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Transforming Desire

Erotic Knowledge in Books III and IV of The Faerie Queene

Lauren Silberman

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ca. 40,99

University of California Press img Link Publisher

Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik / Englische Sprachwissenschaft / Literaturwissenschaft

Beschreibung

The Faerie Queene anticipates postmodernist concerns with destabilizing language, and Lauren Silberman's stimulating study of Books III and IV of the poem proceeds from the assumption that Spenser has something important to say to us in the late twentieth century. In these books, Spenser exposes fictions of total control for what they are—fictions. The text affirms the value of risk and improvisation over the temptation to seek guarantees. The books examine the role of desire in moving us to function in an uncertain world and tempting us to foreclose that uncertainty by strategies that seek to frame knowledge through total mastery of it. 

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Schlagwörter

allegorical devices, improvisation, verse form, court favor, epic poems, flowers, virtue, spenserian stanza, stimulating study, poetry, edmund spenser, the faerie queene, historical, knights, nature, uncertain world, allegory, erotic knowledge, history, desire, postmodernist literary criticism, queen elizabeth i, royal patronage, temptation, charming, risk, literary theory, destabilizing language, poems, fictions of total control, romance