Edmund Spenser

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Edmund Spenser, born around 1552, in London, was an English poet; one of the pioneers of modern English usage in poetry. Edmund has an extensive list of works, but his most prolific is the ‘The Faerie Queene.’ He attended Merchant Taylors’ School and later Pembroke College in Cambridge. It is while at Cambridge that the poet within him was nurtured (Hales 2). Living during, and serving in the Second Desmond Rebellion, Spencer was a typical colonialist – he took up seized land after the war and worked hard to move up the ranks of the land.
Other than his seminal piece of work, Spenser wrote many other poems, some of which generated a lot of debate, even after his death. One such work is a pamphlet, written in prose, entitled, ‘A View of the Present State of Ireland.’ It was one article, so marred by controversy, that many believe that it was kept as a manuscript until after the writer’s death for this reason. In it, Spenser proclaims that the only way England would fully conquer Ireland was by stifling the entire Irish language and tradition. He even suggested the use of battlefield tactics, such as artificial famines, to suppress the Irish (Hales 5).
Spenser’s style, now referred to as the Spenserian stanza, has an iambic main meter with the rhyme scheme ‘ababbcbcc.’ Petrarch and Shakespeare inspired his style.
While he uses metaphors and metonymy in ‘Amoretti’ to objectify the woman he loves, he employs a counter-blazon in ‘The Faerie Queene’ in his description of Duessa (Hales 3).

He was a diverse poet, exploring the features of the verse world, and creating new elements of his own. His fellow poets deeply revered him; they paid tribute at his funeral by throwing pens and pieces of poetry at his grave.
Works Cited
Hales, John. A Biography of Edmund Spenser. London: IndyPublish, 2006. Print.