54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An edition which gives maximum help with Spenser's language., June 13, 2001
This review is from: Edmund Spenser's Poetry (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)
EDMUND SPENSER'S POETRY : Authoritative Texts and Criticism. Third Edition. Selected and Edited by Hugh Maclean and Anne Lake Prescott. 842 pp. London & New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 1993.
Although everyone has heard of Edmund Spenser's amazing narrative poem, 'The Faerie Queene,' it's a pity that few seem to read it. To a superficial glance it may appear difficult, although the truth is that it's basically a fascinating story that even an intelligent child can follow with enjoyment and interest.
It appears difficult only because of Spenser's deliberately antique English. He needed such an English because he was creating a whole new dimension of enchantment, a magical world, a land of mystery and adventure teeming with ogres and giants and witches, hardy knights both brave and villainous, dwarfs, magicians, dragons, and maidens in distress, wicked enchanters, gods, demons, forests, caves, and castles, amorous encounters, fierce battles, etc., etc.
To evoke an atmosphere appropriate to such a magical world, a world seemingly distant in both time and place from ours, Spenser created his own special brand of English. Basically his language is standard Sixteenth Century English, but with antique spellings and a few medievalisms thrown in, along with a number of new words that Spenser coined himself. The opening lines of the poem are typical :
"A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, / Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, / Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine, / The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde...." (page 41).
If, instead of reading with the eye, we read with the ear or aloud, the strange spellings resolve themselves into perfectly familiar words such as clad (clothed), mighty, arms, shield, deep, cruel, marks, bloody, field. And "Y cladd" is just one of those Spenserian medievalisms that simply means "clad" or clothed (i.e., wearing).
The only two words in this passage that might cause problems for the beginner are "pricking" and "dints," and it doesn't take much imagination to realize that these must refer, respectively, to 'riding' (i.e., his horse) and 'dents.' But if you can't guess their meaning, in the present edition a quick glance to the right at their explanatory glosses will soon apprize you of it, and will save you the trouble of searching for their meaning elsewhere.
Once you've used the side glosses for a little while, progress through Spenser's text becomes a snap. And learning a few hundred words is a small price to pay for entrance into one of the most luxuriant works ever produced by the Western imagination, and one that once entered you will often want to return to.
The present Norton Critical Edition has been designed for college students, but will appeal to anyone who is looking for an abridged Spenser which gives maximum help with the language, and who might also like to read a little of the best recent criticism.
The first part of the book, besides giving almost 500 large pages of annotated selections from 'The Faerie Queene' which amount to well over half of Spenser's complete text, also includes a generous selection from Spenser's other poetry : The Shephearde's Calendar; Muipotmos : or The Fate of the Butterflie; Colin Clouts Come Home Againe; Amoretti; and the beautiful Epithalamion and Prothalamion. An Editor's Note exploring important issues follows each selection, and all obscure words have been given convenient explanatory glosses in the right margins.
The second part of the book consists mainly of a wide range of Twentieth-Century Criticism, and contains twenty-five critical essays on various aspects of Spenser, many by noted scholars such as A. Bartlett Giamatti, Thomas P. Roche Jr., Northrop Frye, A. C. Hamilton, Isabel MacCaffrey, Paul Alpers, Louis Martz, and William Nelson. The book is rounded out with A Chronology of Spenser's Life and a very full Selected Bibliography.
Criticism undoubtedly has its value and at times can be stimulating, but Spenser, as one of England's very greatest writers, was of course writing not so much for critics as for you and me. Admittedly his language can be a bit tricky at first, and he certainly isn't to be rushed through like a modern novel. His is rather the sort of book that we wish would never end.
His pace is leisurely and relaxed, a gentle flowing rhythmic motion, and that's how he wants us to read him. To get the hang of things, try listening to one of the many available recordings. And when you hit a strange-looking word there will be no need to fret or panic, for a quick glance to the right at its gloss will soon apprize you of its meaning.
So take Spenser slowly, and give his words a chance to work their magic. Let him gently conduct you through his enthralling universe, one that you will find both wholly strange and perfectly familar, since human beings and their multifarious doings are Spenser's real subject, and somewhere in one of his enchanted forests you may one day find yourself.
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
O pittious worke of Mutabilitie!, January 31, 2006
This review is from: Edmund Spenser's Poetry (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)
This edition is all right - reasonable level of annotation (most students would benefit from more), justifiable selection, fair show of critical essays; but it's a comedown from the 2nd ed. in every respect, or so it seems to me. The selection from "The Faerie Queene" cuts out Scudamour's relation of his experience in the mysterious Temple of Venus: absolutely essential for anyone reading Book III, which is printed entire in both eds. The pseudo-personal "Colin Clouts Come Home Againe" is a thin substitute, whatever its indications of "the teasing ambiguities of the patronage system" so dear to critics of the 1990s. With the new emphasis on politics rather than philosophy, the "Fowre Hymnes" have gone too; the editors are clearly aiming to reflect "recent critical attention" (their words), but the result somehow suggests that Spenser has become more predictable, less intellectually exciting, over the 10 years between the two editions (1982-1993). As for the choice of critical essays, some things have not been changed when they should have been (the tiny snippet on allegory from "The Kindly Flame" is far too brief to be helpful); on the other hand, the excision of C.S. Lewis's account of the House of Busyrane is simply perverse. Lewis is the critical starting point for this, and later work depends (whatever its attitude) on him.
Obviously a new edition must struggle over the demands of space, but it must also keep in mind the nature of its readership. Who will use this? Not a professional Renaissance scholar, who will own a complete text. So, students, or interested readers, who don't already own the previous edition, and have not necessarily internalized a long tradition of Spenser scholarship. This imposes a serious responsibility on the editors to choose not just fashionably but judiciously. And to limit the bibliography to work published since 1972 (just over 20 years!) is not just injudicious but absurd. (The list for "Epithalamion" does not list Kent Hieatt's seminal study of its structure, to give just one egregious example.) Also, of course, this procedure limits the work's own reach into the future. This bibliography already looks out of date, as one with a broader chronology would not. The same goes for other elements, too: the editors of a fourth edition, on a similarly limited plan, would probably want less on power and more on gender - and thus, with luck, might reintroduce the Temple of Venus, dropped here.
Meanwhile, for the decisions here outlined, so damaging to the lasting value of the book, these editors deserve three stars.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
1993 Edition Details, February 18, 2004
This review is from: Edmund Spenser's Poetry (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)
It has been mentioned that only half the "Faerie Queene" is here included. I would like to add that of the 12 months of the "Shepherd's Calendar", only the months January, February, April, October, November & December are included.
I would have prefered that the editors throw out some of those 160 pages of critical examinations and include a complete text.
The type face is legible, the paper opacity is adequate, and I especially applaud putting the glossary in the margin so I need not turn to the back of the book to make use of it.
The "Shepherd's Calendar" is illustrated with one woodcut for each month. They are not the elegant sort we get from say Albrecht Durer, but are are in a primitivism style. I found no other illustrations in the rest of the book.
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