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Written by a team of international experts, the forty-two essays in The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser examine the entire canon of Spenser's work and the social and intellectual environments in which it was produced, providing new readings of the texts, extensive analysis of former criticism, and up-to-date bibliographies. Section I, 'Contexts', elucidates the circumstances in which the poetry and prose were written, and suggests some of the major
political, social, and professional issues with which the work engages. Section 2, 'Works', presents a series of new readings of the canon informed by the most recent scholarship. Section 3, 'Poetic Craft', provides a detailed analysis of what Spenser termed the poet's 'cunning', the linguistic, rhetorical, and
stylistic skills that distinguish his writing. Section 4, 'Sources and Influences', examines a wide range of subtexts, intertexts ,and analogues that contextualise the works within the literary conventions, traditions and genres upon which Spenser draws and not infrequently subverts. Section 5, 'Reception', grapples with the issue of Spenser's effect on succeeding generations of editors, writers, painters, and book-illustrators, while also attempting to identify the most salient and influential
strands in the critical tradition. The volume serves as both companion and herald to the Oxford University Press edition of Spenser's Complete Works. No 'agreed' view of Spenser emerges from this work or is intended to. The contributors approach the texts from a variety of viewpoints and employ
diverse methods of critical interpretation with a view to stimulating informed discussion and future scholarship.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Abbreviations
- Illustrations
- List of contributors
- Section 1: Contexts
- 1: Willy Maley: Spenser's Life
- 2: Claire McEachern: Spenser and Religion
- 3: David Baker: Spenser and Politics
- 4: Andrew Zurcher and Chris Burlinson: Spenser's Secretarial Career
- 5: Ciaran Brady: Spenser's Plantation
- 6: Wayne Erickson: Spenser's Patrons and Publishers
- 7: Paul D. Stegner: Spenser's Biographers
- Section 2: Works
- 8: Tom MacFaul: A Theatre for Worldlings (1569)
- 9: Clare Kinney: The Shepheardes Calender (1579)
- 10: Joseph Campana: Letters (1580)
- 11: Linda Gregerson: The Faerie Queene (1590)
- 12: Mark Rasmussen: Complaints, Daphnaïda (1591)
- 13: Patrick Cheney: Colin Clovts, Astrophel (1595)
- 14: Roland Greene: Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595)
- 15: Elizabeth Jane Bellamy: The Faerie Queene (1596)
- 16: David Lee Miller: Fowre Hymnes, Prothalamion (1596)
- 17: Elizabeth Fowler: A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596, 1633)
- 18: Gordon Teskey: Two Cantos of Mutabilitie (1609)
- 19: Lisa Celovsky and Joseph Black: 'Lost Works', Suppositious Pieces, and Continuations
- Section 3: Poetic Craft
- 20: Dorothy Stephens: Spenser's Language(s)
- 21: Jeff Dolven: Spenser's Metrics
- 22: Colin Burrow: Spenser's Genres
- 23: Peter Mack: Spenser and Rhetoric
- 24: Kenneth Borris: Emblem, Allegory and Symbol
- 25: Richard A. McCabe: Authorial Self-presentation
- Section 4: Sources and Influences
- 26: Carol Kaske: Spenser and the Bible
- 27: Syrithe Pugh: Spenser and Classical Literature
- 28: Andrew Escobedo: Spenser and Philosophy
- 29: Bart van Es: Spenser and Historiography
- 30: Andrew King: Spenser, Chaucer and Medieval Romance
- 31: Lee Piepho: Spenser and Neo-Latin Literature
- 32: Elizabeth Heale: Spenser and Sixteenth-Century Poetics
- 33: Jason Lawrence: Spenser and Italian Literature
- 34: Anne Lake Prescott: Spenser and French Literature
- Section 5: Reception
- 35: Joe Loewenstein: Spenser's Textual History
- 36: Michelle O'Callaghan: Spenser's Literary Influence
- 37: Claire Preston: Spenser and the Visual Arts
- 38: David Wilson-Okamura: The Formalist Tradition
- 39: John D. Staines: The Historicist Tradition
- 40: Theresa Krier: Gender Studies
- 41: Elizabeth D. Harvey: Psychoanalytical Criticism
- 42: Andrew Hadfield: Postcolonial Spenser
- Index
About the author
Richard A. McCabe is Fellow of Merton College, and Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. He was elected FBA in 2007. He is author of Joseph Hall: A Study in Satire and Meditation (1982), The Pillars of Eternity: Time and Providence in 'The Faerie Queene' (1989), Incest, Drama, and Nature's Law 1550-1700 (1993), and Spenser's Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (2002). He has edited Edmund Spenser: The Shorter Poems for Penguin (1999). With Howard Erskine-Hill he co-edited Presenting Poetry: Composition, Publication, Reception (1995), and with David Womersley Literary Milieux: Essays in Text and Context presented to Howard Erskine-Hill.
Summary
The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser examines the entire canon of Spenser's work and the social and intellectual environments in which it was produced. It explores technical matters of style, language, and metre, the poet's use of sources and subtexts, and the reception of his work amongst editors, critics, writers, and visual artists.
Additional text
The Handbook's greatest strength is its provocative definition of new lines of inquiry.
Report
Review from previous edition This volume is a huge undertaking and is to be welcomed for its comprehensive coverage and attention to detail Joan Fitzpatrick, Year's Work in English Studies
