Spenser's famous flight : a Renaissance idea of a literary career

In Spenser's famous Flight, Patrick Cheney challenges the received wisdom about the shape and goal of Spenser's literary career. He contends that Spenser's idea of a literary career is not strictly the convential Virgilian pattern of pastoral to epic, but a Christian revision of that pattern in light of Petrarch and the Reformation. Cheney demonstrates that, far from changing his mind about his career as a result of disillusionment, Spenser embarks upon and completes a daring progress that secures his status as an Orphic poet. In October, Spenser calls his idea of a literary career the 'famous flight.' Both classical and Christian culture has authorized the myth of the winged poet as a primary myth of fame and glory. Cheney shows that throughout his poetry Spenser relies on an image of flight to accomplish his highest goal. Contents 9 Preface 11 Texts and Abbreviations 17 Introduction: Scanning the Famous Flight 31 1. Displaying the Fluttering Wing: The Literary Career of the New Orphic Poet 53 2. Pastoral, or Proving Tender Wings: Acquiring Vatic Authority in The Shepheardes Calender 107 3. Epic, or Making the Greater Flight: Enacting Vatic Virtue in Spenser's Allegory of Ralegh and Elizabeth 141 4. Love Lyric, or Sporting the Muse in Pleasant Mew: Renewing Vatic Virtue in Amoretti and Epithalamion 179 5. Hymn, or Flying Back to Heaven Apace: Returning to the Vatic Source in Fowre Hymnes 225 Conclusion: Rescanning the Famous Flight in Prothalamion 255 Notes 277 Works Cited 327 General Index 361 Spenser Index 385