I took it Lewis meant that if you like Spenser and you want to fish around
and make connections between different bits of the poem and you happen to
see this book in a second hand bookshop you should buy it because it will
help you fish. So spend a fiver on a hunch that you might be a Spenserian
and you might turn out to be one. Implicitly it says too that the kind of
people who like Spenser will also be the kind of people who like subject
indexes. That's how I took it when I bought my copy of the Subject Index
when I was 15 or so, and I think he was right about me anyway. There are
other kinds of people that become lifelong readers of Spenser too, of
course.
Colin Burrow
Senior Research Fellow
All Souls College
High Street
Oxford OX1 4AL
01865 279341 (direct) 01865 279379 (Lodge)
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-----Original Message-----
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of James C. Nohrnberg
Sent: 08 February 2009 06:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Notes on the Education of an English Major
Re this:
Lewis said that he had not heard of people who said they *used* to like The
Faerie Queene, and his last note in the introduction to the Major British
Writers Spenser section cites A Subject-Index to the Poems of Edmund Spenser
(1918) with this note: "Those who are likely to become lifelong readers of
The Faerie Queene will find this book a great convenience." Who exactly does
he mean, who is the likely target?
On Sat, 7 Feb 2009 14:35:52 -0500
Carol Kaske <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
A Subject-index to the Poems of Edmund Spenser by Charles Huntington
Whitman, New Haven: Yale University PRess, 1918.
Carol: No, I wasn't asking who composed the Subject-index (Lewis would
hardly omit that, and he didn't). I was asking what does Lewis mean by
"[t]hose who are likely to be become lifelong readers of The Faerie Queen."
To me the sentence seems both defective and symptomatic.* -- Jim
* As it stands, something seem to be "missing." Maybe the sentence could be
made more intelligible if it said "Those _few_ who are likely to become
lifelong readers of The Faerie Queene," or "Those who become lifelong
readers of The Faerie Queene are likely to find...," or "Those who are lucky
enough to become lifelong readers of The Faerie Queene will find...," or
"Those unlikely souls who become lifelong readers...will find, &c." or "It
is likely that those who become lifelong readers of The Faerie Queene are
also likely to find..." Lewis's sentence seems suspended between the idea
that Spenser's readers are mainly lifelong ones (or most of them are
destined to be), and the nearly opposite idea that the candidates for
lifelong commitment among the poet's more general audience may not really be
all that many. Or did he want to say that the Subject-index can provide a
shortcut and vade mecum for those who are actually UNlikely to become
lifelong readers of The FQ?
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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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