Spenser's Theory of Courtesy

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Judson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
The Faerie Queene ◽  
Courtesy Literature ◽  
The Ideal

Professor H. S. V. Jones in his recently published Spenser Handbook (New York, 1930) has an interesting and valuable chapter on Book vi of The Faerie Queene. Much of his discussion is concerned with the so-called courtesy literature of the Renaissance, which offers striking parallels to Spenser's illustration of the virtue of courtesy. According to Professor Jones, Spenser's object in Book vi is “to exhibit in his allegory certain articles in that familiar creed of courtesy which had been stated and expounded in many doctrinal treatises of the Renaissance, and to oppose to the ideal of the gentleman the forces which were hostile to its realization.”

The Plot of The Faerie Queene

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Blair
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Central Image ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Faerie Queene ◽  
The Ideal

Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, asks the question: “Does Spenser's work satisfy the test of Unity which must be applied to every great creation of art?” Answering this question, Courthope thinks that there is undoubtedly poetical unity in the general conception of The Shepherd's Calendar. But of the Faerie Queene, he says the following:There is undoubtedly a noble, indeed a sublime, foundation for the poem in its central design “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” There is also something eminently poetical in the intention of embodying this image in the ideal knight—a figure consecrated like that of the shepherd, by ancient literary tradition—and in the person of “Arthur before he was king.” Moreover, as the subject was to be treated allegorically, it was open to Spenser to endow his knight with the “twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised.” … No poem in existence can compare with the Faery Queen in the richness of its materials. But the question occurs: In what way is all this “variety of matter” fused with the central image of the “brave knight, perfected in all the twelve private moral virtues”? For this, we must always remember, was Spenser's professed and primary motive; he chose to convey his moral in a form of allegorical narrative, because he thought it would be “most plausible and pleasing, being covered with an historical fiction.”

Blatant Beasts

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-240
Author(s):  
Catherine Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Printed Text ◽  
The Faerie Queene ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter studies the final book of the 1596 edition of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. Discovering the presence of other readers, whether in the archive, the critical tradition, the pages of a manuscript, or the margins of a printed text, can feel like a violation of the seemingly exclusive bond between reader and text. The realization that someone has already had the response one has to a particular poem or passage can bring a pleasing sense of community. By the same token, the discovery that someone else has read a poem or passage in an utterly different sense than oneself can yield exhilaration, amusement, delight, and fascination. Above all, the awareness that one is not alone with what one reads transforms the scene of reading into a space requiring careful displays of deference or sudden and self-preserving acts of aggression—a space, in short, much like the sixth and final book of the 1596 Faerie Queene. Dispensing both with the ideal of singular perfection and with many of its earlier anxieties about aimlessness and indirection, the final book of the 1596 Faerie Queene stages reading as an ongoing intersubjective encounter between readers, texts, and other readers: a conversation in the continual making.

Graham Hough. A Preface to The Faerie Queene. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963. 239 pp. $4.50.

1963 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-337
Author(s):  
Virgil B. HeltZel
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
The Faerie Queene
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