Description
Book SynopsisBeginning with the origins of mnemonic strategies in epic tales, Helfer examines how the art of memory speaks to debates about poetry and its place in culture from Plato to Spenser's present day.
Trade Review'Highly recommended.' -- D.M. Moore Choice Magazine, vol 50:05:2012 'This is a fascinating, scholarly, and thought provoking work, and a formidable contribution to the growing body of challenges to Greenblatt's influential vision of imperialist Spenser.' -- Syrithe Pugh Review of English Studies vol 64:267:2013 'Helfer's memorable treatment of the topic and topos of memory is a major contribution to Spenser studies, Renaissance studies, and memory studies, and in its astute observations on Milton and others it opens up spaces on which subsequent critics will want to dwell.' -- Willey Maley Renaissance Quarterly, vol 66:02:2013 'Rebecca Helfer's monograph makes an invaluable contribution not only to Spenser scholarship but, more generally, to memory studies of the early modern period... Stimulating and substantial study of Spenser's fascination with 'the desire and duty to remember the past'.' -- Andrew Hiscock Modern Language Review vol 110:02:2015
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface: Preamble to Ruin 1 Spenser's Complaints: The Fall of Troy, The Ruin of Rome, and tThe Art of Recollection 2 The Death of the 'New Poete': Ruin and Recollection in The Shepheardes Calender 3 The Ruines of Time and the Art of Recollection 4 'The Methode of a Poet Historical [and] ... an Historiographer': Recollecting the Past in the 1590 Faerie Queene 5 Golden Age Returns: Recollecting Prehistory as Present in Spenser's Later Work Conclusion: Misprision and Freedom: Ruining and Recollecting the Bower of Bliss Notes Bibliography Index
