A Literal Reading of Spenser's Book of Holinesse (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780981947648)

Spenser's introductory Book of Holinesse is frequently cited by scholars as holding the key to all else that happens in The Faerie Queene, but no one has ever been able to exactly define what is going on in that book. William Heise believes this is because Spenser was writing for a Reformation audience whose ideals have been replaced in the modern era by the Enlightenment's more scientific approach to experience. This causes modern critics to translate Spenser's presumably naïve allegorical poetry into more precise scientific terms in the belief that modern science is generally able to make sense of poetry in ways that Reformation thinkers never could. However, Heise points out that Enlightenment thinkers based their science on René Descartes belief that he had discovered the means of combining natural ontology with the human being's epistemology in a single place, an achievement that that eluded not only previous modern humanists but ancient philosophers, as well. That fact caused the modern world to leap past the ancients in science, but it also caused them to leave behind some of the older philosophers that had played such a large role in pre-Enlightenment philosophical systems. One of the most important of these was Saint Augustine, who believed that there was a necessary breach in rational experience that only faith could supply. By reasserting the priority of Augustine over Descartes in Spenser's pre-Enlightenment thought, Heise is able to make sense of several cruces in The Faerie Queene. But he does more than that. He challenges the modern critical assumption of priority over Reformation thought in an era in which Enlightenment thought is sporting paradoxes that, as Augustine predicted 1,000 years before the advent of Descartes' perfect philosophy, are not possible to overcome through reason alone.

Author: William E. Heise
ISBN-10: 0981947646
ISBN-13: 9780981947648
Publisher: Jackson Graham LLC
Language: English
Published: 09/07/2012
Pages: 520
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.52lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.05d