The Faerie Queene: A Reader's Guide

Another review of this book (by tepi) is one of the worst I've read. Take these two sentences, for instance: 1.) "If, as people like Heale would have us think, Spenser had written a versified theological treatise, it would long since have been trashed along with all the other theological lumber of his era."That might make one wonder why people still read Milton. Or Petrach. Or Dante. Or the Psalms. Or Job. 2.) "And ultimately, as with any poem, the only real meaning it can have for you is the one that you yourself give it, a personal and individual meaning, a meaning that will slowly take shape as you expose yourself to more and more of Spenser's gorgeous Pagan lines."If the reader is the one bringing the meaning to the poem, then tepi can't say Spencer's lines are Pagan; the meaning is only Pagan if the reader brings that meaning himself. Heale would have just as much right to give it a theological meaning, as he does a Pagan one. But reading isn't about reading your own interpretation into a work. Literature is a form of communication, from author to reader. Meaning is the author's intent. Books like Heale's can help us understand more clearly what certain authors, far removed from today, are trying to tell us.