The Faerie Queen

Considered to be one of the most difficult poems in the history of the English language, “The Faerie Queen” by Edmund Spenser is a marvelous epic poem depicting the virtues of the legendary King Arthur and his knights in a mythical place called Faerieland. Spenser based his interpretation of the virtues on those named by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Each one of the books discusses a different hero who displays one of these virtues; however, this entire collection was meant to be a tribute to Queen Elizabeth and the Tudor family. The stories are intricate and sometimes hard to understand. The language follows Spenserian prose and is…