Exemplary Spenser analyses the reading experience of The Faerie Queene, as it is construed through the didactic poetics espoused in the Letter to Ralegh. Grogan pays close attention to Spenser's interrogation of visual as well as literary paradigms of knowledge and moral learning, and to his influences, including Sidney, Plutarch, and, importantly, Xenophon.

Jane Grogan was the NUI Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the National University of Ireland, Galway from 2006-08. She has recently been appointed Lecturer in English Literature, c. 1550-1750 at University College Dublin.

Contents: Introduction: misreading Spenser; To fashion a gentleman or noble person: Xenophon and English Protestant poetics; Spenser's 'gallery of pictures'; 'Bad art' or good readers? Spenserian ekphrasis; Making a virtue of courtesy; Epilogue: civil conversation after Cyrus; Bibliography; Index.