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
In the pantheon of English literature, few figures loom as large or cast as long a shadow as John Dryden. Born on August 9, 1631, in the village of Aldwincle All Saints in Northamptonshire, England, and dying on May 12, 1700, in London, Dryden lived through one of the most turbulent periods in British history. His lifetime spanned the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Interregnum under Oliver Cromwel…
“A play ought to be a just image of human nature; but it is not necessary that it should be a true history of the times.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
