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[grassfed]

TLS The Times (of London) Literary Supplement June 9, 2006
"Radical Spenser" by Bart Van Es

“The act of destruction was driven by Edmund Spenser’s (1552–1613) profound fear of the cultural ‘other’. The poet worshipped an English imperial state, and hated all that threatened its strident Protestant values. As a colonial official in Ireland, Spenser found this threat embodied in a recalcitrant Irish populace. In his political writing he demanded its absolute surrender and, where this was not forthcoming, advocated a policy of slaughter, burning, and deliberate mass starvation. Beautiful Ireland must be made terrible in order to be reformed.”