At 01:20 PM 10/9/2003 -0700, Jean Goodrich wrote:
>I know that early on, Gabriel Harvey dismissed Spenser's "faerie project"
>as "Hobgoblin runne away with the garland of Apollo." However, is anyone
>familiar with a criticism that Spenser's topic was the "matter of the
>nursery," (paraphrase) either by Harvey or a later critic (like C.S. Lewis)?
"Beyond all doubt it is best to have made one's first acquaintance with
Spenser in a very large -- and, preferably, illustrated -- edition of The
Faerie Queene, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen; and
if, even at that age, certain of the names aroused unidentified memories of
some still earlier, some almost prehistoric, commerce with a selection of
'Stories from Spenser,' heard before we could read, so much the better."
- C. S. Lewis, "On Reading The Faerie Queene," rpt. in idem, Studies in
Medieval & Renaissance Literature, ed. Walter Hooper (CUP, 1966), p. 146.
Illustrations, I'm guessing, must have been the big set done by Walter
Crane, now available from Dover; as for "Stories from Spenser," I am
guessing that this is a reference to The Gateway to Spenser: Stories from
the Faerie Queene, by Emily Underdown (London: Nelson, 1890).
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David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
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