Edmund Spenser's Poetry: Authoritative Texts Criticism

About this book

To facilitate discussion of the place of the body and of pastoral elements in Spensers epic the Third Edition includes more of The Faerie Queene: from Book II canto ix (the House of Alma) and from Book VI the remainder of canto x and all of cantos xi-xii. The Shepheardes Calender is represented by six eclogues including the much-discussed "Februarie." Colin Clouts Come Home Againe increasingly a focus of critical attention is an important addition and Amoretti is offered in its entirety. Seventeen critical essays judiciously chosen from the many published since 1982 have been added to supplement eleven earlier commentaries. New to the Third Edition are the perspectives of Spensers contemporary William Camden Virginia Woolf William Nelson A. Bartlett Giamatti Donald Cheney Judith Anderson Richard Helgerson Louis Adrian Montrose and David Lee Miller. The critical essays on the House of Busyrane Spensers pastoral Muiopotmos and Amoretti are grouped to "speak" to each other in ways sure to stimulate classroom discussion. This class-tested feature is back by popular demand along with essays by D. C. Allen Robert A. Brinkley Ronald P. Bond Anne Lake Prescott Andrew D. Weiner Susanne Lindgren Wofford Harry Berger Jr. and Paul Alpers. A Chronology of Spensers life and an extensive Bibliography are also included.