Edmund Spenser, born about 1552 and dead on 13 January 1599, was the most ambitious English poet of the later Elizabethan age and one of the chief architects of the English literary canon. His achievement rests above all on The Faerie Queene, the vast unfinished romance-epic through which he attempted to give Protestant England a national mythology, a moral education, and a poetic language equal to those of classical…
“The twelve books are twelve adventures or quests, which the twelve several knights undertake, in which they severally represent the twelve several virtues.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Irish Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
2 live poems · Middle English
Geoffrey Chaucer, born about 1343 in London and dead on 25 October 1400, stands at the beginning of the English literary tradition not because he was the first poet to write in English, but because he revealed on an unprecedented scale what English could do. In his poems, the language accommodates courtly elegance, religious meditation, philosophical argument, vulgar comedy, domestic quarrel, public satire, and intim…
“Now wol I preie mekely every discret persone that redith or herith this litel tretys, to have my rude enditing for excused.”
Neighbourhood:
Ancient & Classical Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Medieval Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Wonder
