The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser examines the entire canon of Spenser's work & the social & intellectual environments in which it was produced. It explores technical matters of style, language, & metre, the poet's use of sources & subtexts, & the reception of his work amongst editors, critics, writers, & visual artists.

ChinaÕs enormous size, vast population, abundant natural resources, robust economy, and modern military suggest that it will emerge as a great world power. Inside ChinaÕs Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the PeopleÕs Republic offers unique insights from a prominent Chinese scholar about the countryÕs geopolitical ambitions and strategic thinking. Ye Zicheng, professor of political science in the School of International Studies at Peking University, examines ChinaÕs interactions with current world powers as well as its policies toward neighboring countries. Despite claims that repressive domestic policies and an economic slowdown are evidence that the countryÕs efforts toward modernization will fail, Ye points to ChinaÕs inclusion in the G-20 as an indicator of success. Ye compares ChinaÕs global ascension, particularly its emphasis on peace, to the historical experiences of rising European superpowers, providing an insider look at a country poised to become an increasingly prominent international power.

From the distinguished literary scholar Gordon Teskey comes an essay collection that restores Spenser to his rightful prominence in Renaissance studies, opening up the epic of The Faerie Queene as a grand, improvisatory project on human nature, and arguing—controversially—that it is Spenser, not Milton, who is the more important and relevant poet for the modern world. There is more adventure in The Faerie Queene than in any other major English poem. But the epic of Arthurian knights, ladies, and dragons in Faerie Land, beloved by C. S. Lewis, is often regarded as quaint and obscure, and few critics have analyzed the poem as an experiment in open thinking. In this remarkable collection, the renowned literary scholar Gordon Teskey examines the masterwork with care and imagination, explaining the theory of allegory—now and in Edmund Spenser’s Elizabethan age—and illuminating the poem’s improvisatory moments as it embarks upon fairy tale, myth, and enchantment. Milton, often considered the greatest English poet after Shakespeare, called Spenser his “original.” But Teskey argues that while Milton’s rigid ideology in Paradise Lost has failed the test of time, Spenser’s allegory invites engagement on contemporary terms ranging from power, gender, violence, and virtue ethics, to mobility, the posthuman, and the future of the planet. The Faerie Queene was unfinished when Spenser died in his forties. It is the brilliant work of a poet of youthful energy and philosophical vision who opens up new questions instead of answering old ones. The epic’s grand finale, “The Mutabilitie Cantos,” delivers a vision of human life as dizzyingly turbulent and constantly changing, leaving a future open to everything.

The life.--The works.--Criticism, influence, allusions.--Various topics.--Index.

"What critic of Spenser's poetry does not know, and acknowledge, a debt to Harry Berger? The collection, at last, of these seminal essays into a single volume is welcome news indeed for the generation of scholars who learned from them and can now more easily send their own students to them. . . . Their importance as documents of the discovery of Spenser, and the Spenserian mode, in the 1960s is given new prominence, moreover, by Berger's recent essays here on the 'metapastoralism' of The Shepheardes Calendar. In them, this New Critic comes home again to Spenser, recognizing the value of recent critical trends but arguing passionately for the centrality of the close reading of text. The result is a powerful case for reconciliation and consolidation of methods that have dominated literary study over the second half of this century."--Donald Cheney, co-editor of The Spenser Encyclopedia

This volume explores Spenser's linguistic experimentation and his engagement with political, and particularly legal, thought and language in his major works, demonstrating by thorough lexical analysis and illustrative readings how Spenser figured the nation both descriptively and prescriptively.

An impressive exploration of the poet Edmund Spenser's second career as a political secretary.

Edmund Spenser's poetry remains an indispensable touchstone of English literary history. Yet for modern readers his deliberate use of archaic language and his allegorical mode of writing can become barriers to understanding his poetry. This volume of thirty-seven essays, written by distinguished scholars, offers a rich introduction to the literary, political and religious contexts that shaped Spenser's poetry, including the environment in which he lived, the genres he drew upon, and the influences that helped to fashion his art. The collection reveals the multiple personae that Spenser constructs within his work: to read Spenser is to read a rich archive of literary forms, and this volume provides the contexts in which to do so. A reading list at the end of the volume will prove invaluable to further study.