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51.1 (Winter 2021)

Editorial Introduction Jane Grogan, Andrew Hadfield

The present issue of The Spenser Review focusses on Spenser’s connections with European writers, the opportunities for international engagement that Spenser undertook, and that his work, in turn, offers. Read more…

Spenser's Horizon David Scott Wilson-Okamura

How far did Spenser’s horizon extend? In the republic of letters, was he citizen or sojourner? One measure is how much he absorbed from foreign authors. Read more…

Cosmic Languishing in Spenser and Tasso Giulio J. Pertile

Over the last 25 or so years, the view of Tasso from the vantage point of Spenser studies has remained fairly consistent, and at times somewhat one-dimensional: the Gerusalemme Liberata as the paradigm of neo-classical epic closure, with all of the ideological associations this generic form entails. Read more…

Spenser Among the Tombs: Some Petrarchan Paratexts Deirdre Serjeantson

Petrarch is everywhere in Spenser, though a cursory glance would suggest that he is present largely to be amended by his successor. Amoretti, appearing in 1595 at the peak of the vogue for English sonnet sequences in the mode of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, can be read as a genial rebuke to the Petrarchan valorisation of chastity over companionate marriage. Read more…

Astrological Description in Spenser and Du Bartas Peter Auger

Past discussions of Spenser’s relation to Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas (1544‑90) have understandably centred on Urania. She is the classical astronomical muse who, in Du Bartas’ poem L’Uranie, becomes the Christian muse telling poets to reject trivial courtly poetry and address spiritual and scriptural themes instead. Read more…

From Russia, with Amoretti Yulia Ryzhik

The following article offers an overview of the literary and scholarly receptions of Spenser in Russia, as well as a review of the latest scholarly edition of Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion in Russian translation, compiled and edited by Irina I. Burova (2018). Read more…

Bas relief from the exterior of the Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice. Photo courtesy of Roger Kuin.

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