Dec 27, 2009
In a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Spenser stated that his purpose in this epic poem was to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” Although Spenser may have intended to write twenty-four books, twelve concerned with private and twelve with public or political virtues, he completed only six books and The Mutabilitie Cantos, a fragment of a possible seventh book.
Spenser’s first book focuses on the virtue of holiness and relates the story of Redcross Knight, also St. George of England, who hopes to liberate the parents of Una...
[The entire page is 563 words long]
©2000-2009
Enotes.com Inc.
All Rights Reserved