The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser presents forty-two articles that examine the entire canon of Spenser's work and the social and intellectual environments in which it was produced, providing new readings of the texts, extensive analysis of former criticism, and up-to-date bibliographies. Section 1 elucidates the circumstances in which the poetry and prose were written, and suggests some of the major political, social, and professional issues with which the work engages. Section 2 presents a series of new readings of the canon. Section 3 provides a detailed analysis of what Spenser termed the poet's ‘cunning’, the linguistic, rhetorical, and stylistic skills that distinguish his writing. Section 4 examines a wide range of subtexts, intertexts, and analogues that contextualise the works within the literary conventions, traditions, and genres upon which Spenser draws and not infrequently subverts. Section 5 grapples with the issue of Spenser's effect on succeeding generations of editors, writers, painters, and book-illustrators, while also attempting to identify the most salient and influential strands in the critical tradition. No ‘agreed’ view of Spenser emerges from this work or is intended to. The contributors approach the texts from a variety of viewpoints and employ diverse methods of critical interpretation with a view to stimulating informed discussion and future scholarship.

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