A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies

A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies

Bart Van Es 2006

E-Book: 326 English pages

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

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A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies provides an authoritative guide to debate on Elizabethan England’s poet laureate. The book covers key topics (such as politics and gender) and provides reception histories for all of the primary texts. Across twelve chapters, some of today’s most prominent Spenser scholars offer lively accounts of debates on the poet, from the Renaissance to the present day. The Companion is an essential reference work for scholars but also provides a stimulating introduction for the non-specialist, Plot summaries, generous quotation and a jargon-free style help make this book as accessible as possible. The impact of critical movements such as Formalism, Psychoanalysis and New Historicism are clearly set out. A concluding guide to ‘Texts and Resources’ also assists the reader in the pursuit of further research, including the use of on-line sources. Those looking to develop a fresh, independent perspective on Spenser will find the Companion an invaluable aid.

Review

‘Spenser has become ever more appealing as a prospect for study, with present day students more likely to be familiar with at least some parts of The Faerie Queene than they are with Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, which was arguably more celebrated in its immediate period. This makes Bart van Es’ excellent collection timely and pertinent to a whole range of Spenser students. Designed in part to allow both an authorative overview of Spenser’s critical reception from the sixteenth century until the present and to indicate areas of potential research for those new to the writer, this collection is equally valuable to ‘professional’ Spenserians by reminding us just how contested Spenser studies are.’

— Thomas Healy, The Review of English Studies

About the Author

BART VAN ES is Fellow of St. Catherine’s College and Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Oxford University, UK. He is the author of Spenser’s Forms of History (2002).