Spenserian Moments
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Gordon Teskey
About this book
From the distinguished literary scholar Gordon Teskey comes an essay collection that restores Spenser to his rightful prominence in Renaissance studies, opening up the epic of The Faerie Queene as a grand, improvisatory project on human nature, and arguing—controversially—that it is Spenser, not Milton, who is the more important and relevant poet for the modern world.
There is more adventure in The Faerie Queene than in any other major English poem. But the epic of Arthurian knights, ladies, and dragons in Faerie Land, beloved by C. S. Lewis, is often regarded as quaint and obscure, and few critics have analyzed the poem as an experiment in open thinking. In this remarkable collection, the renowned literary scholar Gordon Teskey examines the masterwork with care and imagination, explaining the theory of allegory—now and in Edmund Spenser’s Elizabethan age—and illuminating the poem’s improvisatory moments as it embarks upon fairy tale, myth, and enchantment.
Milton, often considered the greatest English poet after Shakespeare, called Spenser his “original.” But Teskey argues that while Milton’s rigid ideology in Paradise Lost has failed the test of time, Spenser’s allegory invites engagement on contemporary terms ranging from power, gender, violence, and virtue ethics, to mobility, the posthuman, and the future of the planet. The Faerie Queene was unfinished when Spenser died in his forties. It is the brilliant work of a poet of youthful energy and philosophical vision who opens up new questions instead of answering old ones. The epic’s grand finale, “The Mutabilitie Cantos,” delivers a vision of human life as dizzyingly turbulent and constantly changing, leaving a future open to everything.
Reviews
-- Andrew Hadfield Times Literary Supplement
-- Catherine Nicholson New York Review of Books
-- Mark Heberle Claremont Review of Books
-- Jonathan Locke Hart Renaissance and Reformation
-- Joseph Lowenstein Studies in English Literature
-- Melissa E. Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania
-- Jeff Dolven, Princeton University
-- Joe Moshenska Milton Quarterly
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Note on References, Texts, and Quotations
ix -
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Introduction
1 - PART ONE: ON SPENSER
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1. Other Poets
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2. Toward Fairy Land
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3. In Ireland
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4. A Survey of The Faerie Queene
129 - PART TWO: ON ALLEGORY
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5. Allegory in The Faerie Queene
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6. For a General Theory of Allegory
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7. Death in an Allegory
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8. Positioning Spenser’s Letter to Raleigh
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9. Allegory and Renaissance Critical Theory
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10. A Field Theory of Allegory
241 - PART THREE: ON THINKING
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11. From Moment to Moment
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12. Thinking Moments in The Faerie Queene
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13. Courtesy and Thinking
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14. The Thinking of History in Spenserian Romance
327 - PART FOUR: ON CHANGE
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15. Colonial Allegories in Paris
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16. Courtesy and the Graces
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17. Night Thoughts on Mutability
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18. Mutability Ascendant
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Afterword: The Colossi of Memnon
435 -
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Notes
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Acknowledgments
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Credits
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Index
517
