Spenser's Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference

by Richard A. McCabe

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198187349
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/26/2002
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Merton College, Oxford University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Preface: Beyond the Pale
I. The Imperial Theme
1. Arms and the Woman
2. Spenser and the Rival Poets
II. 'Salvagesse sans finesse'
3. 'Salvage Nation'
4. 'Salvage Knight'
III. The Faerie Queene (1590)
5. St George for Ireland
6. Sins of Difference
7. Noble Britons, Savage Scyths
IV. Dialogues of Displacement
8. Colin Clout's Other Island
9. Irenius's Mother Tongue
V. The Faerie Queene (1596)
10. 'Friendships Faultie Guile'
11. Poetic Justice
12. Savage Courtesy
VI. Spenser's Ireland 1609-50
13. Diana's Spite
14. The Response to A View
Notes
List of Primary Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Two distinctive strengths make this book especially original. First, McCabe's knowledge of Irish language and literature provides a richer context, compensating for the 'rigidly anglophone' limitations of recent scholarship. Second, McCabe challenges prevailing assumptions about art's relationship to ideology.... McCabe's informed account of Irish poetry makes Spenser's struggle against its attractions more urgent and acute.... McCabe concludes this fascinating book by showing how another Spenser shared the fate of those he sought to dispossess."—Renaissance Quarterly

"An important addition to the widespread recent reconsideration of the significance of Spenser's Irish experience to his nationalist poetry.... This book offers a major reorientation of the conversation on the meanings of Spenser's Irish experience; the yield in fresh contexts and vigorous interpretations is great."—Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

From the Publisher