Sir Philip Sidney: the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia: The New Arcadia, Second Revised Edition(The Manchester Spenser)

Modern readers mostly know Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia in its complete ‘old’ version, but it is the New Arcadia (published in 1590), a revised version of his pastoral romance The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, that was the most influential and most widely imitated literary text of the sixteenth century. Preserving the basic plot, New Arcadia adds further narrative strands and introduces ambitious revisions, demonstrating Sidney’s brilliance as a prose writer. This edition of the New Arcadia is the first in nearly four decades, preserving the text of Victor Skretkowicz’ celebrated 1987 edition, whilst making the text accessible through modern spelling and supplementing it with a substantially expanded scholarly commentary, an updated glossary, and additional long notes on the book’s history and Sidney’s use of rhetorical devices, as well as his contributions to the English language.

Table of Contents:
General Preface Preface to the 1987 Edition References and Abbreviations General Introduction Textual Introduction List of Sigla The History of Arcadia in Print Arcadia Editions Before 1700 Rhetorical Figures in the New Arcadia The New Arcadia The First Book The Second Book The Third Book Appendices I. Eclogues from the 1590 edition II. Dedication from the Old Arcadia III. Evidence against T IV. New Arcadia – Rhetorical Figures Commentary The First Book The Second Book TheThird Book The Eclogues Glossary Index of Characters Index of Other Names Index of Places Index of First Lines of Poems Genealogical Tables General Index to Introduction and Commentary

About the Author :
Victor Skretkowicz joined the Department of English at the University of Dundee in 1978, and remained there until 2009. Elisabeth Chaghafi is a Lecturer in English at Tbingen University. J. B. Lethbridge is a Lecturer emeritus at Tbingen University.

Review :
'This volume is the new standard.' —Choice Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association 'This new edition belongs in the collections of every college and university library in the English-speaking world and on the study shelves of every scholar who works with Sidney or with the countless authors whose writing has been enlivened and enlightened by his brilliance.' —Sidney Journal ‘The long-awaited new standard edition of the New Arcadia is now out, and it is magnificent… the most reliable and illuminating edition of Sidney’s revised Arcadia ever undertaken.’ —Donald Stump, Sidney Journal