About this Journal

The Spenser Review is an online journal published three times each year, supported by the International Spenser Society. The Review publishes book reviews, essay-reviews and writing of various kinds on topics in and around the work of Edmund Spenser and Renaissance scholarship more generally. The writing that appears in the journal ranges from historically and textually focused scholarship to a wide array of theoretical, experimental, collaborative, exploratory, and playful forms of writing. The mission of the journal is to complement, reflect and provoke exciting work being undertaken on (and adjacent to) Spenser's writings and the work of other Renaissance figures, and the changing intellectual, pedagogical, cultural and institutional structures in which they are read.


The Spenser Review was founded in 1969–70 by Elizabeth Bieman and A. Kent Hieatt, and was originally published from the University of Western Ontario, with the endorsement of the Renaissance Society of America. Until 2001 its title was Spenser Newsletter. In 2013, David Lee Miller at the University of South Carolina saw the journal from print to digital publication. In 2013, the International Spenser Society restructured the journal’s management and format, and it has continued to develop under subsequent editors, becoming a widely recognized hub for a wide variety of Spenserian and other Renaissance engagements.

  • Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

    Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry


Guest edited by Richard Danson Brown, Andrew Hadfield, and Andrew Wadoski

Article


"Bad Intro": Letter from the Editors

"Bad Intro": Letter from the Editors

Andrew Wadoski, Andrew Hadfield and Richard Danson Brown

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Sidney's Bad Poetry

Sidney's Bad Poetry

Brad Tuggle

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Bad Spenser? A Dialogue

Bad Spenser? A Dialogue

Andrew Hadfield and Richard Danson Brown

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

"Minor" Epic as "Bad" Poetry

"Minor" Epic as "Bad" Poetry

Jane Grogan

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

To Fashion a Bad Poem: Faunus and Misconstruction

To Fashion a Bad Poem: Faunus and Misconstruction

Andrew Wadoski

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Better than Bad Words

Better than Bad Words

Jeff Dolven

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Bad Poets Fail to “Compasse”?

Bad Poets Fail to “Compasse”?

Bethany Dubow

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Wanton Music and Wanton Toys: Sidney and Bad Poetry

Wanton Music and Wanton Toys: Sidney and Bad Poetry

Matthew Harrison

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

A ‘Debauchery of Judiciousness’ Directed at The Faerie Queene, Book IV Canto iv

A ‘Debauchery of Judiciousness’ Directed at The Faerie Queene, Book IV Canto iv

Katharine Addis

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Book Review


Hugh Grady, Shakespeare’s Dialectic of Hope: From the Political to the Utopian

Hugh Grady, Shakespeare’s Dialectic of Hope: From the Political to the Utopian

Jessica Chiba

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Marion Turner, The Wife of Bath: A Biography

Marion Turner, The Wife of Bath: A Biography

Cathy Hume

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

John Creaser, Milton and the Resources of the Line

John Creaser, Milton and the Resources of the Line

Nicholas McDowell

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Benjamin C. Parris, Vital Strife: Sleep, Insomnia, and the Early Modern Ethics of Care

Benjamin C. Parris, Vital Strife: Sleep, Insomnia, and the Early Modern Ethics of Care

Cassie M. Miura

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Rebecca Bushnell, The Marvels of the World: An Anthology of Nature Writing Before 1700

Rebecca Bushnell, The Marvels of the World: An Anthology of Nature Writing Before 1700

Ashley Sarpong

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Todd Andrew Borlik, Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain

Todd Andrew Borlik, Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain

Charlotte Scott

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Kristen Poole and Owen Williams, eds., Early Modern Histories of Time: The Periodizations of Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century England

Kristen Poole and Owen Williams, eds., Early Modern Histories of Time: The Periodizations of Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century England

Abigail Shinn

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Joshua R. Held, Bold Conscience: Luther to Shakespeare to Milton

Joshua R. Held, Bold Conscience: Luther to Shakespeare to Milton

Ceri Sullivan

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry

Yulia Ryzhik, ed., Spenser and Donne: Thinking Poets

Yulia Ryzhik, ed., Spenser and Donne: Thinking Poets

Leah Veronese

2024-03-29 Volume 54 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spenser and Bad Poetry