Abstract

Sixteenth-century history may have been recorded most spectacularly in prestigious folio chronicles, but readers had more ready access to printed books that conveyed this history in epitome. This essay focuses on how Edmund Spenser (1552?–99) appropriated the rhetoric and form of such printed redactions in his rendition of fairy history found in book 2 of The Faerie Queene (1596). Through his abridged fairy chronicle, Spenser connects to a broadly defined reading public, emphasizes the deeds not only of kings but their imperial and civic deputies, and provides an alternative interpretive pathway through his poem.

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