Edmund Spenser: New and Renewed Directions

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J. B. Lethbridge
Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 2006 - 385 pages
This is a collection of wide-ranging papers on Edmund Spenser, including criticism on the Shepheardes Calender, Spenser's rhymes, his impact on Louis MacNeice, the medieval organizations of the Faerie Queene, on the Mutabilite Cantos, Temperance in Book II, and Friendship in Book IV, Written by younger as well as by well-established scholars, the contributors move quietly away from theoretically dominated criticism, and emphasize the importance of historical criticism, both breaking new ground and recuperating neglected insights and approaches. The introduction describes and defends the current trend towards a renewed historical criticism in Spenser criticism. The papers contribute to our knowledge of Spenser's life as well as to our understanding of his poetry. J. B. Lethbridge lectures at the English seminar at Tubingen University.

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Contents

Preface
11
Acknowledgments
12
Recuperating the Return to History
16
Pastoral Motivation in The Shepheardes Calender
59
Muiopotmos and Irish Politics
81
The Medieval Structure of The Faerie Queene
120
Guyons Perversion of the Ovidian Erotic in Book II of The Faerie Queene
154
Acts of Friendship in The Faerie Queene Book IV
196
Exile and the Kingdom in Some of Spensers Fictions for Crossing Over
215
Spensers Ireland and the Frontiers of Faerie
287
Ireland Career Mutability Allegory
303
A New Look at the Spenserian Stanza
338
MacNeice in Fairy Land
353
Index
371
Copyright

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Page 216 - Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us, that are squires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty; let us be — Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon : And let men say, we be men of good government; being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we — steal, P.
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Page 134 - So in the person of Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in particular, which vertue, for that (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and conteineth in it them all...

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