In text citation of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene

Underdog

Ok so I screwed up and forgot to ask the prof or ta how exactly I'm supposed to cite quotes from the Faerie Queene. I tried some googling but I just kept getting Faerie Queene guides so hopefully some of you will be able to help.

While I normally would turn to my MLA handbook for these problems, this particular text is different and difficult and hence not covered. It's poetry but there are no line numbers. Instead the whole thing split up into several different books. Then each book is split up into about 10 cantos which are in turn made of 40-50 stanzas. Each stanza then made up of 9 lines.

I'm thinking the most logical way to do it is to treat it like a play. So if the quote is from book 1, cantos 1, stanza 3, line 4, I'd go with 1.1.3.4 However, logical is not always how things are treated plus it looks kinda weird. So does anyone know for sure?

Edit: I changed the wording around since I left out the cantos.

Toldo

Are you citing an anthology (like Norton) or just the poem itself? If it were an anthology, it would make your life a lot easier.

Underdog

It's published by Norton but not an anthology per se. It's more a collected works of Edmund Spenser. Why would an anthology make it easier?

kaliyama

I think he was suggesting that you cite the page number, rather than the poem's internal structure; I might do both, but I would definitely cite the line, stanza, etc. for FQ. That said, I have no idea what the right format is. :P

Grislo

Yeah, don't just cite the page number of any given anthology, that's not a good idea. In addition to something else, perhaps, sure.

I'd go with your idea of 'treating it as a play', basically. Couldn't you email your prof and ask him how to do it exactly?

EDIT: I was bored and logged onto Jstor, this is from a paper on FQ:

'In book 2 of Edmund Spenser's.."another booke, / That Hight, Antiquitee of Faery lond," in which "whenas he greedily did looke; / Th'of-spring of Elves and Faryes there he fond, / As it delivered was from hond to hond" ..(2.9.60.1-5).'

She cites 5 lines there, from book 2, and you can see how she does it at the end there. You can find those lines and see if you could do it in a similar way.

Another does it like this:

"And so, I would argue, does Spenser. The first six episodes of Book V, from Sir Sanglier through Terpine, seem clearly to have been selsected and arranged as exempla illustrating Justice Absolute, the execution of the letter of the law in averiety of areas. As is often his practice, Spenser breaks into the narrative to emphasize his point in general terms when he says in the first stanza of Canto iv: *Quote goes here*"

A mix of both ways of doing it would be fine, depending on your style of writing and whatnot.

Underdog

Cool! Thanks a lot. That really eases my mind actually. The citation does match my copy so I figure this will be the way to do it.

And the reason I didn't just email my prof/ta is because they never gave out their email. First class I've taken in 5 years that that's been the case. Very weird and inconvenient.