Spenser's Popular Pastoral: Hodgepodges and Genre Trouble in The Shepheardes Calender

The article explores Spenser’s harnessing of popular culture in his Shepheardes Calender (1579). Highlighting references to almanacs, ballads and festival culture, and the poem’s use of regional and colloquial language, I argue that Spenser’s distinctly English pastoral relies on a commingling of classical precedent with popular motifs. The result is a cultural hodgepodge in which disparate literatures and voices combine to produce new effects, but whose constituent parts significantly remain legible to the reader. The Calender thus offers a playful, and provocative, reimagining of pastoral which advertises Spenser’s roving cultural palate and solidifies his claim to be England’s new poet.