Introduction

This book is the first extended critical study of the early modern poet Edmund Spenser from the perspective of animal studies. With an introduction situating Spenser in current discussions of animal life and literary form, and early modern animal studies, the book proceeds in four sections: “Animals and Cultural Practices”; “Animals, Slavery, and Race”; “Animals in Complaints”; “Readers and Poetics in The Faerie Queene”. Contributors discuss a broad range of Spenser’s work, putting it into dialogue with a number of early modern discourses, including politics, poetics, and natural history.