Paola Baseotto’s important study stresses death’s ubiquity as a concept in Spenser’s works, always present in intimate relation to life, whether in the recurring, disturbing, figures of “deathwishers,” characters who seem to belong as much to the dead as the living, or as a perspective, challenging both characters and readers, to reassess their own apprehension of death and the way in which it shapes our lives. Baseotto’s analyses of Spenser’s “deathwishers” and “living dead” focus our attention on some of the most compelling and distinctive images in Spenser’s work, illuminating our understanding of their power and significance through a combination of detailed attention to language and context, and a thoroughly informed understanding of contemporaneous religious ideas and attitudes. Through close and sensitive study of Spenser’s writing from The Shepheardes Calender, through The Faerie Queene, to such little discussed poems as The Ruines of Time and Daphnaida in Complaints, Baseotto establishes the centrality, the subtlety and the distinctiveness of Spenser’s figuring of death. Baseotto’s study offers us a new and illuminating understanding of an aspect of Spenser’s writing that is fundamental, but which has been strangely neglected in recent decades. – Elizabeth Heale (Senior Lecturer, University of Reading)Author of The Faerie Queene: A Reader’s Guide (Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1999) and Autobiography and Authorship in Renaissance Verse (Palgrave, 2003).Exhaustive and succinct, rigorous and readable, Baseotto examines Spenser’s obsession with death, and shows us what a remarkable, independent and surprisingly modern sensibility he had. Here is a Spenser who engages our sympathies with unexpected intensity.– Tim Parks (Lecturer, IULM University, Milan) Novelist and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
Paola Baseotto’s important study stresses death’s ubiquity as a concept in Spenser’s works, always present in intimate relation to life, whether in the recurring, disturbing, figures of “deathwishers,” characters who seem to belong as much to the dead as the living, or as a perspective, challenging both characters and readers, to reassess their own apprehension of death and the way in which it shapes our lives. Baseotto’s analyses of Spenser’s “deathwishers” and “living dead” focus our attention on some of the most compelling and distinctive images in Spenser’s work, illuminating our understanding of their power and significance through a combination of detailed attention to language and context, and a thoroughly informed understanding of contemporaneous religious ideas and attitudes. Through close and sensitive study of Spenser’s writing from The Shepheardes Calender, through The Faerie Queene, to such little discussed poems as The Ruines of Time and Daphnaida in Complaints, Baseotto establishes the centrality, the subtlety and the distinctiveness of Spenser’s figuring of death. Baseotto’s study offers us a new and illuminating understanding of an aspect of Spenser’s writing that is fundamental, but which has been strangely neglected in recent decades. – Elizabeth Heale (Senior Lecturer, University of Reading)Author of The Faerie Queene: A Reader’s Guide (Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1999) and Autobiography and Authorship in Renaissance Verse (Palgrave, 2003).Exhaustive and succinct, rigorous and readable, Baseotto examines Spenser’s obsession with death, and shows us what a remarkable, independent and surprisingly modern sensibility he had. Here is a Spenser who engages our sympathies with unexpected intensity.– Tim Parks (Lecturer, IULM University, Milan) Novelist and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
When the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the Russian Federation and the newly independent republics of the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia engaged in redefining their national identity in a challenging regional and global context. The stances and policies towards the minorities living in these countries became part of the striving towards national independence and identity formation. Despite vastly different post-Soviet nation-building trajectories, the development and implementation of state policies towards minorities had similar relevance and importance across the region. Thirty years after the end of the USSR what is the situation of minorities and minority issues in the countries that emerged from that multi-ethnic state?How have the former republics – including Russia dealt with their minorities and minority affairs? To what protection and rights are minority communities entitled to? Studies of the dissolution of the USSR and of nation-building in the independent post-Soviet states have flourished over the past decades. However, despite the relevance of the theme, there is a dearth of specialist publications which address the many issues related to minority communities in the post-Soviet space. This volume attempts to fill this gap by providing a collection of essays covering some of the most relevant aspects of the contemporary status and situation of minorities in the area.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.