Archimago the wicked magician sends a,spirit to the house of Morpheus, the god of sleep, who lives in the subterranean world. Spenser has introduced supernatural machinery of dream and fancies. Such ugly monstrous shapes elsewhere may no man reed." "As when old father Nilus gins to swell With timely pride above the Aegyptain vale, His fattie waves do fertile slime outwell,And overflow each plaine and lowly dale. In Canto I, stanza 21 of The Faerie Queene, the poet uses an epic simile to describe the evil impact of the Roman catholic priests, symbolised by the monster Error's offsprings, as compared to the ugly creatures who are brought to life by the fertile mud of the Nile after the flood. But Arthur like Achilles in The Iliad has eclipsed all other Knights and has proved himself worthy of Gloriana.Įpic similar is one of the important technical devices of epic and Spenser has introduced epic similes which are broad in their comparisons and bring the pictures clearly before our eyes. Similarly, we have in The Faerie Queene separate books, each with its separate hero. In The Iliad although Achilles is its chief hero, there are several other heroes like Diomedes, Agamemnon and Hector. But we have seen in the classical epic, e.g. Warton, a critic, says that not the Red Cross Knight but Arthur should have slain the Dragon, as we find in Book-I. Some critics have raised questions regarding the central figure of Arthur, the hero of the epic. Since King Arthur, unlike the hero of a romance, is a historical figure, Spenser, by presenting his activities makes The Faerie Queene an epic. But Spenser has given it the air of an epic by interweaving the various actions of various characters round the figure of Prince Arthur, the single hero. In depicting the actions of many men, The Faerie Queene becomes a romance rather than an epic. The attention of the readers of The Faerie Queene is focussed not on the activities of one man, but on the achievement of many persons. The Faerie Queene is neither an epic nor a perfect romance but, in fact, it combines the qualities of both romance and epic. An epic generally maintains the unity of structure, while in a romance the structure is often loose. The hero of an epic is a person of historical and national importance, while the characters of the romance are fictitious persons, created by the fertile imagination of the writer. An epic centres round the activities of a single hero of national importance the romance, on the other hand, records the activities of several characters.
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