Marlowe's Counterfeit profession : Ovid, Spenser, counter-nationhood / Patrick Cheney.

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Cheney argues that Marlowe organizes his canon around an "Ovidian" career model, or cursus, which turns from amatory poetry to tragedy to epic. The first comprehensive reading of the Marlowe canon in over a generation.

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CHOICE Review

To be fully appreciated, this book requires a patient reader who can absorb Cheney's closely worded argument. Patience will be rewarded, however. Cheney (Pennsylvania State Univ.) argues that "Marlowe responds to Spenser's Virgilian career and its Renaissance version, the progression from pastoral to epic, with an Ovidian career modeled on the paradoxically oscillating pattern of three fixed genres: amatory poetry, tragedy, and epic." As Spenser sought to be the preeminent Virgilian poet of Elizabethan England centered on royal power, so Marlowe sought to be the preeminent Ovidian poet centered on individual power. As the copious notes indicate, other critics, including Cheney himself, have covered some of this ground before. However, no other study has discussed the Spenser-Marlowe connection in such depth and breadth. The only disappointment is the chapter "The Jew of Malta," which reads as if Cheney had to strain to make his argument valid. No serious student of the English Renaissance can afford to ignore this book, but only the most committed undergraduate will be able to take it on. L. L. Bronson; emeritus, Central Michigan University