Spenser and the Historical Revolution: Briton Moniments and the Problem of Roman Britain

Curran argues that, since Roman Britain is a key to understanding the historiographical debates of Edmund Spenser\u27s time, the Roman Britain section of Briton Moniments in The Faerie Queene needs to be examined. It is here that Spenser acknowledged the direction historiography was taking, and saw how this new trend altered the relation between history and glory

The Use of Classical Mythology in Edmund Spenser\u27s Faerie Queene Book I and II

For the proper understanding of this thesis, it is necessary to state explicitly what it does not attempt to do. It is absolutely not an examination into the sources of Spenser\u27s classical mythology. That research work has already been done in two published studies; namely, The Sources of Spenser\u27s Classical Mythology by A. E. Sawtelle and a second work with the same title by A. S. Randall. The connection of Virgil and Spenser has been treated by M. G. Hughes in Virgil and Spenser

Spenser and Europe: Britomart after Brexit

No abstract available

The fortunes of Arthur: Malory to Milton

This chapter follows the fortunes of Arthur as a figure contested and celebrated in equal measure between Malory's Morte Darthur (1485), and Milton's History of Britain (1670). Malory depicted the French wars under the guise of Arthur's sixth-century campaign against Rome, and Arthur was key to medieval and Renaissance representations of sovereignty and resistance. One critical view suggests that by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Arthur became an inconvenient myth, retaining poetic and propagandistic potential but scoffed at by serious scholars. The Reformation and the rise of antiquarianism engendered suspicion of medieval sources, and Arthur and Brutus were undone by the rise of Anglo-Saxon studies. Yet Arthur maintained momentum even as myth morphed from history to poetry, and writers such as Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare still found purchase in the legend. Looked at closely, Milton's disparaging of Arthur appears less absolute, refashioning as it does Malory's Arthurian political allegory

‘Still finest wits are stilling Venus Rose’: Robert Southwell's ‘Optima Deo’, Venus and Adonis, and Tasso's canto della rosa

It has been argued, with reference to Venus and Adonis, that Shakespeare is the poet targeted specifically by Robert Southwell in his mournful stanza on love poetry in ‘The Author to the Reader’; this essay argues instead that Southwell's remark has a wider application to English poets of the early 1590s. The image of ‘Venus Rose’ draws attention to Tasso's celebrated canto della rosa (1581), which survives in a manuscript translation attributed to Southwell, although there is a significant shift, where Tasso's carpe diem conclusion is replaced with an invocation to turn to God. It has been suggested that the translation dates from Southwell's time in Rome in the 1580s; this essay favours a later date of composition, arguing that the poet was aware of both Spenser's adaptation of the song, and Daniel's rendering of it in Delia (1592), and that his translation should be read as further evidence of an engagement with contemporary poetry during the Jesuit mission in England. The essay also considers Shakespeare's treatment of the carpe florem motif in Venus and Adonis, arguing for the poet's direct awareness of Tasso's song and the Armida episode, and highlighting his bold reworking of it at the end of the poem

Book Reviews

Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction (Vincent B. Leitch) (Reviewed by John T. Matthews, Boston University)Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History (John Guillory) (Reviewed by Steven Mullaney, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton and the Literary System (Richard Helgerson) (Reviewed by Steven Mullaney, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The English pastoral, its origin, and development

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Book review: Andrew Zurcher, Spenser's Legal Language: Law and Poetry in Early Modern England

Book review of this monograph

Iacopo Sannazaro and the Creation of a Poetic Canon in Early Modern England

This article investigates the circulation and fame of Sannazaro\u2019s Arcadia in early modern England, focusing first on Philip Sidney\u2019s reception of the poem as part of an ongoing pastoral tradition. Sannazaro\u2019s work thus contributed to create a new poetic context and decisively influenced Sidney\u2019s own Arcadia. Significantly enough, after Sidney\u2019s death the name of Sannazaro seems to suffer a deliberate act of ostracism (he does not appear in the works of Sidneian followers and commentators) as if Sidney\u2019s scribal community preferred to exalt the name of their friend and patron by marginalizing one of Sidney\u2019s sources