Talk:Edmund Spenser

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on January 13, 2018 and January 13, 2024.

2006

Could the discussion of Brady and Canny's readings of the "View of the Present State of Ireland" be relegated to a subheading? It severely impairs the flow of Spenser's biography. I propose a "Controversy" subsection.

While funny, I thought this quite biased:

One poet enormously influenced by Edmund Spenser is John Milton, famous author of Paradise Lost, which critics many consider the greatest poem of all time. They are clearly wrong however .

Bold text removed. MarkReid

Can we justify the boldface in the quote from "The Faerie Queen"? (The link is amusing.) Vicki Rosenzweig

What's the source for the Karl Marx quotation? It seems very suspect. I can't find it elsewhere on the Web and AFAIK it's not even good German (the usual word for "poet" in German is "Dichter"). I'm deleting it as a bit of trollery (unless anyone can come up with a valid reference...).--Folantin 12:06, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the comment "Spenser is often overshadowed by his contemporary Shakespeare", because:

1. They weren't quite contemporaries

2. Spenser wrote no plays

3. You could say that about any Elizabethan writer, really - not illuminating.

4. It was in the same paragraph as a comment about Spenser's Epithalamion.

I think it would be great if someone wanted to compare them off the back of knowledge though.

It's frankly bizarre that Samuel Daniel's entry is considerably longer (and more interesting) than Spenser's. This article could do with serious expansion. --rmcubed 00:48 20 November 2006 (GMT)

Expansion

The comment that this article needs serious expansion, made in 2006, is still true. I have added in the obvious reference to Gabriel Harvey, and amended the statement about his death, as his dying in poverty is contested. But doing anything more is beyond me, as the article is also seriously imbalanced and needs wholesale reconstruction. --MWLittleGuy (talk) 13:53, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

References

This article's references can probably be cleaned up to combine both citation sectionsMrathel (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reputation

I have deleted a sub-clause in the introductory statement. If anyone wishes to replace it, perhaps they would put in something that is (a) grammatical and (b) makes sense. If they wish to put in something as contentious as what has been deleted, perhaps they would reference it. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 22:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

I am a SUNY New Paltz student, and I (and two classmates) will be making substantial changes to the page in the coming weeks, as part of an English Literature class project. Mraewarren (talk) 00:43, 16 October 2012 (UTC)Mraewarren[reply]

"According to legend"

The 'Life' section contains three allusions to "legends". Is this appropriate for a biographical article?Tffff (talk) 21:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Date of birth

The latest biography of Spenser, by Andrew Hadfield, contains a detailed discussion on Spenser's date of birth. He puts it to 1554, but this rather depends on whether one uses the Elizabethan dating convention or the modern one, as his birthday probably occurred in the period 1 January to 24 March which was in one year then and another year now. c.1653 will probably do, and I have altered the text to correspond to what is in the infobox.

That biography, incidentally, explodes one of the "legends" referred to in the previous entry. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:26, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which legend is that? Hohenloh⁺ 15:14, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly named as a legend, now I look at it: "It is said that Spenser is the man to have crafted the phrase "without reason or rhyme." The Queen promised him payment of one hundred pounds for his poetry, a so-called "reason for the rhyme." The Lord High Treasurer William Cecil, however, considered the sum too much. After a long while without receiving his payment, Spenser sent the Queen this quatrain: I was promis'd on a time, To have a reason for my rhyme: But from that time unto this season, I had neither rhyme or reason. She immediately ordered Cecil to send Spenser his due sum." --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:14, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Major alterations

I have made major alterations to the Life section, adding information, removing misleading non-information, reorganising, and, I hope, adding enough references to satisfy anyone. What I have done can doubtless be improved, but simply reinstating previous errors will not help. Some work now needs to be done on the Poetry section, preferably by scrapping most of it and starting again. The first paragraph starts with an unsubstantiated statement. The second starts with an obvious one, but then carries on in a manner which is highly misleading. The bit about rhyme and reason simply shows that in the absence of hard fact a lot of nonsense accrued to Spenser's name after his death.--Martin Wyatt (talk) 15:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What about his death - did he die in poverty or not? Are there any contemporary sources? Thanks, Hohenloh⁺ 19:09, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a long, well-informed and inconclusive discussion on this in the latest biography by Hadfield. The statement that he died in poverty rests largely on Jonson and Camden. Spenser left estates worth litigation over once the English had "pacified" Ireland, but he may have been short of ready money. He had recently received a fee for bringing despatches over from Ireland, though it is possible that he was too ill to pick up the payment. The latest instalment of his pension was collected after his death. As everything is uncertain, I have said nothing. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:56, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have now made further major changes to the article, reorganising it to cut out repetition, removing unsubstantiated statements, and correcting the stuff about rhyme and reason. In view of this I have removed the tag saying that it has multiple issues.--Martin Wyatt (talk) 21:39, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mother Hubberds Tale

This has been altered by the addition of an apostrophe. Mother Hubberds Tale is how the work appears on the title page of the original work. Is anyone going to start correcting Spenser's spelling of Shepherdes Calender?--Martin Wyatt (talk) 13:58, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The WP article is entitled Mother Hubberd's Tale. There are many strong sources that use this formulation. It is more commonly written in texts 'Hubbard' than 'Hubberd', but there you are. Span (talk) 14:12, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Too many editors who don't know what they are doing (I don't mean you, Spanglej)- this is why I have mostly given up on Wikipedia. Incidentally, the link provided does not go anywhere. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:47, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No doubt there is a lot of nonsense around. Which link is broken? There may be a good case for retitling the article. WP:UCN, however suggests the WP "prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources" which would seem to be Mother Hubbard's Tale. But it's certainly worth exploring. Don't give up my friend. We each make the contributions that we can and we learn from each other as we go. Best wishes Span (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Raleigh's commendatory sonnet

I have reinstated the assertion about Raleigh's commendatory sonnet. It appears as one of the commendatory verses attached to the Faerie Queene, is signed W.R. and ends: "Of me no lines are lov'd, nor letters are of price,/Of all which speake our English tongue, but those of thy device." This, being written in Alexandrines, does not conform to our present idea of a sonnet, so if anyone wanted to change sonnet to poem, that would be OK. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 21:37, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have now made the change suggested above. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 15:43, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Present State of Ireland

When I saw the deletion of so much text on Spenser's notorious diatribe on Ireland, I wondered whether to revert it, but decided not to, because (a) the overall article is relatively short, and the part on this failed pamphlet is disproportionately long, unbalancing the whole; and (b) it does not add much to what was written before - I think the reader will already have gathered that Spenser was very prejudiced. I have therefore reverted the text to the shorter version. If what I have reverted is to be reinstated, I think the whole paragraph needs to be edited. I doubt whether the failed pamphlet justifies an article in itself, but that might be an answer. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 18:51, 29 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of publications on The Present State dating from the 1990s, so it is a significant work. The analysis doesn't just relate to prejudice but to political economy too, so I'd say no delete - at least without prior discussion - with "a view" maybe to just cutting it down to essentials. I suppose the material is more appropriate to the intellectual history of early English colonialism, but I'm not aware of a corresponding article.--Shtove (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That seems reasonable enough. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 21:25, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not Cited

Hi, I am doing a research project on Edmund Spenser, and as I was reading this article, I noticed that the first two paragraphs are taken from(or, at least, it is the exact same wording) http://www.poemhunter.com/edmund-spenser/biography/. Now, I may not have seen it, but when I looked at the citations, I didn't se this website down there. The part that I believe to be copied is where, in both articles(this one and the one mentioned previously) it says, "Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English language.

Life

Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London around the year 1552 though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey, and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry.

In July 1580 Spenser went to Ireland, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton." Minecraftwizard (talk) 01:35, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, never mind-on that website it says "based off the Wikipedia "Edmund Spenser"" Minecraftwizard (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 01:40, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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