Spenser's poetics of corporeality and its influence on Milton

Thesis

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between rhetoric, reading and fallen bodies—both natural and imagined—within Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and the influence of Spenser’s practice on his greatest ‘poetical son’, John Milton. It begins and ends with allegory, from the ‘continued allegory, or darke conceit’ through which Spenser examines the fallen world to Milton’s account of the genesis of allegory through the experience of the Fall.

A longstanding critical...

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Authors: Rao, N

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English