The MacLean lecture from 2018, delivered in New York by Stephen Guy-Bray as the author was unable to leave London due to the ‘bomb cyclone’, is designed to be provocative and to encourage debate about crucial but (relatively) neglected aspects of Spenser’s work. The Fowre Hymnes have their champions and their detractors and it might be good to move beyond entrenched positions and open out discussion to see if we can understand the nature of these strange, elusive and mysterious poems. The lecture asks whether the Hymnes express Spenser’s mature vision of his art as some have claimed, and, if so, what is the nature of that vision? If not, can they be written off as juvenilia as the preface suggests they are? Most significantly, what is actually at stake in how we read them and what might it tell us about how we have been reading Spenser. Read more…
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