Of all the chivalric works of medieval fiction I have read, The Faerie Queene is probably the most fleshed out precursor to what has become modern fantasy fiction today. Dante and Milton have spiritual and political allegory. Cervantes and Mallory have knights errant pricking across the plains. Boccaccio and Chaucer have elicit lovers and tales of romantic betrayal. But Spenser alone brings all of these things together in a chivalric work peopled by princes and faerie knights and damsels and nyads and monsters and giants and witches. Originally planned to be 12 books of twelve cantos each, Spenser only completed the first 6. It’s hard to imagine what might have been if the full cycle had been completed before his death.

The entire time I was reading this, I was constantly reflecting on the ways in which it feels like a precursor to the works of Lewis and Tolkien more than any other work I have read. Tolkien’s ideas of faerie, both in Middle Earth and elsewhere, are laid out as a clear precursor here. Lewis ideas of a Christian world full of pagan gods and spirits is completely aligned with this world. Here, Spenser has a world of Christian faerie knights devoted to a queen who each embody a virtue in a world ruled by the Greco-Roman gods. He blends all the traditions he has received, creating a universe that feels like it could be as expansive as Middle Earth if he only took the time to tell more diverse stories.

Spenser was obviously trying to curry favor with Queen Elizabeth and, though there is no evidence that she ever read his work, she did give him a royal stipend for his efforts. While the typical male-female roles of violent knights and damsels in distress are on display everywhere here, he does go to great lengths to include strong female knights and villains who break the stereotype. In an attempt like Virgil’s Aeneid to create a mythology for England that tells the birth of the people and also ties them to the current monarchs, he creates the mother knight character of Britomart, the lady who quests across the countryside in search of the knight she is fated to wed. Apart from being a badass, Britomart is a coolheaded strong leader who always drops in at the right moment to save men and women alike, as strong as a man but impervious to most of their testosterone driven faults. She is a the great great great etc grandmother of Queen Elizabeth, or so we are told, and has bequeathed to her many of the traits the Queen herself exhibits as a powerful and just ruler of her lands.

Faerie knights with enchanted armor, magic weapons that guarantee a win, foul beasts, sea goddesses, river spirits, false ladies made of snow, squires made of metal who can clear whole battlefields, lady knight who every man is jealous of and every woman smitten by until she lifts her helm. It’s all here folks and the old English language just adds to the appeal in my opinion.

My only qualm with Spenser is the breakneck speed at which he switches storylines. He is often juggling three strands at once and just when a plot gets interesting he switches back to someone else. Often the episodes of random encounters happen at such quick intervals that knights and ladies fly on and off the stage being attacked or enchanted or unseated so fast that it’s hard to know who they were or where they came from. Some characters begin to reoccur throughout and the building there is welcome, but often the characters are just random people that knights try to help for a scene or two without any clear story development. He frames the work as an allegory split up by books focusing on knights that each embody a different virtue, but a single story arc with each of them coming and going would probably be more effective.

So confusing had to read for AP English

Only read Book 1 (Cantos 1-12) for school.