Edmund Spenser and Animal Life

This book is the first extended critical study of the early modern poet Edmund Spenser from the perspective of animal studies. With an introduction situating Spenser in current discussions of animal life and literary form, and early modern animal studies, the book proceeds in four sections: “Animals and Cultural Practices”; “Animals, Slavery, and Race”; “Animals in Complaints”; “Readers and Poetics in The Faerie Queene”. Contributors discuss a broad range of Spenser’s work, putting it into dialogue with a number of early modern discourses, including politics, poetics, and natural history.

Rachel Stenner is senior lecturer in Literature 1350–1660 at the University of Sussex. She has published on authors including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Caxton, George Gascoigne, Edmund Spenser, Alexander Pope, and William Baldwin. She is currently coediting Baldwin’s literary writings for publication with Boydell and Brewer.

Abigail Shinn is lecturer in Early Modern Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of Conversion Narratives in Early Modern England: Tales of Turning (Palgrave, 2018). She has published work in the fields of conversion studies, early modern popular culture, drama, and Spenser studies. She is currently working on a new book project: Spenser’s Popular Voices: Culture and Play.