Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Chronology; Introduction: The relevance of Edmund Spenser A. Hadfield; 1. Spenser's life and career R. Rambuss; 2. Historical contexts: Britain and Europe D. J. Baker; 3. Ireland: policy, poetics and parody R. McCabe; 4. Spenser's pastorals: The Shepardes Calender and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe P. Cheney; 5. The Faerie Queene, I-III S. L. Wofford; 6. The Faerie Queene, IV-VII A. Hadfield; 7. Spenser's shorter poems A. L. Prescott; 8. Spenser's languages: writing in the ruins of English W. Maley; 9. Sexual politics L. Gregerson; 10. Spenser's religion J. King; 11. Spenser and classical traditions C. Borrow; 12. Spenser and contemporary vernacular poetry R. Greene; 13. Spenser's influence P. Alpers; Index.

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An accessible and rigorous introduction to Spenser's work, in fourteen specially commissioned essays.

Reviews

'This valuable compendium of synoptic essays includes well-measured contributions from leading figures in the field: Richard Rambuss, Richard McCabe, Willy Maley and Hadfield himself ... they offer carefully calibrated accounts of the complexity of late Elizabethan Anglo-irish affairs and timely reminders of the need to read literary texts in their own terms. The Companion as a whole gives an excellent sense of Spenser's strange position simultaneously at the very centre and the extreme margin of his culture, with one foot in the court and the other on distant Irish soil.' Times Literary Supplement