The Shepheardes Calender

Publication Date: November 2, 2010

Chapter: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century

"The Shepherd's Calendar" is pretty weak. Spenser was doing a style pastiche of Chaucer, but even in the 1500s, the language was already outdated and generally panned by most critics. The poetry was actually so difficult to parse - even to the 16th century ear - that Spenser had to write his own extensive footnotes to each poem. The Norton helpfully mentions that the footnotes often just made it worse. Go figure.

Author: Edmund Spenser • Year: 1579 • Info: Wikipedia

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Lit Brick is a comic started by Jodie Troutman in an effort to read the entire Norton Anthology of English Literature. Having eventually succeeded in that goal, it now features comics about all manner of random literature. For more of Jodie's work, visit longtalljodie.com!