Complaints - (Manchester Spenser) by Richard Danson Brown & Elisabeth Chaghafi (Hardcover)

About the Book

A new edition of Spenser's Complaints, with unrivalled critical apparatus and a reassessment of these fascinating poems.

Book Synopsis

This is a new edition of Spenser's Complaints (1591), which provides unrivalled support in the reading and interpretation of these crucial poems. The introduction surveys the publication in terms of Spenser's life, his experiments with the complaint mode, the scandal of the original publication, and the creative-critical aspects of the poems. It also considers in depth the text of the poems and the evidence of its early reception through a thorough re-evaluation of surviving manuscript copies of the poems, all of which were copied from print versions. The edition provides new support for the reading of the translation Virgils Gnat in the shape of a new translation of the text Spenser used by Syrithe Pugh, supplemented by a commentary that considers his choices as a translator. The volume also includes Daphnaïda, a poem printed at the same time as the rest of the volume and responding to analogous literary stimuli.

From the Back Cover

'This is the edition of the Complaints for the foreseeable future. This book is essential for anyone interested in sixteenth century poetry.'
--William A. Oram, Smith College
'A go-to resource for Spenser's poetics, ambitions, contexts, career, and afterlife in scholarship. Brown and Chaghafi accomplish in spades what they set out to do: give us timely "new ways" to understand Spenser's Complaints.'
--Judith Owens, University of Manitoba
'Literary history may not have been kind to the Complaints, but Richard Danson Brown and Elisabeth Chaghafi certainly have been. This will be an edition for the ages.'
--Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex

Complaints (1591) was Edmund Spenser's most controversial work and was suppressed months after its first publication for the perceived attack on William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I's Lord Treasurer in Mother Hubberds Tale. Elsewhere in the volume, established political and social hierarchies are repeatedly challenged and overthrown: its poems record the wreckage of civilisations and aristocratic lineages, blame the nobility for the decline of learning, or invert traditional images of authority.

This edition breaks new ground in the framing of these poems as central to Spenser's achievement. The introduction presents complaint as an open mode, equally liable to subversion and quiescence. It explores the relationship between early printed editions and manuscript copies that proliferated after Complaints was censored. The edition situates the poems as key texts in the dissemination of Spenser's poetry within Elizabethan literary circles. Additionally, Syrithe Pugh's annotated translation of the pseudo-Virgilian Culex (the Latin original of Virgils Gnat) provides an unrivalled reassessment of Spenser as a translator, revitalising the sense of the volume's contribution to Elizabethan Classicism. Finally, the inclusion of the simultaneously published Daphnaïda highlights Spenser's continued experimentation with complaint.

Review Quotes

'This is the edition of the Complaints for the foreseeable future. It sums up our knowledge of these poems and their unstable mode, preparing its readers for future work. The text is freshly edited, and the extensive notes are wide-ranging, learned and helpful. After a nuanced discussion of the complaint-mode, the introduction shows how the volume responds to its historical, political and literary contexts, and how subsequent writers respond in turn to it. This book is essential for anyone interested in sixteenth century poetry.'
--William A. Oram, Smith College

'This new stand-alone scholarly edition of Edmund Spenser's Complaints, the first such one since 1928, is ample recompense for the long wait. Editors Richard Danson Brown and Elisabeth Chaghafi have furnished scholars with what should quickly become a go-to resource for not only the study of these "sundry small poemes", published in 1591, but also for Spenser's poetics, ambitions, contexts, career, and afterlife in scholarship. There is nothing small, in volume or in aims, about this edition. From their Introduction - lengthy, thorough but not dense, erudite yet engaging - to their copious annotations, which point readers in almost any interpretive, analytical direction they might wish to go, Brown and Chaghafi accomplish in spades what they set out to do: give us timely "new ways" to understand Spenser's Complaints.'
--Judith Owens, University of Manitoba

'Literary history may not have been kind to the Complaints, but Richard Danson Brown and Elisabeth Chaghafi certainly have been in producing the edition for which we have all been waiting. With an erudite introduction, reader-friendly text, and informative footnotes, this will be an edition for the ages. Complaints will no longer languish as a neglected byway in the Spenserian canon, but be central to debates about his poetic identity and status.'
--Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex

About the Author

Richard Danson Brown is Professor of English Literature at The Open University
Elisabeth Chaghafi is Lecturer in English at the University of Tübingen