Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Preface: Beyond the Pale
I. The Imperial Theme
1: Arms and the Woman
2: Spenser and the Rival Poets
II. 'Salvagesse sans finesse'
3: 'Salvage Nation'
4: 'Salvage Knight'
III. The Faerie Queene (1590)
5: St George for Ireland
6: Sins of Difference
7: Noble Britons, Savage Scyths
IV. Dialogues of Displacement
8: Colin Clout's Other Island
9: Irenius's Mother Tongue
V. The Faerie Queene (1596)
10: 'Friendships Faultie Guile'
11: Poetic Justice
12: Savage Courtesy
VI. Spenser's Ireland 1609-50
13: Diana's Spite
14: The Response to A View
Notes
List of Primary Sources
Index

Reviews

Two distinctive strengths make this book especially original. First, McCabe's knowledge of Irish language and literature provides a richer context, compensating for the "rigidly anglophone" limitations of recent scholarship. Second, McCabe challenges prevailing assumptions about art's relationship to ideology ... fascinating book. Renaissance Quarterly ... an important addition to the widespread recent reconsideration of the significance of Spenser's Irish experience to his nationalist poetry. SEL The book offers a major reorientation of the conversation on the meanings of Spenser's Irish experience; the yield in fresh contexts and vigorous interpretations is great. SEL Richard McCabe writes lucidly and has an inspired eye for poetic detail and significance ... He is also good at finding the memorable phrase to make a telling point. Andrew Hadfield, Times Literary Supplement Up until now, like the interlocuters in Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland [1596], scholars have excluded Irish voices from critical dialogue upon the poet's life and writings. This book unequivocally and magisterially redresses this imbalance... McCab'e book has set a new standad for Spenser scholarship, particularly, though not solely, that concerned with Ireland. Subsequent critical works on Spenser's Irish contexts simply cannot ignore the field of reference opened up here. Matthew Woodcock, Sixteenth Century Journal