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Seminar: Spenser

Edmund Spenser is one of the most engaging and most versatile writers of the English Renaissance.  His works have elicited widely different responses: Milton called him "our sage and serious poet"; Yeats referred to him as "a poet of the delighted senses"; Virginia Woolf advised readers to "make a dash for The Faerie Queene and give yourself up to it."  We will explore the imaginative world of Faeryland Spenser creates (populated by dragons, monsters and egalitarian giants; virginal damsels in distress, heroic cross-dressed female warriors, and dangerously seductive women; fearless knights and noble savages) in relation to the world he inhabits; we will consider his complex representations of power and gender in their literary and cultural contexts; throughout we will attend closely to the texture of his verse and the shape of his career.  Early in his career, Spenser introduced himself as England’s “new poet” who would eventually write for England a national epic; that epic would, he later explained, through a “delightful” fiction, fashion his readers in virtue.  Throughout his career, however, Spenser simultaneously subjects virtue, his readers, and his own intentions to intense scrutiny, probing the both the motives for fiction and the possibilities of moral action in a complex, fallen world.  Readings will include The Faerie Queene, The Shepherds Calendar, and others. 

NOTE:  Prior familiarity with Spenser is NOT a requirement for this course.

Attendance:  Regular attendance required

Means of evaluation:  papers; no exams