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 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

    Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser


Guest edited by Bethany Dubow and Michael Ullyot

Article


“Algorithmic Spenser”: Letter from the Editors

“Algorithmic Spenser”: Letter from the Editors

Bethany Dubow and Michael Ullyot

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Searching and Stumbling: Serendipity, Allegory, and Spenser’s Recommender Algorithm

Searching and Stumbling: Serendipity, Allegory, and Spenser’s Recommender Algorithm

Archie Cornish

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

“blotte,” “iott,” “gobbet,” “lumpe”: Algorithmic Uncertainty in The Faerie Queene

“blotte,” “iott,” “gobbet,” “lumpe”: Algorithmic Uncertainty in The Faerie Queene

Chloe Holmquist

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

A World of Woven Glass: Tapestries, Mirrors, and Pattern in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Book III

A World of Woven Glass: Tapestries, Mirrors, and Pattern in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Book III

Tyler Dunston

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Reading The Faerie Queene Backwards and Forwards

Reading The Faerie Queene Backwards and Forwards

Penny McCarthy

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Networking Spenser in Ireland

Networking Spenser in Ireland

Evan Bourke

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Afterword: Recounting the Uncountable

Afterword: Recounting the Uncountable

Colin Burrow

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Book Review Essay


Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney, eds., The Oxford History of Poetry in English, Vol. 4: Sixteenth-Century British Poetry

Catherine Bates and Patrick Cheney, eds., The Oxford History of Poetry in English, Vol. 4: Sixteenth-Century British Poetry

Adhaar Noor Desai

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma, eds., The Arthur of the Low Countries: The Arthurian Legend in Dutch and Flemish Literature

Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma, eds., The Arthur of the Low Countries: The Arthurian Legend in Dutch and Flemish Literature

Elsa Strietman

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Book Review


Victoria Moul, A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England

Victoria Moul, A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England

Ian Calvert

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Paul Joseph Zajac, Emotion and the Self in English Renaissance Literature: Reforming Contentment

Paul Joseph Zajac, Emotion and the Self in English Renaissance Literature: Reforming Contentment

Bradley J. Irish

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Richard Meek, Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Richard Meek, Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Toria Johnson

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Simon Jackson, George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture

Simon Jackson, George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture

Anna Lewton-Brain

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Peter K. Andersson, Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man

Peter K. Andersson, Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man

Hollyann Pye

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Alison Knight, The Dark Bible: Cultures of Interpretation in Early Modern England

Alison Knight, The Dark Bible: Cultures of Interpretation in Early Modern England

M. Elise Robbins

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Devani Singh, Chaucer’s Early Modern Readers: Reception in Print and Manuscript

Devani Singh, Chaucer’s Early Modern Readers: Reception in Print and Manuscript

Robert Stretter

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Ian Smith, Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

Ian Smith, Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

Lydia Valentine

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser

Brian Cummings, Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book

Brian Cummings, Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book

Conor Wilcox-Mahon

2024-08-20 Volume 54 • Issue 2 • 2024 • Algorithmic Spenser