A Knight in Borrowed Armour: an introduction to Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'

A close-up of a suit of armour in a darkly lit room.

A knight in shining armour, a damsel in distress, a quest to slay a dragon: on the face of it, as simple and familiar a story as could be. But in Edmund Spenser’s Elizabethan epic poem, The Faerie Queene, one of the greatest and most influential works in all of English literature, there is always more to be discovered than initially meets the eye.

Course Dates

Key Features

Aims of the course

To introduce students to critical study of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, through a complete reading of Book One and a glance forward at key episodes from Book Two.
To provide students with the basic historical and literary context needed to understand and appreciate Spenser’s poetry.
To inspire students with confidence and enthusiasm for reading more of this enjoyable and thought-provoking poem for themselves.

Course content overview

A knight in shining armour, a damsel in distress, a quest to slay a dragon: on the face of it, this looks like as simple and familiar a story as could be. But in Edmund Spenser’s great Elizabethan epic poem, The Faerie Queene, there is always more to be discovered than initially meets the eye. Indeed, the experience of getting to grips with Spenser’s masterpiece is comparable to taking part in a rich archaeological dig, unearthing stratum after stratum of ancient treasure. For The Faerie Queene not only draws abundantly on the rich medieval tradition of Arthurian chivalric tales with their intriguing elements of Celtic magic, but at the same time sinks foundations into the literature and philosophy of classical Greece and Rome, by way of the Italian Renaissance; and to these diverse elements it brings a distinctive imaginative vision and critical intelligence that make this one of the greatest and most influential works of English poetry.
In this course, we will read and explore the whole of Book I of The Faerie Queene – a complete story in its own right, which in retelling the popular medieval legend of St George the dragon slayer, also makes of that old tale something fascinatingly new, full of surprising narrative turns and unexpected depths. On the one hand this is a story resonant with timeless themes – good and evil, error and forgiveness – but on the other hand it is sharply focused on its own historical moment: on the England of Elizabeth I, a newly Protestant nation surrounded by powerful enemies and urgently in need of an inspiring national myth.
Having read closely through Book I, the essential opening movement of this great symphonic poem, we will also consider how it fits into the poem’s larger plan, with a look forward at key episodes from Book II.
The Faerie Queene, a major influence on later English writers from Milton through the Romantics and beyond, still has the power to surprise, enchant, and inspire. Let’s get started on our quest of discovery!

Target audience

Anyone who is interested in reading The Faerie Queene with greater understanding and enjoyment.
Anyone wanting to establish a basis for further study of Spenser's poetry and/or of Elizabethan literature more widely.

Set Text

The recommended set text for the course is:
Edmund Spenser's Poetry: A Norton Critical Edition. Fourth edition. Edited by Andrew D. Hadfield and Anne Lake Prescott. W. W. Norton and Company, 2014.

Welcome week (Week 0)

Purpose:

personal introductions
introducing the course
useful reading
personal objectives

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have:

become familiar with navigating around the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and from VLE to links and back
test your ability to access files and the web conferencing software and sort out any problems with the help of the Technology Enhanced Learning team
learn how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
contribute to a discussion forum to introduce yourself to other students and discuss why you are interested in the course and what you hope to get out of your studies

Teaching Week 1: Epic Romance (core reading: Letter to Raleigh, The Faerie Queene Book One proem and cantos 1-2)

Purpose:

In The Faerie Queene, Spenser presents himself as Elizabethan England’s epic poet, setting out to achieve in English what Homer had done in Greek and Virgil in Latin. But his Renaissance rendering of the classical epic form is profoundly influenced by intervening medieval literary tradition of chivalric romance, with its heroic tales of “knights’ and ladies’ gentle deeds”. We begin our quest to understand the poem by looking at its hybrid form, ‘epic romance’, seeing how it shapes the poem as a whole, its episodes, and its verse. We will start by looking at Spenser’s own accounts of the overall shape and aims of his poem, both in the prefatory opening stanzas of the poem (the ‘proem’), and in the explanatory letter to his patron Sir Walter Raleigh that was published with the first edition of The Faerie Queene. We will then consider to what extent those accounts are realised or called into question in the narrative experience of reading the poem. In particular, we will see how Spenser’s declared aim of writing an edifying tale of epic or chivalric heroism comes into question from the outset, as the supposed hero and heroine of Book One promptly go astray, their simplistic chivalric value system proving inadequate to understanding the complicated and deceptive world which they encounter, making them easy targets for duplicitous enemies that prey on their naive ideas about themselves and their mission. More disorientating still, we as readers are slyly led astray with them, thus forcing us to confront not only their errors but our own.

Learning objectives:

to learn why Spenser evoked the classical epic and medieval chivalric traditions in writing his heroic poem
to examine how the ideas of ‘epic poetry’ and ‘chivalric romance’ shape the poem as a whole, its episodes, and its verse form
to explore the way the opening two cantos of Book One engage our interest and challenge our expectations

Teaching Week 2: Allegory (core reading: The Faerie Queene Book One, cantos 3-5)

Purpose:

As well as an epic poem and a tale of knightly deeds, Spenser famously describes The Faerie Queene as “a continued allegory, or dark conceit”; but what does it mean in practice that the poem is an ‘allegory’, rich in hidden meaning? This can be one of the most difficult questions for its readers to grapple with, one that has led to many misunderstandings, and has even seemed to some to threaten to spoil the magical pleasure of immersing ourselves in its fantastical story world. This week we will try to address some of these difficulties by showing that looking for ‘allegorical meaning’ need not be a dry exercise of translating stories into terms extrinsic to them, but rather was an intrinsic feature of the enchanting strangeness of certain medieval stories, not least The Faerie Queene’s important predecessor, the 13th-century prose Quest of the Holy Grail. Spenser draws on the medieval heritage of allegorical chivalric romance to fascinating and expert effect, in placing his protagonists within a magically strange and intriguing world perilously pregnant with double meanings. We will look in detail at the various ways the poem tempts us to read ‘allegorically’ in the House of Pride episode (cantos iv-v), asking, why are we confronted here with alternative and apparently incompatible ways of reading, and do some of these help us to understand the story most clearly than others.

Learning objectives:

to encounter the difficulties presented by the demand that we read The Faerie Queene ‘allegorically’
to learn about the various uses of allegory in medieval and Renaissance literature and seen how Spenser draws on these traditions
to interpret an important and challenging ‘allegorical’ episode of the poem

Teaching Week 3: Storytelling (core reading: The Faerie Queene, Book One, cantos 6-8)

Purpose:

This week we will begin by looking closely at the story of the heroine’s hapless wanderings after she is separated from her knight (cantos iii & vi). We will see in particular how the poet draws attention here to his own role as a storyteller, spinning his tale in such a way as to maximize sympathy and suspense, and playfully exploring the strong expectation of rescue that is intrinsic to the ‘damsel in distress’ type of story.
We will see how this sort of artfully self-conscious storytelling voice derives from yet another important influence on Spenser’s poem, the chivalric epic poets of the Italian Renaissance, especially Ariosto. We will see how, in Spenser’s hands, this sophisticated and ludic mode of storytelling contributes to a wider sense in these episodes of lost moral bearings and aimless wandering, and we will follow the heroine’s faltering attempts to find a way out of the resulting narrative wilderness.
We will then move on to canto vii, in which a satisfactory rescuer finally appears in the person of Prince Arthur, who saves both heroine and hero, reunites them, and sets them back on course to finish their quest. We will see how this transformative moment in the story is associated with a decisive seizing of storytelling initiative by the good characters themselves, who from this point assume responsibility for shaping their own narrative.

Learning objectives:

to understand the sophistication of Spenser’s storytelling voice, and explored the purposes to which it is put
to look closely at the way the poem’s characters themselves act as storytellers, and what effects this has

Teaching Week 4: Reformation (core reading: The Faerie Queene, Book One, cantos 9-10)

Purpose:

The first two thirds of Book One have shown us a protagonist who falls woefully short of being ready to play his destined role as St George the Dragon Slayer. Now, in canto 9, he must starkly confront his own failings, as well as the question of how he can hope to close the gap between the thoroughly wayward man he has been and the heroic knight he is called on to become. The business of these cantos is not only to show the moral and spiritual reformation of the book’s hero, but to set forth a particular vision of what ‘reformation’ means – a vision both markedly Protestant and markedly nationalistic in character, and brilliantly in step with the mythic needs of the Elizabethan regime. Along the way, it sets out to reform a wayward chivalric ethos, wayward devotional forms, and wayward ideas about what makes a ‘saint’, reclaiming all these for the service of a godly state. As a counterpoint to these developments, we also encounter here Prince Arthur’s story of his own more secular reformation, in which a naive sense of knightly self-sufficiency yields to loving service of the Fairy Queen, Gloriana. This inset story, which from one point of view looks like a mere interlude, from another perspective is nothing less than our first glimpse of the wider framing narrative around which the whole poem is ostensibly organized. But does this charming fairy tale of Arthur’s chivalric reformation wholly align with the grander narrative of spiritual reformation that shapes this key part of Book One, or does it also tends to raise certain doubts about that whole grand story

Learning objectives:

to see how the idea of moral and spiritual ‘reformation’ shape the story at a crucial juncture
to place Spenser’s poem theologically and historically in relation to the Protestant Reformation in England
to consider closely the way Spenser reclaims medieval materials and makes them serve new purposes

Teaching Week 5: Unfinished Business (core reading: The Faerie Queene, Book One, cantos 11-12, plus selected passages from Book Two, cantos 1 & 12)

Purpose:

“High time”, says the narrator, for the hero to get on with his appointed task of slaying the dragon. But this is to be no ordinary battle: rather a three-day set piece shaped by apocalyptic imagery and resonant with the themes of salvation and damnation. How has the poem prepared us for this moment, and what in the end does it all mean? We will see how this climactic episode not only updates an old saint’s legend to align it with the poem’s vision of Christianity, but achieves a certain ‘archetypal’ clarity in its own right. And yet… even after this seemingly conclusive fight, there still remains the book’s final canto, to confront readers with a surprising amount of unfinished business. For one thing, there is the love plot to tie up by way of the betrothal of the hero and heroine – and this will prompt us to think about the distinctive role of love and marriage in Spenser’s poem. But beyond this, a whole new set of last-minute obstacles are thrown in the way of the anticipated marriage, as though the poet is determined to postpone indefinitely a ‘happily ever after’ ending. Is this just a narrative device to keep us reading the poem beyond Book One? Perhaps in part; but then, why does the poem keep going beyond Book One in the first place? What can be left to do or say? We will read on with curiosity, glancing ahead at the opening and closing cantos of Book Two, to get an inkling of how many more surprises are still to come from this fascinating poem.

Learning objectives:

to look closely at how Spenser handles the first book’s climactic episode and its aftermath
to give consideration to the important Spenserian theme of love and marriage
to think about the unfinished nature of the story in Book One, and explored the role of this opening book within the wider poem