Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland

Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

by Christopher Highley

Christopher Highley's book explores the most serious crisis the Elizabethan regime its attempts to subdue and colonize the native Irish. Through a range of literary representations from Shakespeare and Spenser, and contemporaries such as John Hooker, John Derricke, George Peele and Thomas Churchyard he shows how these writers produced a complex discourse about Ireland that cannot be reduced to a simple ethnic opposition. Highley argues that the confrontation between an English imperial presence and a Gaelic "other" was a profound factor in the definition of an English poetic self.

264 pages, Paperback

First published December 11, 1997