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The first prominent literary landmark since Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was the epic poem “Faerie Queene” written by Edmund Spenser. The “poet’s poet” as Spenser had been called, was the morning star of the Renaissance Period. The “Faerie Queene” embodied most of the ideas of the Renaissance Period and it was a treasure-house of echoes and reminiscences from the classics and from the poets of the Renaissance of France and Italy. However, it did not copy lavishly from Italy, for while Spenser also responded ” to the pagan worship of sensuous beauty,” still in the Faerie Queene, according to Gilbert Phelps (A Survey of English Literature), there was more of that gay unquestioning surrender to it of which the Italians were capable… at one and at the same time for the heights of beauty and the depths of depravity.
Edmund Spenser explained in his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh (prefixed to the 1590 edition of the Faerie Queene) that his purpose in writing that poem was to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline. The story itself involved a feast which Gloriana, Queene of Fairyland, holds for twelve days. In each of those days, a distressed person appears seeking help against a tyrant, a giant, or some other monster. A knight is then assigned to ride forth and avenge the injustice committed or wrong done.