Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland (1596): Re-Appraised

Spenser’s View has, for centuries, been treated variously as a trove of prejudiced antiquarian lore useful for disparaging Irish people at moments of crisis, and as a store house of evidence that the English government engaged upon an Irish genocide in Elizabethan times.

This lecture offers a radical re-appraisal of the manuscript copy that Spenser left to posterity in 1596, and asks what motivated Spenser to take time from poetic composition to write this prose dialogue, what circumstances influenced his composition of different passages, and what sources and methods he used to underpin the ideas advanced by his interlocutors?

The speaker for this event is Nicholas Canny.

Note: Booking essential.