The "custom of the castle" imposes strange ordeals on knights and ladies seeking hospitality - daunting, mostly evil challenges that travelers must obey or even defend. This seemingly fantastic motif, first conceived by Chretien de Troyes in the twelfth century and widely imitat…
Jennifer C. Vaught illustrates how architectural rhetoric in Shakespeare and Spenser provides a bridge between the human body and mind and the nonhuman world of stone and timber. The recurring figure of the body as a besieged castle in Shakespeare's drama and Spenser's allegory …
This fourth volume of essays under the title The Shaping of English Poetry consolidates the work of the previous three volumes. Ranging from The Battle of Maldon to The Canterbury Tales, it provides a range of fascinating insights into the great subjects of English literature in…
This study argues that the most illuminating meditation on vulnerability, masculinity, and ethics in the wake of the Reformation came from Spenser, a poet often associated with the brutalities of English rule in Ireland. The underside, or shadow, of violence in both the fantasie…
