Hymnic Epic and The Faerie Queene ’s Original Printed Format: Canto-Canticles and Psalmic Arguments

When Edmund Spenser (1552?–99) published his Faerie Queene in 1590 and 1596, two pervasive structural features would have seemed surprising: the abbreviation Cant. in sectional and running titles, used instead of Canto; and a four-line stanza of common meter for each section's argument, instead of a more expansive and prestigious stanza. Study of the relevant early modern Italian and English norms of publication indicates that these were complementary and innovative means of merging heroic form with divine poetry and hymnic discourse, and recognized as such. Cant. readily suggested canticle and the Solomonic Canticles, and the poet himself calls one of his so-called cantos a “canticle” (4.5.46). In style and prosodic form, his arguments would have particularly evoked the nationally distinctive Elizabethan Protestant psalmody and hymnody, as well as popular ballads. By incorporating these two metamorphic devices into The Faerie Queene 's framework, Spenser reconfigured the heroic poem to serve his different, English vision.