Spenser portrays the last four turbulent months of Edmund Spenser’s life as he and his family are caught up in the Munster Revolt in Ireland in 1598. As he fights to survive the invasion of his home, his life as a refugee in Cork, and his return to England, his memories and thoughts trace through the sweep of his life, he continues to work on the last book of The Fairie Queene, and a treatise he writes about the Irish rebellions turns out to have far-reaching consequences.
Written in the form of his own Spenserian stanzas, Spenser evokes the sense of the Elizabethan Period and is Book Two of the epic trilogy On the River of Time, taking us to the second time- period of the three thousand years spanned in the trilogy and the second figure of the three—Odysseus, the mythical hero, in ancient Greece; Spenser, the poet, in Ireland, and Archer, the fictional renegade actor/director in present-day Canada.
Through their journeys and struggles we explore the nature of human perceptions and drives, our use of the Mask in our lives, encounters with the Other, acceptance or denial of the consequences of our actions, and the continuity over the millennia of the universal human attributes.
Reviews
“Congratulations on another coup d’etat, an extraordinary feat of delicately balancing the two masks, with sympathy for both. I am impressed by the flow from present to past, and enjoyed the evocation of the two nations, geographically and psychically. I look forward to book three!”
– Ann Saddlemyer, Master Emerita, Scholar of Irish Theatre and Poetry & Master of Massey College
Author(s)
Carl Hare
Carl Hare in his long career has been a professor, actor, director, playwright, and poet. Odysseus, Book One of his trilogy On the River of Time, was published in paperback in the spring of 2017, and Spenser, Book Two of the trilogy, was published in paperback in 2018.