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The presentation of poetry to auditor and reader involves a complex
interaction of rhetorical, orthographical and visual mediating
skills. At issue are the nature of 'authority', the creation of a
readership attuned to the writer's poetic resonances, and a
delicate negotiation between literary tradition and individual
talent. In a series of detailed readings leading scholars focus on
the presentation of work by Spenser, Herbert, Milton, Dryden, Pope,
Smart, Blake, Wordsworth, Browning, Newman, Yeats, Lawrence and
David Jones. The wide chronological range enables unusually
extensive comparison across the boundaries of generic form, and
between the varying emotional, aesthetic and rhetorical emphases of
specific periods: from the creation of fictitious personae to the
construction of autobiographical 'self', from the interaction of
printed word and visual image to the arrangements and
rearrangements of structure and sequence.
This is a full-length study of incest in English Renaissance and
Restoration drama. Richard McCabe's comprehensive survey offers a
literary history of this theme, informed by an investigation of the
intellectual background, with particular emphasis on changing
concepts of natural law, and consequent reassessments of classical
tradition. It examines a wide range of theological, philosophical,
legal and literary sources, in the context of modern psychological
and sociological theories of family development. Extensive
comparisons with classical models and contemporary European
dramatists, from Tasso to Corneille and Racine, explore the
volatile association between dramatic form and emotional content,
structural experiment and sexual ambivalence. The centrality of the
family to all human relationships, and the mutual reflection of
familial politics and the patriarchal state make incest a powerful
metaphor for the ambivalence of all concepts of 'natural'
authority, and for various forms of social and political revolt.
The presentation of poetry to auditor and reader involves a complex
interaction of rhetorical, orthographical and visual mediating
skills. At issue are the nature of 'authority', the creation of a
readership attuned to the writer's poetic resonances, and a
delicate negotiation between literary tradition and individual
talent. In a series of detailed readings leading scholars focus on
the presentation of work by Spenser, Herbert, Milton, Dryden, Pope,
Smart, Blake, Wordsworth, Browning, Yeats, Lawrence and David
Jones. The wide chronological range enables unusually extensive
comparison across the boundaries of generic form, and between the
varying emotional, aesthetic and rhetorical emphases of specific
periods: from the creation of fictitious 'persona' to the
construction of autobiographical 'self', from the interaction of
printed word and visual image to the arrangements and
rearrangements of structure and sequence.
In this important study of Spenser and nationhood - the first to
contextualize Spenser's response to the Irish colonial situation by
reference to contemporary Gaelic literature - Richard McCabe
examines the poet's canon within the dual contexts of imperial
aspiration and female 'regiment'. He shows how the experience of
writing from Ireland, where the queen's influence repeatedly
frustrated the expansionist ambitions of New English settlers,
intensified Spenser's sense of alienation from female sovereignty
and led to the remarkable fusion of colonial and sexual anxieties
evident in The Faerie Queene's pervasive images of anti-heroic
emasculation. At the same time the paradoxical attempt to impose
civility through violence compromised the poem's moral vision and
problematized its conception of national identity. The attempt to
create an English myth of origin coincided uneasily with the need
to discredit its Gaelic counterpart, as formulated in such works as
the Lebor Gabala Erenn, while the perceived 'degeneration' of Old
English families within the Pale confounded the ethnic distinctions
upon which the colonial enterprise had come to rest and challenged
the validity of all nationalist 'myth'. By drawing upon a wide
range of Gaelic poets, historians, and polemicists, McCabe seeks to
recover the voices that the dialectical format of A View of the
Present State of Ireland is designed to exclude and to demonstrate
how the Irish dimension of The Faerie Queene provides a dark, but
aesthetically enhancing subtext to the poetics of national
celebration.
Spenser's Monstrous Regiment is a stimulating and scholarly account of how the experience of living and writing in Ireland qualified Spenser's attitude towards female regiment and challenged his notions of English nationhood. Including a trenchant discussion of the influence of colonialism upon the structure, themes, imagery, and language of Spenser's poetry, this is the first major study of Spenser's canon to engage with primary Gaelic materials in its assessment of his relationship with native Irish and Old English culture. It also provides the first detailed analysis of his association with Lord Grey through examination of the secretarial letters currently held in the PRO.
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