o Edmund Spenser dedicated his work The Shepherds’ Calendar
(1579) to Sir Philip Sidney.
o The Arcadia draws on Greek, Italian, Spanish and French romances;
its story is in five prose acts divided by verses.
o In his Defense of Poesy, Sidney commended Spenser’s
Shepherds Calendar but added, ‘The same framing of his style to an old rustic
language I cannot allow.’
o The Defense of Poesy is a first classic of English
Literary Criticism. It defense poetry against Stephen Gosson’s The School of
abuse (1579). The Defense augmented that poetry imitated the golden Idea,
what should be rather than the brazen actuality, what it delights and moves us
to virtue, unlike tedious philosophy and unedifying history.
o Edmund Spenser had translated sonnets by Petrarch and Du
Balley.
o Spenser was a colonist in Ireland ad he wrote Faerie
Queen from 1580. Spenser dedicated his heroic romance to the Queen.
o Sir Walter Raleigh, colonist of Ireland and Virginia
wrote a long poem The Ocean to Cynthia.
o The Faerie Queen and Arcadia both printed in
1590.
o ‘Fairyland’ is a word first found in Spenser.
o He also wrote Prothalamion and Epithalamion, poems
of wonderful musical vigour and the Amoretti (Containing perfect
sonnets, such as once I wrote her name upon the sand)
o Gothic poems which used or adopted Spenser’s stanza were James
Thomson’s Castle of Indolence. William Wordsworth’s Resolution and Independence,
Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and John Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes.
o Walter Raleigh wrote History of the world (1614)
o Anthology of lyrics Tottel’s Miscellany (1557). A paradise
of Dainty devices and A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions to England’s
Helicon (1601).
o Thomas Campion was a inventive composer and masque maker,
wrote best qualities verse.
o Euphues (1578- Well Educated).
o Thomas Nashe’s (1567-01) extravagance is suggested by his
titles Piers Penniless his supplication to the Divell (the complaint of
a poor writer), Christs Teares over Jerusalem (an apocalyptic satire), The
Terrors of the Night (a study of nightmares), The Unfortunate Traveller. Or The
Life of Jacke Wilton (escapades abroad), Have with you to Saffron-Walden, Or
Gabriel Harveys Hunt is up (a pamphlet controversy), The isle of Dogs (a lost
play), Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe (a mock encomium of the red herring, including a
parody of Hero and Leander), and Summers Last Will and Testament (a comedy).
o A better effort at loving his puritan neighbour was made by Richard
Hooker (1553-1600) in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a defence of the
apostolic Episcopal order and doctrine of the Church of England, appealing to
natural law as well as the Bible.
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