Reading and Not Reading The Faerie Queene

The four-hundred-year story of readers'' struggles with a famously unreadable poem—and what they reveal about the history of reading and the future of literary studies

"I am now in the country, and reading in Spencer''s fairy-queen. Pray what is the matter with me?" The plaint of an anonymous reader in 1712 sounds with endearing frankness a note of consternation that resonates throughout The Faerie...