The current issue of The Spenser Review reminds us all in the Spenser community of our debt to tradition. We have to pay our last respects to Tom Roche, who sadly died this May. Tom, as you all know, wrote one of the critical works that has shaped modern Spenser criticism, The Kindly Flame (1964), as well as co-founding and steering the course of Spenser Studies from 1980 onwards. We have asked two major Spenserians, Roger Kuin and Anne Lake Prescott, who knew Tom well, to reflect on his significance and influence, as well as providing personal reflections. This volume also marks a rather more celebratory event, the publication of Harry Berger Jr.’s Resisting Allegory, organized by the previous editor of the Review, David Lee Miller (who also edited Resisting Allegory; a review will appear in our next issue). The online symposium contains a series of reflections by critics and scholars of different generations explaining how they understand the work of another major Spenserian and the role it played in their own critical thinking and intellectual development. As with the tributes to Tom Roche, the discussion is a combination of intellectual exploration and personal reflection in a variety of modes and styles.
The issue also contains Bill Oram’s Hugh MacLean lecture on the Amoretti and Epithalamion, an important intervention that argues that while the sonnet sequence should be understood as a dialogue, the marriage-hymn reverts to the dominant male voice, even though the poet always understands that poetry should provoke and challenge. We have published Willy Maley’s extensive response to Jean Brink’s important new book on Spenser’s life before he moved to Ireland as a feature, appropriately enough for a serious discussion by the author of the Spenser Chronology (1994), one of the key works that has helped us reconstruct Spenser’s biography. And as usual, our review section takes on major critical works of interest to Spenserians and other scholars of early modern literature.
Hoping this finds you all safe and well.
Jane Grogan and Andrew Hadfield
50.2.1
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We have to pay our last respects to Tom Roche, who sadly died this May.
Link / ReplyAs with the tributes to Tom Roche, the discussion is a combination of intellectual exploration and personal reflection in a variety of modes and styles.
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