Spenser in the Moment

Edited by Paul J. Hecht and J. B. Lethbridge - Contributions by Gavin Alexander; April Bernard; Elisabeth Chaghafi; K. Silem Mohammad; Syrithe Pugh; Gordon Teskey; Kathryn Walls and David Scott Wilson-Okamura

Spenser in the Moment collects specially commissioned essays critical of established readings, each of which in surveying the state of the art attempts radically to unsettle our conception of the poetry of Edmund Spenser (1552–1599).

The editors were drawn together by a shared restlessness with the canonical Spenser, and a sense that attention especially to Spenser’s musical qualities, and the distinctiveness of his poetic style compared with that of his contemporaries, could display exciting new paths forward. Scholars from three continents contribute bracing reviews of Spenser’s relationship with his classical sources, with religious history, and the history of the book. Two essays consider Spenser and music, both music in Spenser’s works, and Spenser’s works in the music of his time. Two working poets inaugurate the final group of essays on Spenser’s poetry, with original, irreverent poetry reflecting and riffing on Spenser. The essays argue for various versions of revolution: one mixing aesthetics and sex, another diagnosing widespread fallacies (“expressivist” and “dramatistic”) made in reading Spenser, and the last arguing for a Spenser not of enormous interlocking networks, but of the moment: that the primary Spenserian structure is that of a moment of stillness-in-motion. With so much change behind us already in this young century, another series of changes emerges from recent work, and a sense of expectation, as of held breath, seems to pervade the discipline—that is the moment that this volume attempts to capture and nourish.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅜

978-1-61147-684-2 • Hardback • November 2015 • $107.00 • (£82.00)

978-1-61147-880-8 • Paperback • April 2017 • $59.99 • (£46.00)

978-1-61147-685-9 • eBook • November 2015 • $57.00 • (£44.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Poetry, Literary Criticism / Renaissance, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Spenser in the Moment

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Summary

Spenser in the Moment collects specially commissioned essays critical of established readings, each of which in surveying the state of the art attempts radically to unsettle our conception of the poetry of Edmund Spenser (1552–1599).

The editors were drawn together by a shared restlessness with the canonical Spenser, and a sense that attention especially to Spenser’s musical qualities, and the distinctiveness of his poetic style compared with that of his contemporaries, could display exciting new paths forward. Scholars from three continents contribute bracing reviews of Spenser’s relationship with his classical sources, with religious history, and the history of the book. Two essays consider Spenser and music, both music in Spenser’s works, and Spenser’s works in the music of his time. Two working poets inaugurate the final group of essays on Spenser’s poetry, with original, irreverent poetry reflecting and riffing on Spenser. The essays argue for various versions of revolution: one mixing aesthetics and sex, another diagnosing widespread fallacies (“expressivist” and “dramatistic”) made in reading Spenser, and the last arguing for a Spenser not of enormous interlocking networks, but of the moment: that the primary Spenserian structure is that of a moment of stillness-in-motion. With so much change behind us already in this young century, another series of changes emerges from recent work, and a sense of expectation, as of held breath, seems to pervade the discipline—that is the moment that this volume attempts to capture and nourish.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅜

978-1-61147-684-2 • Hardback • November 2015 • $107.00 • (£82.00)

978-1-61147-880-8 • Paperback • April 2017 • $59.99 • (£46.00)

978-1-61147-685-9 • eBook • November 2015 • $57.00 • (£44.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Poetry, Literary Criticism / Renaissance, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Author

Paul J. Hecht is associate professor of English at Purdue University North Central and the author of several articles on Spenser, Shakespeare, and Wroth.

J. B. Lethbridge lectures at Tübingen University and is general editor of the monograph series The Manchester Spenser.

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
1 Introduction: Notes toward a New Spenser
Paul J. Hecht

Classical, Medieval, Material
2 Reinventing the Wheel: Spenser’s Virgilian Career
Syrithe Pugh
3 Spenser and the “Medieval” Past: A Question of Definition
Kathryn Walls
4 Spenser and Book History
Elisabeth Chaghafi

Spenser and Music
5 Music in Spenser
David Scott Wilson-Okamura
6 Spenser in Music
Gavin Alexander

Meter/Moment
7 Irreverent Spenseriana
April Bernard, K. Silem Mohammad
8 Queer/Ordinary: Thinking Spenserian Sex and Aesthetics
Paul J. Hecht
9 The Poetry of The Faerie Queene
J. B. Lethbridge
10 Notes on Reading in The Faerie Queene: From Moment to Moment
Gordon Teskey

Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Reviews

Hecht and Lethbridge see themselves as spearheading a movement that will replace the orthodoxies of New Criticism (and its progeny, including New Historicism) with unorthodox—indeed, revolutionary—ways of reading Edmund Spenser’s poetry. . . .[The book beings ]with Syrithe Pugh’s superb account of how Spenser imitates Virgil. Every Spenserian will want to read the excellent middle section, 'Spenser and Music,' with its complementary essays by David Scott Wilson-Okamura and Gavin Alexander. . . .The promised 'new era of Spenser scholarship' begins to take shape in the final section ('Meter/Moment'), with Hecht’s essay 'Queer/Ordinary: Thinking Spenserian Sex and Aesthetics,' Lethbridge's extension of his case against 'expressivist' reading, and Gordon Teskey's bravura display on The Faerie Queene as 'a poem of moments.'. . . .Summing Up: Highly recommended.
— Choice Reviews

This collection has a spinning gyroscope on its cover: an object rapidly in motion but also perfectly balanced, progressively scientific in its associations but also somehow classical in form. The image matches the ambition of the editors…. The final essay, by Gordon Teskey, which gives the book its title...tells us we should read Spenser ‘from moment to moment’, isolating his visual, sonic and spiritual set pieces. These are distinct sections of the poem, generally around ten stanzas in length. If we pay attention to these ‘moments’, Teskey argues, we will appreciate the ‘curious combination of stasis and movement’ in which the ‘wonder’ of The Faerie Queene resides. This is a profound insight that justifies the choice of image on this book’s cover.
— Times Literary Supplement

[T]his is a valuable book that will be important to many scholars – those combining early modern music and poetry, those studying Elizabethan poetics, and, naturally, Spenserians, all of whom should read it.
— Renaissance Studies

Spenser in the Moment is a fascinating volume. Its contributors, in distinct rhythms and registers, encourage us to think deeply about form and language.... [I]ts colloquial title captures beautifully the mood of a collection of consequence, at once ambient and ambitious, mellifluous and momentous. Hecht and Lethbridge remind us that the Spenser we thought we knew can always be read anew.
— Renaissance Quarterly

Spenser in the Moment, edited by Paul J. Hecht and J.B. Lethbridge, is a provocative volume, which pushes at the limits of what is usually expected from a collection of academic essays.
— The Spenser Review