faerie queene
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Happy New Year!
Happy Medieval New Year, that is, and maybe more specifically, medieval English new year. The sixth century monk Dionysius Exiguus is the one who created our current Anno Domini system of dating, in which the life of Christ is the significant event that all history is dated from. By the late seventh century most of… Continue reading
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Recommended editions of Spenser’s Faerie Queene
This is the third post in a series. Some of the editions I recommend below come with scholarly essays, but the important thing to keep in mind is what C.S. Lewis says about reading it in his chapter on Edmund Spenser in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. He says that while reading commentaries can… Continue reading
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Strategies for reading Spenser’s Faerie Queene
In my last post I described how I prepared to read aloud Spenser’s Faerie Queene to my children. It took some time, but it didn’t cost me any money at all, as the high quality, literary retellings for children that I used were written over a century ago and are available for free on the… Continue reading
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How to read The Faerie Queene; or, You are already qualified to read Spenser’s masterpiece
Many of you know that last school year I taught a year-long class on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. To help prepare myself for the classes, I spent hours and hours reading commentaries and scholarly essays on the poem, because I wanted to give my students (mostly adults, but a few high schoolers as well) value… Continue reading