43.3 (Winter 2014)

On 17 August 2013, the poet and critic John Hollander died. He was at the time of his death Sterling Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Yale University.  Opening remarks from guest editor Kenneth Gross are followed by five memory pieces in honor of John Hollander, by Stephen Orgel, Susanne Wofford, Kenneth Gross,  Jennifer Lewin, and Tom Bishop.

Photo by Thomas McDonald, used by permission of the New York Times. 

John Hollander: In Memoriam

John was the author of more than twenty books of poetry and many works of literary criticism, also the editor of a myriad of brilliant anthologies of poetry and criticism.  His scholarly contributions to our understanding of Renaissance literature, and of poetics more generally, are astonishing in their range and authority, their wild learning and analytic verve, their seriousness and sense of play.  The list of critical works includes his gripping first book, The Untuning of ...

With this issue we add a new feature to The Spenser Review: “Reflections: Editor’s Choice” will offer unconventional pieces of varying length and focus solicited from our Contributing Editors.  We inaugurate this new section with a witty, astute, and at times whimsical essay by Gordon Teskey.  

Richard Danson Brown and Robert L. Reid review an important and, in all likelihood, controversial new study from David Wilson-Okamura.

At the annual ISS Members’ Luncheon in Chicago, Vice-President Graham Hammill presented the Isabel MacCaffrey Prize for 2013 to Andrew Hadfield (in absentia) for Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford, 2012).  The Isabel McCaffrey Award, named after the distinguished author of Spenser’s Allegory: The Anatomy of Imagination (Princeton, 1976), is given in alternating years to the best book or the best article written during the preceding two-year span. Theresa Krier and Ayesha Ramachandran, judges for the competition, announced their decision with the following statement:

The judges for this competition would first like to express their gratitude for the range and quality of books engaged with Spenser’s work in 2011 and 2012. There were so many. They were inventive, curious, passionate, surprising. We wish that there could be more prizes to go around, and we hope this luncheon celebrates the authors.

The International Spenser Society is almost inordinately pleased to ...

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