It coincided with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and is considered to be the literary height of the English Renaissance. He was also considered to be a part of the Elizabethan era. It saw writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift in Europe. Works in this time period are considered Early Modern literature, which spanned from the Baroque period to the Age of Enlightenment. The ode's content progresses from the enthusiasm of youth to the concerns of middle age by beginning with high hopes for a joyful day and ending with an eye toward the speaker's legacy to future generations. Spenser meticulously records the hours of the day from before dawn to late into the wedding night: its 24 stanzas represent the hours of Midsummer Day. The ode begins with an invocation to the Muses to help the groom, and moves through the couple's wedding day, from Spenser's impatient hours before dawn while waiting for his bride to wake up, to the late hours of night after Spenser and Boyle have consummated their marriage (wherein Spenser's thoughts drift towards the wish for his bride to have a fertile womb so that they may have many children).

Only six complete copies of this first edition remain today, including one at the Folger Shakespeare Library and one at the Bodleian Library. The volume included the sequence of 89 sonnets ( Amoretti), along with a series of short poems called Anacreontics and the Epithalamion, a public poetic celebration of marriage. Written not long since by Edmunde Spenser. It was first published in 1595 in London by William Ponsonby as part of a volume entitled Amoretti and Epithalamion.

The title page from the first edition of Amoretti and Epithalamion, printed by William Ponsonby in 1595.Įdmund Spenser's Epithalamion is an ode written to his bride, Elizabeth Boyle, on their wedding day in 1594.

Prothalamion summary pdf