Spenser's supreme fiction : Platonic natural philosophy and The faerie queene / Jon A. Quitslund.

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Quitslund argues that Spenser sought authority for his poem by grounding its narrative in a divinely ordained natural order, intelligible in terms derived from the ancient sources of poetry and philosophy.

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CHOICE Review

Writing in or around 1628, Kenelm Digby, one of the earliest commentators on Edmund Spenser, noted that the poet was "a constant disciple in Plato's School." But the standard modern monograph, Robert Ellrodt's Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (1960), downplays the contribution of distinctively Renaissance versions of Platonism to Spenser's Faerie Queene. Quitslund's important and learned study sets the record straight, showing the vital role played in Spenser's romance epic by such thinkers as Ficino, Leone Ebreo, and Louis Le Roy. Quitslund (emer., George Washington Univ.) writes especially well on this last, who clearly merits a great deal more attention than he has received as a commentator on Plato. Traditional scholars will be delighted with Quitslund's expositions of these Renaissance texts, and poststructuralists will welcome his demonstration of how Judith Butler's gender theory fits Spenser's epic like a glove. Spenser's Supreme Fiction has been four decades in the making, as its command of the subject manifests. The book is rich in passing comments that will start even veteran scholars rethinking The Faerie Queene. A must for the collection of any college where Spenser is taught beyond snippets in beginner surveys. E. D. Hill Mount Holyoke College