Ruth McAdams
Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Fellow in the Humanities
2005—2006 Forum on Word and Image
Ruth McAdams
English, German, Music
College '06
Jonson and Spenser: English in Dialogue with the Past
Ben Jonson’s play Poetaster and Edmund Spenser’s pastoral poems The Shepheardes Calender are two English Renaissance texts acutely aware of and concerned with their place in the literary canon. How did these two legendary Renaissance writers conceive of the classical Latin tradition and use it as a counterpoint to their own understanding of the rapidly expanding English literary works of their day?