English 203: Edmund Spenser

Sidney wrote that the poet’s task was to “grow in effect into another nature.” No poet in English has fulfilled that charge more luxuriantly than Edmund Spenser. We will read widely in Spenser’s oeuvre and milieu, but most of our attention will be devoted to exploring the strange landscapes and structures of The Faerie Queene. As the semester progresses we will address the poem’s books and worlds from the multiple perspectives they invite, from the psychological to the ecological.