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Biography of Edmund SpenserName: Edmund SpenserBirth Date: c. 1552 Death Date: January 16, 1599 Place of Birth: London, England Nationality: English Gender: Male Occupations: poet Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (ca. 1552-1599) ranks as the foremost English poet of the 16th century. Famous as the author of the unfinished epic poem The Faerie Queene, he is the poet of an ordered yet passionate Elizabethan world.Edmund Spenser was a man of his times, and his work reflects the religious and humanistic ideals as well as the intense but critical patriotism of Elizabethan England. His contributions to English literature--in the form of a heightened and enlarged poetic vocabulary, a charming and flexible verse style, and a rich fusing of the philosophic and literary currents of the English Renaissance--entitle him to a rank not far removed from that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.Spenser was the son of a London tailor, but his family seems to have had its origins in Lancashire. The poet was admitted to the newly founded Merchant Taylors' School about 1561 as a "poor scholar." …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Allegory (1932); C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1936); Ruth Mohl, Studies in Spenser, Milton, and the Theory of Monarchy (1949); and E. M. W. Tillyard, The English Epic and Its Background (1954). A work on Spenser's reputation through the centuries is William R. Mueller, ed., Spenser's Critics (1959). Waldo F. McNeir and Foster Provost compiled an Annotated Bibliography of Edmund Spenser, 1937-1960 (1962).For general background see S. T. Bindoff, Tudor England (1951); Hallet Smith, Elizabethan Poetry (1952); and C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama (1954).Rambuss, Richard, Spenser's Secret Career, Cambridge England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Shire, Helena Mennie, A Preface to Spenser, London; New York: Longman, 1978.Spenser and Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Cork: Cork University Press, 1989.Spenser's Life and the Subject of Biography, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.Tuckwell, William, Spenser, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1975.Waller, Gary F. (Gary Fredric), Edmund Spenser: A Literary Life, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. |