Shakespeare, Spenser and the Matter of Britain - Hardcover

by A. Hadfield (Author)

Shakespeare, Spencer and the Matter of Britain examines the work of two of the most important English Renaissance authors in terms of the cultural, social and political contexts of early modern Britain. Andrew Hadfield demonstrates that the poetry of Edmund Spenser and the plays of William Shakespeare demand to be read in terms of an expanding Elizabethan and Jacobean culture in which a dominant English identity had to come to terms with the Irish, Scots and Welsh who were now also subjects of the crown.

Author Biography

ANDREW HADFIELD is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Shakespeare and Renaissance Political Culture (2003) and Edmund Spenser's Irish Experience (1997), as well as numerous other studies of Renaissance literature and culture. He is the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Spenser (2001), and has taught at universities in Ireland, Wales, England and the USA.