Blog | Joshua Clarke-Kelsall

Nov 21, 20223 min read

The Faerie Queene, Book VI: Courtesy ¦ Edmund Spenser (1956)

And so we come to the end of what would have been the first half of the Faerie Queene, and it’s strange because, just as book I tells a...

Nov 6, 20225 min read

The Faerie Queene, Book V: Justice ¦ Edmund Spenser (1956)

After (in my view) a lacklustre book IV, Spenser picks things up with possibly one of the best books in the whole epic. Book V, of...

Oct 30, 20224 min read

The Faerie Queene, Book IV: On Friendship (1956)

The Fourth book of the Faerie Queene is an odd one. Firstly, it’s title “The Legende of Cambel and Telemond, or of Friendship” gets the...

Oct 24, 20225 min read

The Faerie Queene, Book III: Of Chastity ¦ Edmund Spenser (1590)

Of all the virtues exhibited in the six books of the Faerie Queen, Chastity, the subject of the third book seems the most outmoded. In...

Oct 16, 20224 min read

The Faerie Queen Book II (Temperance) ¦ Edmund Spenser (1590)

When raging passion with fierce tyrannie Robs reason of her due regalitie And makes it seuant to her basest part: The strong it weakens...

Oct 9, 20225 min read

The Faerie Queen: Book I ¦ Edmund Spenser (1590)

The Faerie Queen is the English equivalent of the Homeric epics, Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy. Each book explores a virtue,...

Oct 3, 20223 min read

Prothalamion: Edmund Spenser (1596)

Reading the news today is a dreary business. The BBC News homepage has a new tab for a new crisis every other week. War in Ukraine....

Sep 25, 20224 min read

Epithalamion: Edmund Spenser (1595)

Spenser’s Epithalamion is the culmination of the collection Amoretti and Epithalamanion. The collection is a sequence of 89 sonnets...

Aug 14, 20223 min read

The Ruines of Time: Edmund Spenser (1951)

The Ruines of time follows Spenser as he has ruminates on a succession of visions of fallen cities, forgotten kings, and all things great...