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The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy. George Oppitz-Trotman. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. xiv + 258 pp. £80.

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with which human problems are usually met” (314). Spenserian Moments teaches us how to read The Faerie Queene by opening ourselves to its strangeness, by allowing its improvisation to invite… Click to show full abstract

with which human problems are usually met” (314). Spenserian Moments teaches us how to read The Faerie Queene by opening ourselves to its strangeness, by allowing its improvisation to invite us into “the poet’s open enterprise of creative thought” (12), and by exulting in its beauty and intelligence. For me this is entirely satisfactory. Indeed, I find critical studies of The Faerie Queene somewhat disappointing, not because they lack insight, but because they rarely approach my sheer pleasure in reading Spenser’s poetry. That said, having spent a career immersed in Elizabethan poetics, politics, religion, and the writers Spenser read, including the English chroniclers, I am probably more open to the poem’s strangeness than I once was. What is compelling about Spenserian Moments is that it does not neglect a reader less familiar with Spenser’s world. Essays in the first part, “On Spenser,” remind readers about Spenser’s life, literature, and Irish experiences, and survey The Faerie Queene’s plan and publication history. This enables courteous readers to be open to the momentary and the momentous in Spenser’s poetics, which Teskey explores in “On Allegory” and “On Thinking” (parts 2 and 3). In part 4’s essays, “On Change,” Teskey reflects more personally on how time affects how we experience The Faerie Queene’s allegorical fixity and fluidity. Rather than teaching what we should know about The Faerie Queene, Spenserian Moments offers ways to think about its bounty. Professor Teskey’s richly allusive writing, his command of literary theory and philosophy from Plato to Derrida, and his keen intellect and wit invite us to revisit Spenser’s brilliant poem with leisurely indulgence.

Keywords: spenser; critical studies; faerie queene; edinburgh; origins english; spenserian moments

Journal Title: Renaissance Quarterly
Year Published: 2021

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