An edition of Spenser's famous flight (1993)

Spenser's famous flight

a Renaissance idea of a literary career

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 24, 2024 | History
An edition of Spenser's famous flight (1993)

Spenser's famous flight

a Renaissance idea of a literary career

  • 0 Ratings
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  • 0 Currently reading
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In Spensers' Famous Flight, Patrick Cheney challenges the received wisdom about the shape and goal of Spenser's literary career. He contends that Spenser's idea of a literary career is not strictly the conventional Virgilian pattern of pastoral to epic, but a Christian revision of that pattern in light of Petrarch and the Reformation.

Spenser begins his literary career with pastoral in The Shepheardes Calender and follows with the first instalment of his epic The Faerie Queene, but then inserts the Petrarchan love lyric, represented by Amoretti and Epithalamion, as a genre of renewal so that he can continue his epic; and eventually he turns from these courtly forms to a contemplative one, the Augustinian-based Fowre Hymnes.

In the October eclogue he prophesies his four-genre career, of which the highest goal is an alignment of the Virgilian telos of poetry, fame, with the Augustinian telos of the Christian life, glory. The Petrarchan erotic genre exercises a revolutionary bridging power in that alignment. Cheney demonstrates that, far from changing his mind about his career as a result of disillusionment, Spenser embarks upon and completes a daring progress that secures his status as an Orphic poet

  1. In October, Spenser calls his idea of a literary career the 'famous flight.' Both classical and Christian culture had authorized the myth of the winged poet as a primary myth of fame and glory. Cheney shows that throughout his poetry Spenser relies on an image of flight to accomplish his highest goal.
Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
360

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Spenser's famous flight
Spenser's famous flight: a Renaissance idea of a literary career
1993, University of Toronto Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [297]-329) and index.

Published in
Toronto, Buffalo

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
821/.3
Library of Congress
PR2367.A9 C44 1993, PR2367.A9C44 1993

The Physical Object

Pagination
xviii, 360 p. :
Number of pages
360

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1159274M
Internet Archive
spensersfamousfl0000chen
ISBN 10
0802029345
LCCN
94137259, cn93094246
OCLC/WorldCat
28499354
Goodreads
1663372

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
July 24, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 24, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 28, 2010 Edited by Open Library Bot Linked existing covers to the work.
February 3, 2010 Edited by WorkBot add more information to works
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page