Although it has been recognized that Edmund Spenser's poetry owes a debt to the work of the French poets of the Pléiade, particularly to Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard, there has been no critical analysis of this relationship. Mr. Satterthwaite compares the work of the three poets, showing the relation between the English movement to write quantitative verse and the French experiments in vers mesures. He discusses the attitudes of the poets to their Muses and to contemporary literature, their ideas of time and mutability, their moral (or amoral) views of literature and of life their religious orientation, and their use of the Platonic and neo-Platonic theories that were a part of the inherited culture of the Renaissance. Originally published in 1960. 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.

Beginning 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.

"This is a beautiful book, a lucidly written and elegantly crafted scholarly and critical essay on the rise of a new poetry in the sixteenth century."--David Quint, Yale University

Worldmaking Spenser reexamines the role of Spenser's work in English history and highlights the richness and complexity of his understanding of place. The volume centers on the idea that complex and allusive literary works such as The Faerie Queene must be read in the context of the cultural, literary, political, economic, and ideological forces at play in the highly allegorical poem. The authors define Spenser as the maker of poetic worlds, of the Elizabethan world, and of the modern world. The essays look at Spenser from three distinct vantage points. The contributors explore his literary origins in classical, medieval, and Renaissance continental writings and his influences on sixteenth-century culture. Spenser also had a great impact on later literary figures, including Lady Mary Wroth and Aemilia Lanyer, two of the seventeenth century's most important writers. The authors address the full range of Spenser's work, both long and short poetry as well as prose. The essays unequivocally demonstrate that Spenser occupies a substantial place in a seminal era in English history and European culture.