This book was compiled by Alastair Fowler from notes left by C. S. Lewis at his death. It is Lewis's longest piece of literary criticism, as distinct from literary history. It approaches The Faerie Queene as a majestic pageant of the universe and nature, celebrating God as 'the glad creator', and argues that conventional views of epic and allegory must be modified if the poem is to be fully enjoyed and understood.
Despite all of his acknowledged greatness, almost no one reads Edmund Spenser (1552-99) anymore. Roy Maynard takes the first book of the 'Faerie Queene, ' exploring the concept of Holiness with the character of the Redcross Knight, and makes Spenser accessible again. He does this not by dumbing it down, but by deftly modernizing the spelling, explaining the obscurities in clever asides, and cuing the reader towards the right response. In today's cultural, aesthetic, and educational wars, Spenser is a mighty ally for twenty-first century Christians. Maynard proves himself a worthy mediator between Spenser's time and ours. (Gene Edward Veith)
Gary Waller surveys Spenser's career in terms of the material conditions of its production - the often overlooked material factors of race, gender, class, agency - and the resonant 'places' which influenced his career - court, church, nation, colony. The book includes an original account of the gender politics of Spenser's work and his difficult position between Ireland and England, the 'homes' about which he held ambivalent feelings. Waller also discusses the 'place' the biographer occupies in writing a literary life.
Isabel MacCaffrey contends that, in allegory, the mind makes a model of itself, and she shows that The Faerie Queene, mirroring as it does the mind's structure, is both a treatise on and an example of the central role that imagination plays in human life. Viewing the poem as a model of Spenser's universe, the author investigates the poet's theory of knowledge and the role of imagination in the construction of cosmic models. She begins with a survey of theories of the imagination and the creation of fictions, establishing a context in which allegorical images may be understood throughout the European allegorical tradition to which The Faerie Queene belongs. Isabel MacCaffrey's new readings show that insofar as Spenser's poem concerns modes of knowledge, it offers the reader an anatomy of its own composition, an analysis of imagination in its varied relations to the world. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This book presents more than 1,500 quotes from C. S. Lewis's writings, providing ready access to his thoughts on a variety of topics. An exhaustive index references key words and concepts, allowing readers to easily find quotes on any subject of interest.
