Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity

by Willy Maley

Salvaging Spenser is a major new work of literary revision which places Edmund Spenser's corpus, from The Shepheardes Calender to A View of the Present State of Ireland, within an elaborate cultural and political context. The author refuses to engage in the sterile opposition between apology and attack that has marred studies of Spenser and Ireland, seeking neither to savage nor to save, but rather, in a project of critical recovery, to salvage Spenser from the wreckage of Irish history.

Hardcover

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

William Timothy "Willy" Maley is a Scottish literary critic, editor, teacher and writer. He was Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow, and founder, with Philip Hobsbaum, of Glasgow's Creative Writing programme. He retired from the university in 2024. He is a Fellow of the English Association (FEA). He writes on early modern English literature from Spenser to Milton, and on modern Scottish and Irish writing.