biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1554–86)
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| biography:
| Poet, statesman, soldier, and courtier, born in Penshurst, Kent, SE England, UK. He studied at Oxford, and perhaps also at Cambridge, then travelled in Europe (1572–5). He gained Elizabeth I's displeasure when he advised her against a projected marriage plan, and in 1580 left the court. Knighted in 1583, he was sent to Holland to assist in the struggle against Spain, and was fatally wounded at Zutphen. His literary work, written in 1578–82, was not published until after his death. It includes the unfinished pastoral romance, Arcadia, the Defence of Poesie, and a sonnet cycle, Astrophel and Stella, considered one of the finest Elizabethan examples of this genre. In his Defence of Poesie (1595), he wrote the most notable work of Elizabethan literary criticism, upholding the superiority of poetry as a means of teaching virtue. He is also known for the patronage he bestowed on poets, as shown by the dedications in Spenser's The Shepheardes Calendar (1579) and in over 40 works by English and European authors. |
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