Editing Edmund Spenser (section)

==''The Shepheardes Calender''==
{{main|The Shepheardes Calender}}
[[File:Title Page of a 1617 Edition of The Shepherd's Calendar.jpg|thumb|Title Page of a 1617 Edition of ''[[The Shepheardes Calender]]'' printed by Matthew Lownes, often bound with the complete works printed in 1611 or 1617.]]
''[[The Shepheardes Calender]]'' is Edmund Spenser's first major work, which appeared in 1579. It emulates [[Virgil]]'s ''[[Eclogues]]'' of the first century BCE and the ''Eclogues'' of Mantuan by [[Baptista Mantuanus]], a late medieval, early renaissance poet.<ref>Merritt Yerkes Hughes, "Virgil and Spenser", in ''University of California Publications in English'', vol. 2, no. 3. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1929).</ref> An eclogue is a short pastoral poem that is in the form of a dialogue or soliloquy. Although all the months together form an entire year, each month stands alone as a separate poem. Editions of the late 16th and early 17th centuries include woodcuts for each month/poem, and thereby have a slight similarity to an emblem book which combines a number of self-contained pictures and texts, usually a short vignette, saying, or allegory with an accompanying illustration.<ref>{{cite web|title=The English Emblem Book Project {{!}} Penn State University Libraries|url=https://libraries.psu.edu/about/collections/english-emblem-book-project|website=libraries.psu.edu|date=8 September 2016|access-date=21 January 2018|language=en}}</ref>