E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team SPENSER'S THE FAERIE QUEENE BOOK I EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY GEORGE ARMSTRONG WAUCHOPE, M.A., Ph.D. Professor of English in the South Carolina College _Velut inter ignes luna minores_ New York The Macmillan Company London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1921 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1903. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: I. The Age which produced the Faerie Queene II. The Author of the Faerie Queene III. Study of the Faerie Queene: 1. A Romantic Epic 2. Influence of the New Learning 3. Interpretation of the Allegory 4. The Spenserian Stanza 5. Versification 6. Diction and Style IV. Chronological Table of Events THE FAERIE QUEENE. BOOK I: Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh Sonnet to Sir Walter Raleigh Dedication to Queen Elizabeth Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Canto X Canto XI Canto XII NOTES GLOSSARY * * * * * INTRODUCTION I. THE AGE WHICH PRODUCED THE _FAERIE QUEENE_ The study of the _Faerie Queene_ should be preceded by a review of the great age in which it was written. An intimate relation exists between the history of the English nation and the works of English authors. This close connection between purely external events and literary masterpieces is especially marked in a study of the Elizabethan Age. To understand the marvelous outburst of song, the incomparable drama, and the stately prose of this period, one must enter deeply into the political, social, and religious life of the times. The _Faerie Queene_ was the product of certain definite conditions which existed in England toward the close of the sixteenth century. The first of these national conditions was the movement known as the _revival of chivalry_; the second was the _spirit of nationality_ fostered by the English Reformation; and the third was that phase of the English Renaissance commonly called the _revival of learning_.