Placeholder text

Go to cart

Edmund Spenser

By Andrew Hadfield

Edmund Spenser

By Andrew Hadfield

0 - Default Title
Description
Edmund Spenser's innovative poetic works have a central place in the canon of English literature. Yet he is remembered as a morally flawed, self-interested sycophant; complicit in England's ruthless colonisation of Ireland; in Karl Marx's words, 'Elizabeth's arse-kissing poet'-- a man on themake who aspired to be at court and who was prepared to exploit the Irish to get what he wanted. In his vibrant and vivid book, the first biography of the poet for 60 years, Andrew Hadfield finds a more complex and subtle Spenser. How did a man who seemed destined to become a priest or a don become embroiled in politics? If he was intent on social climbing, why was he so astonishingly rude tothe good and the great Lord Burghley, the earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Ralegh, Elizabeth I and James VI? Why was he more at home with 'the middling sort' -- writers, publishers and printers, bureaucrats, soldiers, academics, secretaries, and clergymen -- than with the mighty and the powerful? Howdid the appalling slaughter he witnessed in Ireland impact on his imaginative powers? How did his marriage and family life shape his work? Spenser's brilliant writing has always challenged our preconceptions. So too, Hadfield shows, does the contradictory relationship between his between life and his art.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
illustrated
Number of Pages:
672
Release Date:
2014-12-10
Publication Date:
2014-12-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press(UK)
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0198703007
ISBN13:
9780198703006
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
1004 g
Height:
156 cm
Width:
234 cm
Thickness:
36 cm
Buy on Amazon
Currently sold out