Gordon Teskey, Professor of English at Harvard University, is a preeminent scholar of Spenser and Milton. He is editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost and author of Allegory and Violence, Delirious Milton (Harvard), and The Poetry of John Milton (Harvard), which won the Christian Gauss Award for literary criticism. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Humanities Center, is an Honored Scholar of the Milton Society of America, and delivered the Kathleen Williams Lecture on Spenser at the International Spenser Society in 2017.
A tour de force and makes what is surely the best case for reading
Spenser: that it is his open thinking that matters, not the
particular substance of the poem. It will surely set the standard
for future readings of Spenser’s work.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Teskey demonstrates [that] those willing to look past the poem’s
daunting reputation and its bristling armature of scholarly
impedimenta might discover a lifelong—indeed,
life-sustaining—obsession.
*New York Review of Books*
Refigures the poet as an improvisatory artist whose work is most
valuable as a continuous practice of thinking about aesthetic,
moral, and philosophical issues…At its best, Spenserian Moments
cogently captures the experience of reading the poem for those of
us who love it.
*Claremont Review of Books*
Teskey has a deep understanding of Spenser’s learning, language,
and sense of tradition…Well worth reading.
*Renaissance and Reformation*
Teskey’s is among the strongest of this year’s Spenserian
voices…Persuades by elegance and power of statement…There are
wonderful things here.
*Studies in English Literature*
If any book can restore Spenser to his rightfully prominent place
in studies of Renaissance literature—and poetic and philosophical
history more broadly—this is the one. Gordon Teskey makes the
strongest case in decades for Spenser’s brilliance and importance
to both literary history and contemporary theory. The elegance and
wit of this book, and the sheer force of intellect on display, will
draw in any reader who has the good fortune to open it.
*Melissa E. Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania*
Gordon Teskey is among the most consistently surprising and
interesting literary critics writing today, about any period or
genre, and Spenser has always been at the heart of his concerns.
Spenserian Moments will take its place on the shelf of necessary
books about the poet’s poet.
*Jeff Dolven, Princeton University*
Magisterial…The volume confirms Teskey as the most intellectually
bold, expansive, and creative critic of Spenser currently
writing…Spenserian Moments conveys less a method of reading than a
way of being in the company of Spenser’s poetry that learns from
and replicates some of its features as Teskey describes them…My
admiration for Teskey’s work does not imply agreement at every
turn: his unparalleled talent for concise critical characterization
and aphoristic contrast demands and spurs engagement rather than
acceptance; his openness to thought provokes open thought.
*Milton Quarterly*
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