Spenser's Famous Flight / / Patrick Cheney.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• VerfasserIn: Cheney, Patrick,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]; ©1993
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Heritage
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (390 p.)

In Spenser's 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 convential Virgilian pattern of pastoral to epic, but a Christian revision of that pattern in light of Petrarch and the Reformation.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.In October, Spenser calls his idea of a literary career the 'famous flight.' Both classical and Christian culture has 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Texts and Abbreviations -- Introduction: Scanning the Famous Flight -- 1. Displaying the Fluttering Wing: The Literary Career of the New Orphic Poet -- 2. Pastoral, or Proving Tender Wings: Acquiring Vatic Authority in The Shepheardes Calender -- 3. Epic, or Making the Greater Flight: Enacting Vatic Virtue in Spenser's Allegory of Ralegh and Elizabeth -- 4. Love Lyric, or Sporting the Muse in Pleasant Mew: Renewing Vatic Virtue in Amoretti and Epithalamion -- 5. Hymn, or Flying Back to Heaven Apace: Returning to the Vatic Source in Fowre Hymnes -- Conclusion: Rescanning the Famous Flight in Prothalamion -- Notes -- Works Cited -- General Index -- Spenser Index