The Manchester Spenser and Donne

This edited collection of essays, part of The Manchester Spenser series, brings together leading Spenser and Donne scholars to challenge the traditionally dichotomous view of these two major poets and to shift the critical conversation towards a more holistic, relational view of the two authors’ poetics and thought. Early modern poets Edmund Spenser and John Donne are typically viewed in terms of contrasts, and are rarely analysed together as an isolated pair. This collection of essays brings together leading Spenser and Donne scholars to challenge the traditionally dichotomous view of the two poets and to engage critically with both, not only at the sites of direct allusion, imitation, or parody, but also in terms of common preoccupations and continuities of thought. Considering the authors as ‘thinking poets’, the essays do not merely compare what Spenser and Donne thought about certain subjects, such as contemporary events and politics, science, philosophy, love, marriage, and religious devotion. Rather, they explore and meditate on how these poets thought: how they directed their rhetorical and figurative processes, how they crafted their verses, their authorial personae, and their literary careers, and how they navigated the rich intellectual landscape available to them of literary conventions, innovations, and influences both ancient and modern. The volume breaks new ground to address a critical gap in scholarship and illuminates new directions in the studies of two canonical poets at a pivotal point in literary history. With essays by distinguished scholars, including Patrick Cheney, Linda Gregerson, Elizabeth D. Harvey, Anne Lake Prescott, and Ramie Targoff, this collection will prove a valuable resource to scholars, students and libraries. The names Edmund Spenser and John Donne are typically associated with different ages in English poetry, the former with the sixteenth century and the Elizabethan Golden Age, the latter with the ‘metaphysical’ poets of the seventeenth century. This collection of essays, part of The Manchester Spenser series, brings together leading Spenser and Donne scholars to challenge this dichotomous view and to engage critically with both poets, not only at the sites of direct allusion, imitation, or parody, but also in terms of common preoccupations and continuities of thought, informed by the literary and historical contexts of the politically and intellectually turbulent turn of the century. Juxtaposing these two poets, so apparently unlike one another, for comparison rather than contrast changes our understanding of each poet individually and moves towards a more holistic, relational view of their poetics.