Spenser in the Moment - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611476844 ISBN 13: 9781611476842

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (UK), 2015

Synopsis

Spenser in the Moment collects specially commissioned essays critical of established readings, each of which in surveying the state of the art attempts radically to unsettle our conception of the poetry of Edmund Spenser (1552–1599).

The editors were drawn together by a shared restlessness with the canonical Spenser, and a sense that attention especially to Spenser’s musical qualities, and the distinctiveness of his poetic style compared with that of his contemporaries, could display exciting new paths forward. Scholars from three continents contribute bracing reviews of Spenser’s relationship with his classical sources, with religious history, and the history of the book. Two essays consider Spenser and music, both music in Spenser’s works, and Spenser’s works in the music of his time. Two working poets inaugurate the final group of essays on Spenser’s poetry, with original, irreverent poetry reflecting and riffing on Spenser. The essays argue for various versions of revolution: one mixing aesthetics and sex, another diagnosing widespread fallacies (“expressivist” and “dramatistic”) made in reading Spenser, and the last arguing for a Spenser not of enormous interlocking networks, but of the moment: that the primary Spenserian structure is that of a moment of stillness-in-motion. With so much change behind us already in this young century, another series of changes emerges from recent work, and a sense of expectation, as of held breath, seems to pervade the discipline—that is the moment that this volume attempts to capture and nourish.

About this title

About the Author

Paul J. Hecht is associate professor of English at Purdue University North Central and the author of several articles on Spenser, Shakespeare, and Wroth.

J. B. Lethbridge lectures at Tübingen University and is general editor of the monograph series The Manchester Spenser.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (UK)
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1611476844
• ISBN 13: 9781611476842
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Paul J. Hecht, J. B. Lethbridge