The Elfin Knight: Book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene

Eat this book. Devour it. Read it and then reread it. Make its characters and adventures and lessons and images a part of your mental furniture. Be enchanted. Feed your hunger for fantasy. Exercise your faith. Test your judgment. Form your imagination. Enter Faerie Land. Edmund Spenser (1559-99) has earned the title the poet’s poet because of the high poetry of his epic and because so many great poets, including Milton, Dryden, Tennyson, and Keats, cut their poetic teeth on The Faerie Queene. The hero of Book II is Sir Guyon, the knight of Temperance. But do not let that throw you. This is not a poem about teetotalism. As C.S. Lewis puts it, The Faerie Queene demands of us a child’s love of marvels and dread of bogies, a boy’s thirst for adventures, a young man’s passions for physical beauty. Following in the wake of Roy Maynard’s Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves, Toby J. Sumpter’s notes are insightful and humorous-making this great Christian epic poem accessible for modern readers. The Elfin Knight makes an excellent choice as a homeschool or classroom text. -Jayson Grieser, PhD, Fellow of Humanities, New Saint Andrews College Toby J. Sumpter (MA, Erskine Theological Seminary) is co-pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho. Sumpter also writes for the online journal, Credenda/Agenda and can be found regularly at havingtwolegs.blogspot.com. He and his wife Jenny and their three children live in Moscow.