"A View of the State of Ireland

About the Book

Edmund Spenser's A View of the State of Ireland is an exemplary text that participates in several historical moments. Since its first publication in 1633 it has been read as an anti-Irish treatise. As a critical intervention in the public sphere by a major canonical author it has been drawn upon by some of the most important writers of subsequent ages, from Milton through to Wordsworth and Heaney.The View has formed a key text in discussion of modern Ireland by distinguished critics such as Edward Said, Stephen Greenblatt and Declan Kiberd. This new edition of a founding document of English colonial culture promises to bring a compelling and controversial text to a larger audience than has hitherto been possible. As a highly influential colonial discourse and an exemplary exercise in the Renaissance dialogue form it merits the attention of scholars working across a range of disciplines and periods - in the Renaissance, in Irish studies, in the new British history, and in post-colonial theory. In literary studies, the View is now especially valued for the key it provides to the allegorical treatment of Ireland in Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene. In this new edition, aimed at securing for this vital document the wide readership it deserves, the editors offer the first published text, as edited by Sir James Ware (1633). Ware's preface and notes are supplemented with an authoritative introduction, discussing the View's reception, relating it to Spenser's corpus as a whole, and summarizing recent scholarship. The editors also provide a bibliography of criticism, and detailed notes designed to help the student.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements. Framework of Events. Introduction. Map. A View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise. Between Eudoxus and Irenaeus. Notes. Appendix One: Wares Notes. Appendix Two: Guide for Further Reading. Appendix Three: Passages Omitted from Wares Text. Glossary. Index.

About the Author :
Andrew Hadfield is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the author of Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance (1994). He and Willy Maley co-edited Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534-1660 (1993), with Brendan Bradshaw.

Willy Maley is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Apart from his collaborative volume with Maley and Bradshaw, he is also the author of Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (1997) and A Spenser Chronology (1994).

Review :
"It will certainly be good to have an easily available and affordable version of the Vewe, and this volume has several virtues which will recommend it to students and teachers of Spenser and related topics. It will certainly further Spenser studies, especially among undergraduates, to have this user-friendly edition available, and the editors and publisher are to be congratulated on its appearance." Spenser Newsletter 28, 2 (1997) "This timely edition of Spenser's infamous prose treatise about Ireland... which .includes a judicious introductory essay outlining the current state of critical debate about Spenser, a chronology of his life, a glossary, and an annotated bibliography, goes a long way towards redressing ill-informed suppositions about this sixteenth-century dialogue. The edition has the further virtue that it does not overwhelm the text with commentary or annotation. This deft, informative and user-friendly edition of A View of the State of Ireland persuasively urges us not just to read Spenser's text in the first instance but to give full consideration to the historical and political contexts and epistemological frameworks within which readings of this highly problematical but central colonial treatise are constructed." Irish University Review, Spring/Summer "The appearance of a new paperback edition of Ware's version of the Vewe, carefully prepared for a non-specialist audience by Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley, is bound to raise the temperature of this debate. Mindful that other scholars might complain that Ware's text is corrupt, Hadfield and Maley have overcome this problem by including an appendix of those passages that were omitted from Spenser's text by Ware. This is arguably the most important part of their attractive and accessible little book, and it should guarantee that their edition will become a standard reference for academics as well as general readers. Ireland "The introduction as a whole is a model of clarity, balance and compression which will admirably fulfil the editors aim of bringing Spenser's View to a far wider readership and they have provided also a critical guide to further reading which, both in its comprehensiveness and its detachment from the scholastic wranglings that have so often disfigured Spenser commentary, is exemplary." Irish Studies Review