Instructor: Gordon Teskey
Monday, 3:45-5:45 pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students
Course Site
A seminar on the poetry of Spenser and the practice of theory. In contrast to Milton, Spenser thinks as he writes and also lets the poem think for him. He does not think with poetry but through it. One consequence is that the kind of poem he writes—an allegory—invites us to think along with it as well, in our own terms. In the seminar, we will attend to the tensions in Spenser’s imagination between personal expression, social and political structure, and cosmic order. Alongside the poems, especially "The Faerie Queene", we will read some major works of literary theorists from the postwar period to the present day.