| Sumario: | In The Faerie Queene Edmund Spenser establishes the form of the poetic proem for subsequent English literature. Taking models from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and the lyric addresses to muses and patrons in European epic, he transforms these prefatory lyrics in a constantly changing evolution. As he reconceives it, the form centers on an address in which the poet appeals to a figure of authority, normally Elizabeth I. The proem to book 1 is simply an invocation overgoing earlier invocations, but in the proems to books 2 and 3 he assumes the role of poet-as-courtier. Spenser's shift toward lyric in the 1590s provides the context for his experiments with the proem in the second installment of The Faerie Queene. There he stages himself as an isolated figure, rejecting the court for an idealized past or for the pleasures of an imagined world. He reduces the importance of the appeal to the queen and, in the proem to book 4, does not address her at all. Book 6 begins with his delight in the act of creation and the delayed address to Elizabeth foregrounds his agency in making her a symbol of divine beneficence. In Paradise Lost, John Milton's proems develop out of Spenser's, but his substitution of God for the queen creates a characteristically public inwardness.
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