The Faerie Queene

Text:

Book I, Canto I from the RPO

Contexts:

• Spenser's biography @ the University of Cambridge

• Explanation of various literary terms and some useful notes on the Faerie Queene

• SparkNotes on the FQ

• Bartleby on the FQ

• An essay on Spenser's didacticism in the FQ

• An essay about the spiritual warfare in the FQ

• VoS links to Spenser resources

• Fun stuff: English Handwriting 1500-1700 course

• An intertextual connection – compare the first book of FQ with the 17^th century allegorical novel Pilgrim's Progress

Terms:

romance, knight errant, quest, allegorical epic, in medias res, epic similes, emblem books , Spenserian stanza, patronage, propaganda.

The English Sonnet

Texts:

Sir Thomas Wyatt

• “The Long Love That In My Thought Doth Harbour”
• “My Galley Charged With Forgetfulness”
• “I Find No Peace”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

• “Love That Liveth and Reigneth In My Thought”

Sir Philip Sidney

• fragments from The Defence of Poesie (An Apology for Poetry)

from Astrophel and Stella

• sonnet I
• sonnet II
• sonnet XXXI

William Shakespeare

• Sonnet XVIII
• Sonnet CVI
• Sonnet CXVI
• Sonnet CXXX

listen to some Shakespeare's sonnets

Edmund Spenser

• from Amoretti (Sonnet I, XXXIIII, LXXV)

Contexts:

• Renaissance @ Luminarium

• Renascence and Reformation @ bartleby

• Fifteenth century changes in vocabulary @ bartleby

• Read about Sidney's Defense of Poesie
  

• Prosody from Chaucer to Spenser @ bartleby

• The Elizabethan sonnet @ bartleby

• The sonnet in England (by Noble)

• Wikipedia about the sonnet form

• Wyatt and Surrey prosody @ bartleby

• Wyatt's treatment of love @ bartleby

• Wyatt and Surrey comparison

• About Spenser @ bartleby

• Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" study guide by Cummings
  

• Internet Shakespeare Editions

• Shakespeare resources

• Listen to some Shakespeare sonnets @ loudlit

• Shake-Speare Sonnets @ Wikipedia
  

• Shakespeare study guides @ SparkNotes

• Shakespeare's sonnets @ SparkNotes
• Historical background: Elizabethan England @ Bibliomania
  

Terms:

Petrarchan sonnet, Shakespearean sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, terza rima, ottava rima, octave, sestet, quatrain, tercet, couplet, volta, heroic verse, blank verse, iambic pentameter, decasyllabic line, scansion, meter, stanza, Neoplatonism.