Spenser and the Numbers of Time

by Alastair Fowler

Includes black & white illustrations and 16 pages of black & white plates. Explores the formal structure of Edmund Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.'

Genres: Literary Criticism

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Alastair David Shaw Fowler CBE FBA (b. 1930) is a Scottish literary critic and editor, an authority on Edmund Spenser, Renaissance literature, genre theory, and numerology. Fowler was educated at the University of Edinburgh, M.A. (1952). He was subsequently awarded an M.A. (1955), D.Phil. (1957) and D.Litt. (1962) from Oxford. As a graduate student at Oxford, Fowler studied with C.S. Lewis, and later edited Lewis's Spenser's Images of Life.

Fowler was junior research fellow at Queen's College, Oxford (1955 - 59). He also taught at Swansea (1959 - 61), and Brasenose College, Oxford (1962 - 71). He was Regius Professor of literature at the University of Edinburgh (1972 - 84) and also taught intermittently at universities in the United States, including Columbia (1964) and the University of Virginia (1969, 1979, 1985–98).

Fowler is known for his editorial work. His edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost, part of the Longman poets series, has some of the most scholarly and detailed notes on the poem and is widely cited by Milton scholars.

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowing, and salutory. I read this book as a young poet and it had a revolutionary effect on my aesthetics and the direction of my craft. The coded complexity of Spenser's poetic structures as mapped out by Fowler-- their charged, interwoven meanings and symbolism-is almost unbelievable. This book led me to understand the precise technical ways in which poetry makes magic, the ways it changes our minds in ways that directly change our bodies, hearts, wills, and spirits.

[Candy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing.