Spenser's Secret CareerCambridge University Press, 1993 M02 26 - 164 pages Edmund Spenser (c.1552-99) conducted two careers at once: a celebrated poet, he also pursued a lifelong career as secretary to various political and ecclesiastical figures. Richard Rambuss's book explores how this latter career, usually allotted only cursory mention in accounts of Spenser's professional ambitions, informed his poetic career. Working from the fact that contemporary bureaucratic treatises defined the management of secrets as the central occupation of secretaryship, this study provides a careerist context for the attention to secrecy throughout Spenser's poetry. It takes issue with prevailing new historicist accounts which see Spenser's careerism as shaped entirely by a single-minded pursuit of laureateship along a Virgilian route from pastoral to epic. Spenser's Secret Career presents an alternative picture, arguing that for Spenser the manipulation of secrets - his own and others' - provided a strategy of self-promotion for both of his careers. |
Contents
Professional secrets 5509 | 5 |
the secret designs of The Shepheardes | 29 |
the 1590 Faerie Queene and Spensers | 62 |
the 1596 Faerie Queene | 96 |
Notes | 125 |
| 151 | |
| 159 | |
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Common terms and phrases
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References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Spenser's Secret Career Volume 3 of Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture |
| Author | Richard Rambuss |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 1993 |
| ISBN | 0521416639, 9780521416634 |
| Length | 164 pages |
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