Edmund Spenser on the Elfin Race: Some Renaissance Sources of Contemporary Fantasy

Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene (1590/1596) is generally mentioned among the sources of contemporary fantasy fiction. However, scholarly publications, including works in Russian, rarely spell out the particularities of that connection. This article seeks to demonstrate the thoroughness, with which Spenser, in The Faerie Queene, worked out some patterns and techniques of description of the Elfin ‘nation’, deliberating on its particular place on the chain of being. The poet delineated various social and cultural groups of fairies by considering their habits, strengths and shortcomings, their natural localities, their love of magic and poetry, and their extreme or muted (compared to humans) susceptibility to certain moral virtues. More than that, Spenser invented a history of Elfinkind and dwelled extensively on two contrasting chronicles – one featuring the great events of human (specifically British) history; the other, of the elfin history. Hence, the Renaissance allegorical poem contains a set of artistic components similar to those (other-than-human ethnography), which today are constituent for fantasy fiction. The article regards some alterations, which J.R.R. Tolkien introduced into elfin ethnography. The work also comments upon mannerist echoes in contemporary fantasy and upon mutual continuities between literary canon and popular fiction.

Keywords

Edmund Spenser, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, elves, fairies, mannerism, high literature, literary canon, popular fiction, fantasy fiction

Received

27.03.2020

Publication date

01.07.2020

Number of characters

37321

Cite

GOST	Haltrin-Khalturina E. Edmund Spenser on the Elfin Race: Some Renaissance Sources of Contemporary Fantasy // Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka – 2020. – V. 79. – Issue 3 C. 87-98 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://izv-oifn.ru/S241377150009972-2-1 (circulation date: 19.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S241377150009972-2
MLA	Haltrin-Khalturina, Elena "Edmund Spenser on the Elfin Race: Some Renaissance Sources of Contemporary Fantasy." Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 79.3 (2020):87-98. DOI: 10.31857/S241377150009972-2
APA	Haltrin-Khalturina E. (2020). Edmund Spenser on the Elfin Race: Some Renaissance Sources of Contemporary Fantasy. Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 79(3), pp.87-98 DOI: 10.31857/S241377150009972-2

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