
Contents
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Contemporary Responses to the Historical Allegory Contemporary Responses to the Historical Allegory
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Restoration and Eighteenth‐Century Commentaries and Editions: Spenser and Literary History Restoration and Eighteenth‐Century Commentaries and Editions: Spenser and Literary History
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Victorian Spenser: The Imperial Tradition Victorian Spenser: The Imperial Tradition
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The Early Twentieth Century and the Rise of Academic Historicism The Early Twentieth Century and the Rise of Academic Historicism
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Historicism During the New Criticism Historicism During the New Criticism
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The New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and the Political Criticism of the Late Twentieth Century The New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, and the Political Criticism of the Late Twentieth Century
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New Directions: Historicism, Formalism, Historical Formalism New Directions: Historicism, Formalism, Historical Formalism
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Notes Notes
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Bibliography Bibliography
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39 The Historicist Tradition in Spenser Studies
Get accessJohn D. Staines is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York, and he has taught Spenser at the CUNY Graduate Centre. He has also taught at the College of the Holy Cross and Earlham College. He is the author of The Tragic Histories of Mary Queen of Scots 1560–1690: Rhetoric, Passions, and Political Literature (2009) and has published articles on Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, and Early Modern politics.
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Published:18 September 2012
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Abstract
‘The poet's poet’ is perhaps the most common critical cliché about Spenser, uttered by some in admiring tones, by others in dismissive ones. But Spenser is also a historian's poet, deeply engaged in the political, religious, and cultural battles of his age. That Spenser is simultaneously a poet's poet and a historian's poet is for many readers a fruitful paradox that opens up the richness of his literary achievement. It has also led in part to Spenser's curious place in the academy: He plays a central role in graduate curricula, producing dissertations and scholarship surpassed in early modern English studies only by Milton and, of course, the Shakespeare industry. Yet his ‘difficulty’, defined in large part by his historical difference, has limited his popularity not only with the common reader but increasingly with undergraduates and non-specialists. This article considers the historicist tradition in Spenser criticism, which raises enduring theoretical concerns about both poetry and criticism, as well as anxieties about the literary canon, the academic profession, and Spenser's place in them.
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