Fletcher, Giles (1585?-1623), was an English poet. He wrote Christ’s Victorie and Triumph in Heaven, in Earth, over, and After Death (1610), a famous devotional poem. Fletcher composed the poem as an allegory (story with two meanings) in eight-line stanzas that resemble the style of the English poet Edmund Spenser. The poem is Fletcher’s passionate and lyrical vision of heaven. Fletcher’s poetry influenced the English poet John Milton. Fletcher also wrote elegies and the prose work The Reward of the Faithfull (1623).
Fletcher was born in London in 1585 or 1586. He studied and taught at Cambridge University from 1601 to 1615. He is sometimes referred to as Giles Fletcher the Younger to distinguish him from his father, Giles Fletcher the Elder, who was one of Queen Elizabeth I’s ambassadors and a noted poet. Phineas Fletcher, another son, was also an accomplished poet.
