Edmund Spenser's Irish Experience by Andrew Hadfield
Spenser's Irish Experience is the first sustained critical work to argue that Edmund Spenser's perception and fragmented representation of Ireland shadows the whole narrative of his major work, The Faerie Queene, traditionally regarded as one of the finest achievements of the English Renaissance. The poem has often been read in specifically English contexts but, as Hadfield argues, demands to be read in terms of England's expanding colonial hegemony within the British Isles and the ensuing fear that such national ambition would actually lead to the destruction of England's post-Reformation legacy. Spenser should be seen less as an English writer and more as a new English writer in Ireland, his prose and poetry expressing the hopes and fears of his class. Where A View of the Present State of Ireland attempts to provide a violent political solution to England's Irish problem, The Faerie Queene exposes the apocalyptic fear that there may be no solution at all. The book contains an analysis of Spenser's life on the Munster plantation, readings of the political rhetoric and antiquarian discourse of A View of the Present State of Ireland, and three chapters which argue the case that the apparently Anglocentric allegory of The Faerie Queene reveals a land gradually--but clearly--transformed into its Irish other. Spenser emerges from this study as a writer whose experience in Ireland rendered him implacably opposed to the vacillations of his English monarch.
successful contributions to a re-positioning of Spenser's writing... What is most compelling here is the way the debate between Irenius and Eudoxus is so clearly shown to be constructed from a range of material which Spenser had to hand ... contribute enormously to current debats about national identity in the early-modern period, establish new lines of enquiry, and enrich existing ones./Simon Barker/Irish Studies Review 6/3
Hadfield's book, both in its content and methodology, is best regarded as a very clever and useful synthesis * Paul Stevens, Queen's University, Jrnl of English and Germanic Philology, July 99 *
Hadfield's book, both in its content and methodology, is best regarded as a very clever and useful synthesis * Paul Stevens, Queen's University, Jrnl of English and Germanic Philology, July 99 *
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780198183457 |
| ISBN 10 | 0198183453 |
| Title | Edmund Spenser's Irish Experience |
| Author | Andrew Hadfield |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1997-05-29 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |