What Immortal Hand Or Eye?

Heroes make great contribution to the development of the world and play crucial roles in society. Heroes are so indispensable and important that poets have the inclination to extol their heroic behaviors in their poems. Poets have the power to immortalize heroic stories. By depicting heroes and heroic behaviors, poets are capable of making heroes remembered forever by ordinary people. In The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer extols the bravery and fearlessness of heroes. So does Virgil in The Aeneid. The hero tradition is a foremost motif in western poetry and one essential element in the composition of an epic as well. If anybody who wants to pass his name or even fame down into history, he has to approach through the writing of an epic by way of this heroic tradition. Edmund Spenser is such a conscious poet. His monumental work, The Faerie Queene, though unfinished, is without doubt an outstanding masterpiece. The present thesis purports to explore the heroic roles in this masterpiece, with a special consideration of the personalities of his heroes, which consequently offers a new viewpoint at the correct understanding of this very everlasting masterpiece epic.Introduction looks back upon some important critical achievements on The Faerie Queene. especially emphasizing the critical attainments concerning heroes and the hero tradition in The Faerie Queene.The first chapter proposes that education plays an important role in the growth process of Spenser’s heroes. Heroes depicted by Homer and Virgil are distinguished from commoners by patronymics indicative of noble birth while not all Spenser’s heroes have noble ancestry. Spenser admits the importance of noble ancestry but at the same time he thinks that ordinary people are able to become heroes by education. This chapter uses Redcrosse Knight from Book One of The Faerie Queene as an example to illustrate the growth of a real knight from a clownish young man through education.The second chapter aims to analyze humanistic characters of Spenser’s heroes in The Faerie Queene. The majority of heroes in Homer’s The Iliad, The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid are perfect and godlike. They are static under most circumstances. Under the influence of Renaissance, heroes in The Faerie Queene are more like human beings, who grow up and develop along with time. Greatly influenced by Spenser, Milton depicts heroes who share more common with human beings in Paradise Lost and adopts the structural pattern of dual heroes.The third chapter will discuss heroes’concept of peace. War is one of the most popular motifs for epics and the scene of brutal wars is everywhere in Homer’s epics and Virgil’s The Aeneid. However. Spenser’s heroes extol the value of peace in The Faerie Queene and usually serve as peacemakers. Besides, heroes in traditional epics start a war in order to pursue earthly fortune. Unlike them, Spenser’s heroes pursue the spiritualized glory.Conclusion pays attention to Spenser’s influence upon the hero tradition and later poets. This chapter provides a summary of the present paper and discusses shortcomings and implications.To sum up, by analyzing hero’s personalities in Spenser’s Faerie Queene. the present paper wishes to offer a new perspective to the study of The Faerie Queene.