Resisting Allegory: Interpretive Delirium in Spenser's Faerie Queene
Harry Berger and David Lee Miller
Abstract
Resisting Allegory gathers essays from the final two decades of Harry Berger, Jr.’s lifelong engagement with Spenser’s great poem The Faerie Queene, making clear the scope and coherence of the critical vision elaborated in a series of seminal and still-challenging critical arguments. Spenser’s great poem provides the occasion for a searching and comprehensive interdisciplinary exploration of reading practices—those the author advocates as well as those he adapts or criticizes in entertaining a wide range of critical arguments with his celebrated combination of intellectual generosity and rigor ... More
Resisting Allegory gathers essays from the final two decades of Harry Berger, Jr.’s lifelong engagement with Spenser’s great poem The Faerie Queene, making clear the scope and coherence of the critical vision elaborated in a series of seminal and still-challenging critical arguments. Spenser’s great poem provides the occasion for a searching and comprehensive interdisciplinary exploration of reading practices—those the author advocates as well as those he adapts or criticizes in entertaining a wide range of critical arguments with his celebrated combination of intellectual generosity and rigorous questioning. No one writes the way Berger does; no one can combine theoretical scope with close reading the way he can. His distinctive voice, style, and attention to method offer a model to students and younger scholars and should command attention in courses on the method and theory of criticism.
Keywords:
allegory,
close reading,
critical methods,
The Faerie Queene,
Spenser,
theory of criticism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780823285631 |
| Published to Fordham Scholarship Online: September 2020 |
DOI:10.5422/fordham/9780823285631.001.0001 |
