Faerie Queene, The

An engraving of the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser, by George Vertue, in the National Portrait Gallery, London. In his famous allegorical poem in six volumes The Faerie Queene, dedicated to Elizabeth I, he created the nine-line ‘Spenserian stanza,’ which consists of eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by an alexandrine (a six-foot iambic line).

Epic poem by Edmund Spenser, published in 1590–96, dedicated to Elizabeth I. Drawing on the traditions of chivalry and courtly love, the poem was planned as an epic in 12 books, following the adventures of 12 knights, each representing a different chivalric virtue, beginning with the Red Cross Knight of holiness. Only six books were completed; part of a seventh (The Mutabilitie Cantos) also survives.