Cultural semiotics, Spenser, and the captive woman
By: Louise Schleiner.
Publisher: Lehigh University Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Bethlehem [Pa.]; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
Subjects: Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599 -- Characters -- Women.; Semiotics and literature -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Women and literature -- England -- History -- 16th century.; Sex role in literature.
Description: In Cultural Semiotics, Spenser, and the Captive Woman, author Louise Schleiner uses concepts from A. J. Greimas to analyze The Shepheardes Calender (1579) as a discourse and as a definitive text for the Elizabethan "political unconscious," in the sense of Fredric Jameson, who also drew on Greimas.

The book demonstrates sociolinguistic patterns at work in Elizabethan ideological conflicts, at a level that shows how those patterns were related to the energies of people's sexuality and their political and religious commitments.

Through explaining this libidinal and political functioning of the Calender, in its time and for Spenser as a new poet, the book identifies an "ideologeme," widely observable in England of the 1580s and 1590s: that of the captive/capturing woman, a unit of interfactional and interclass discourse.

As well as discussing Spenser, two chapters include examples from music and balladry and use the "captive woman" construct to analyze material from such figures as Lyly, Shakespeare, the composer John Dowland, the Countess of Pembroke, and Queen Elizabeth I.

A concluding chapter on the Calender's proferred text-readership game shows Spenser evolving his ordering of the twelve eclogues through inventing a strategic frame for them, an implied story that both celebrates and leaves behind his passionate friendship with Gabriel Harvey.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.