Enabling engagements : Edmund Spenser and the poetics of patronage / Judith Owens.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Owens, Judith, 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599--Criticism and interpretation.

Spenser, Edmund.

Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599.

Authors and patrons--England--History--16th century.

Authors and patrons.

Criticism and interpretation.

England.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 183 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2002]

Summary:

Enabling Engagements contributes to current critical debates regarding early modern subjectivity and early modern cultural capital. In stressing the boldness of Edmund Spenser's poetics of patronage, Judith Owens shows that Elizabethans could and did exercise agency within a wide range of institutions. By consistently challenging assumptions of courtly hegemony in early modern society, Owens suggests a new appraisal of the processes of cultural commodification.

Enabling Engagements challenges conventional assessments of Spenser as court-centred and of patronal relations in the early modern period as asymmetrical and prescriptive. Owens demonstrates that Spenser exercised a vigorous sense of agency within the close quarters of patronage and courtly culture, fashioning his laureate's role and envisioning nationhood in resistance to the centre.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references: pages [163]-175 and index.

ISBN:

0773523316

OCLC:

48242408