The Faerie Queene as Children’s Literature: Victorian and Edwardian Retellings in Words and Pictures

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Edmund Spenser’s vast epic poem The Faerie Queene is the most challenging masterpiece in early modern literature and is praised as the work most representative of the Elizabethan age. In it he fused traditions of medieval romance and classical epic, his religious and political allegory creating a Protestant alternative to the Catholic romances rejected by humanists and Puritans. The poem was later made over as children’s literature, retold in lavish volumes and schoolbooks and appreciated in pedagogical studies and literary histories.

Spenser’s stories of knights, dragons, giants, magicians, Saracens, castles, quests and tournaments were the stuff of popular medieval romances and chapbooks. One fascinating knight was a woman, Britomart. Distinguished writers for children simplified the stories and noted artists illustrated them. Children were not encouraged to consider the allegory but be inspired to the moral virtues epitomized by the Red Cross Knight (holiness), Sir Guyon (temperance), Britomart (chastity), Triamond and Cambell (friendship), Sir Artegal (justice) and Sir Calidore (courtesy). As adults, they could fully appreciate the achievement of
the poets’ poet.