Plato Baptized places a variety of Spenser's texts in the history of speaking, writing, reading, and interpreting which stretches from Plato's mentors, Pythagoras and Socrates, to the present. Expansive and formidable in its complexity of argument, yet constantly lucid, the book presents its own perceptive readings of Spenser and his literary forebears as instances of 'participatory mimesis' - a process Elizabeth Bieman identifies as central in the tradition of biblicized Platonism and Neoplatonism which informed Spenser's habits of thinking.

The first five chapters offer a...

Plato Baptized places a variety of Spenser's texts in the history of speaking, writing, reading, and interpreting which stretches from Plato's mentors, Pythagoras and Socrates, to the present. Expansive and formidable in its complexity of argument, yet constantly lucid, the book presents its own perceptive readings of Spenser and his literary forebears as instances of 'participatory mimesis' - a process Elizabeth Bieman identifies as central in the tradition of biblicized Platonism and Neoplatonism which informed Spenser's habits of thinking.

The first five chapters offer a...