artist rests on the familiarity of the reader to the text. For anybody reading Chinese works without knowing Chinese, that is akin to zero. To read older English works, that is akin to some familiarity, and the more distant or obscure, or context-heavy, the more remove.
Let me suggest that in terms of world view, we are really limited when it comes to our basic understanding of the English renaissance, given that our vision of the world is a mix of Romanticism with nihilism. Our poetic sensibilities are surely Romantic, and a few of us are modeled in the classical vein.

Yet to comprehend a work, we must enter it. The text is the source, yet the text is also the context. Very few of us are familiar with the context. This work is particularly removed. The language is more removed than Blake's, and the imagery is less so. He is less difficult in a sense, yet still removed.

Shakespeare is closer to us, then lets say, Thomas Kidd. We generally are limited, whether that be by the canon, or around the canon.

We can say the Spanish Tragedy is the big hit of the Elizabethan age, even bigger than Shakespeare, but we no longer read that work, and focus instead on Shakespeare. Likewise, Petrarch is now known for his poems, yet for over a hundred years he was held as one of the best Latin prose writers. We have shifted, based on our familiarity.

Now, as the decline of Renaissance study has invaded our sensibilities, it is clear that something like Shakespeare, which is rather limited in its background requirements, would be considered a dominant text. Likewise, Milton is clearly writing in a language, and with images familiar to us.

But Spenser is not. He is hard, and he even goes out of his way to groom you. The beginning of the Faerie Queene is designed to make you figure out how to read his work. He also uses bad poetry as a pun throughout the book, further toying with these tropes.

So how do we approach the work? to read around it is to put ourselves in the context, but also invest time. Should we invest the time to learn how to read spenser, is it worth it?

Culture has deemed shakespeare worth it, but perhaps for most Spenser simply isn't.

[MorpheusSandman]

I did read the Longman Edition of TFQ, which was quite well annotated and footnoted, so I don't think it was a matter of simply missing something necessary for enjoyment. Hamilton's commentary is probably more in-depth than Bloom's. Besides, as I said, there was something in Blake that prompted me to read more about him.

I agree what you say about distance and difficulty, but I'm hardly someone who shies away from difficult texts, obviously since I love Blake's prophetic works. I also agree about most people's poetic sensibilities still being romantic, but that's probably because romanticism was always more of a middle-class movement, while modernism and everything after took hold more in academia. I don't know about more classical sensibilities.

Yes, Spenser's language is removed, but not much more so than Milton, and certainly no more so than Chaucer, and, again, they're both still more popular and, for me, more memorable/appealing. As to whether we should invest the time to put ourselves in the context, I've always based the answer to that question on any author on how much they pulled me in on an initial reading. Blake pulled me in, so I endeavored to learn more, same with Milton, Shakespeare, and Chaucer. Spenser pulled me in somewhat, but not enough to invest more time than it took to read the lengthy Longman. That question, though, is best answered by each individual. Our lives being finite, we certainly can't devote the necessary time to fully understand every artist we encounter, and considering I love film and music as much as literature I have to be even more selective about which artists I choose to study deeply.

However, I should say that the kind of alienness and difficulty you describe isn't always related to cultural distance. I had a very similar sense of compelling alienation reading 20th century poets like Ashbery and Merrill as much as I did with Chaucer, Spenser, or Blake. Being temporally close to us doesn't always mean being intuitively understandable or relatable to us. I've read as much (if not more) studies on Merrill as Blake, and still feel I only partially understand everything in his work (especially true for The Changing Light at Sandover).