Edmund Spenser : A Life Hardback
by Andrew (Professor of English, University of Sussex) Hadfield
Hardback
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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 the make 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 to the 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?
How did 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.
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Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:672 pages, 46 black-and-white halftones
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:28/06/2012
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199591022
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:672 pages, 46 black-and-white halftones
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:28/06/2012
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199591022