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The Faerie Queene, Book I

By Edmund Spenser

Cover of The Faerie Queene, Book I

Cover: The Fight: St George Kills the Dragon VI (1866), oil on canvas by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1898)

The Redcrosse Knight, who stands for Holiness, rides out with the lady Una to kill the dragon that holds her parents captive, and is led astray by the false Duessa and the wiles of Archimago and Despair. Spenser's twelve cantos in the nine-line stanza he invented set the allegory in Faerie Land, and the spelling is the poet's own.

Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.

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Table of contents

  1. 1: Canto I
  2. 2: Canto II
  3. 3: Canto III
  4. 4: Canto IV
  5. 5: Canto V
  6. 6: Canto VI
  7. 7: Canto VII
  8. 8: Canto VIII
  9. 9: Canto IX
  10. 10: Canto X
  11. 11: Canto XI
  12. 12: Canto XII