Giles
Fletcher the Younger
born c. 1585, London
died 1623, Alderton, Suffolk, Eng.
English poet principally known for his great
Baroque devotional poem Christs Victorie.
He was the younger son of Giles Fletcher the
Elder. He was educated at Westminster School and
at Trinity College, Cambridge. After his
ordination, he held a college position, and
became known for his sermons at the Church of
St. Mary the Great. He left Cambridge about 1618
and soon after received the rectory of Alderton,
Suffolk.
The theme of Fletcher’s masterpiece, Christs
Victorie, and Triumph in Heaven, and Earth,
over, and after death (1610), bears some
resemblance to that of the religious epic
Semaine (1578; Eng. trans., Devine Weekes and
Workes, 1605) of the French Protestant poet Du
Bartas; but the devotion, the passionate
lyricism, and the exquisite vision of paradise
that critics have praised are Fletcher’s own.
The poem is written in eight-line stanzas
somewhat derivative of Edmund Spenser, of whom,
like his brother Phineas, Giles was a disciple.
