Spenser's secret career
By: Richard Rambuss.
Series: Cambridge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ;; 3
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 164
Subjects: Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599 -- Political and social views; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 16th century; Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Courts and courtiers in literature; Secretaries -- England -- Biography; Secrecy in literature
Description: Edmund Spenser (c.1552-99) conducted two careers at once: a celebrated poet, he also pursued a lifelong career as secretary to various political and ecclesiastical figures. Richard Rambuss's book explores how this latter career, usually allotted only cursory mention in accounts of Spenser's professional ambitions, informed his poetic career. Working from the fact that contemporary bureaucratic treatises defined the management of secrets as the central occupation of secretaryship, this study provides a careerist context for the attention to secrecy throughout Spenser's poetry. It takes issue with prevailing new historicist accounts which see Spenser's careerism as shaped entirely by a single-minded pursuit of laureateship along a Virgilian route from pastoral to epic. Spenser's Secret Career presents an alternative picture, arguing that for Spenser the manipulation of secrets - his own and others' - provided a strategy of self-promotion for both of his careers.

In doing so, this study also considers secrecy in relation to Renaissance formations of power, gender, and subjecthood.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-158) and index.