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

Author: Edmund Spenser

Editor: Toby Sumpter

ISBN: 9781591280521

Binding: paperback

Section: Poetry

Keyword: fairy, queen, spencer

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." Toby Sumpter's modernization follows Roy Maynard's Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves, and includes similar notes that explain obscure vocabulary and references.