43.1 (Spring-Summer 2013)

The Literary Biography of a Collective: The Familiar Letters of G.H. and Signior Immerito

First, a warm welcome to the graduate students and recent PhDs.  If you become regular, dues-paying Spenserians, as we hope you will, you’ll soon discern the norms that govern these lectures.  They customarily begin with  Read more »

When I was asked by Nuccio Ordine for a contribution to “Classici della letteratura europea,” a new collection devised by himself, it seemed to us both that the poem by Edmund Spenser, which had never been completely translated into Italian, would, considering the very strong bond between Spenser and our country and literature, fill a gap in Italian culture.        

With his Faerie Queene, Spenser meant to give England the epic (or heroic) poem that it still lacked.  His aim was the celebration of the Tudor dynasty, in particular of Elizabeth I, idealized and glorified through the figures of Gloriana (the Fairy Queen, indeed), powerful and righteous, and Belphoebe, the wonderful and virtuous maiden; the celebration of English nationalism, which had been growing increasingly stronger since the Hundred Years’ War, as Shakespeare reminds us in his Henry V; and the celebration, as well, of the Church of England, which was one ...

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