A Fig for Fortune by Anthony Copley

Anthony Copleys A Fig for Fortune was the first major poetic response to Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene. Written by a Catholic Englishman with an uneasy relationship to the English regime, A Fig for Fortune offers a deeply contestatory, richly imagined answer to sixteenth-century Englands greatest poem. Through its sophisticated response to Spenser, A Fig for Fortune challenges a contemporary literary culture in which Protestant habits of thought and representation were gaining dominance. This book comprises the poems first scholarly edition. It offers a carefully annotated edition of the 2000-line poem, an overview of English Catholic history in the sixteenth century, a full biography of Anthony Copley, an assessment of his engagement with Spensers Faerie Queene, and information on the books early print history. Extensive support for student readers makes it possible to teach Copleys poem alongside The Faerie Queene for the first time. -- .