Which poet is described as the Great Elizabethan poet known for The Faerie Queen, The Shepherdess Calendar, and Astrophel?

Which poet is described as the Great Elizabethan poet known for The Faerie Queen, The Shepherdess Calendar, and Astrophel?

• A. Miguel de Cervantes
• B. Edmund Spenser
• C. Ben Johnson
• D. Francis Bacon

Answer: (B)

This question is testing your knowledge of authors who shaped Elizabethan poetry. Edmund Spenser is the poet who wrote The Faerie Queene and The Shepheardes Calender, placing him among the era’s great English poets. The Faerie Queene is Spenser’s ambitious allegorical epic that explores virtue through a knightly quest, and The Shepheardes Calender is his early collection of pastoral sonnets and odes organized around the months. The name Astrophel is associated with Philip Sidney’s famous sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, not with Spenser, so the pairing of those titles points to Spenser. The other writers listed—Miguel de Cervantes, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon—are known for different works and contexts: Cervantes for Don Quixote, Jonson for plays and poetry, and Bacon for philosophy and essays.

This question is testing your knowledge of authors who shaped Elizabethan poetry. Edmund Spenser is the poet who wrote The Faerie Queene and The Shepheardes Calender, placing him among the era’s great English poets. The Faerie Queene is Spenser’s ambitious allegorical epic that explores virtue through a knightly quest, and The Shepheardes Calender is his early collection of pastoral sonnets and odes organized around the months. The name Astrophel is associated with Philip Sidney’s famous sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella, not with Spenser, so the pairing of those titles points to Spenser. The other writers listed—Miguel de Cervantes, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon—are known for different works and contexts: Cervantes for Don Quixote, Jonson for plays and poetry, and Bacon for philosophy and essays.