The Manchester Spenser David, Donne, and Thirsty Deer

Essays by Anne Lake Prescott on French and English early modern writers and cultures, from Du Bellay to Spenser, Ronsard to Donne. For fifty years Anne Lake Prescott has been a central force in the study of Anglo-French literary relations in the early modern period. Her work anticipates recent scholarship on history, religion and gender. This selection of her essays combines a tight focus on textual and historical particularities with an expansive sense of context—what she calls the 'cultural forcefield surrounding and sustaining the poem.'The essays connect different fields. They consider the reformation as it affects ideas of poetic vocation and the sense of time, and show how the Biblical David became a model for Renaissance poets and also for slandered courtiers. Several essays deal with Edmund Spenser’s epic and his sonnet sequence, and many bring understudied texts to illuminate Donne, Ronsard, the Sidneys and other early modern writers. Three little-known French poems with lesbian speakers illuminate Donne’s “Sappho to Philaenis”, while the language of ruin in Mary Sidney’s psalm translations prepare for her treatment of religious renewal. An introduction by Ayesha Ramachandran, Susan Felch and Susannah Monta places Prescott’s work in the context of early modern scholarship.The essays collected here—penetrating, generous and witty—use close reading to illuminate the large cultural issues of the early modern period. For nearly half a century Anne Lake Prescott has been a force and an inspiration in Renaissance studies. A force, because of her unique blend of learning and wit and an inspiration through her tireless encouragement of younger scholars and students. Her passion has always been the invisible bridge across the Channel: the complex of relations, literary and political, between Britain and France. The essays in this long-awaited collection range from Edmund Spenser to John Donne, from Clément Marot to Pierre de Ronsard. Prescott has a particular fondness for King David, who appears several times; and the reader will encounter chessmen, bishops, male lesbian voices and Roman whores. Always Prescott’s immense erudition is accompanied by a sly and gentle wit that invites readers to share her amusement. Reading her is a joyful education.