Critique de Choice

More than a decade ago, Cheney's Marlowe's Counterfeit Profession: Ovid, Spenser, Counter-Nationhood (CH, Jun'98, 35-5498) broke new ground in Marlowe studies with its argument that Marlowe had patterned his poetic career on Ovid, that in doing so he consciously set himself in opposition to the Virgilian model followed by Edmund Spenser, and that his oeuvre was intended to counter Spenser's vision of English nationhood. In the present title, Cheney (Pennsylvania State Univ.) builds on and extends aspects of his earlier study, urging that Marlowe is not only "Ovidian" but also "Lucanian." Central to the argument is Marlowe's translation of the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia, a text important to English republican thought. Cheney maintains that a pioneering vision of English republicanism and liberty is manifest throughout Marlowe's poems and plays, that it affects Marlowe's understanding of authorship, and that he developed a poetics of the sublime in the service of his republican vision. Cheney's interweaving of these complex, contested topics will be important to all serious students of Marlowe and the English Renaissance. The book includes thorough notes and bibliography. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. B. E. Brandt South Dakota State University