Editorial Notes
All texts included in this site--in English, French, and Italian--represent the early modern spelling in which the texts originally appeared. This may lead to some initial difficulty in comprehension for the user of the site, but the preservation of original spelling is important for two reasons: First, in Spenser's case orthographic decisions represent neither mere idiosyncrasy nor cultural convention but the aesthetic aim of giving his works a deliberately antiquated "feel"; second, rendering the source materials with which Spenser worked in the form Spenser encountered them is essential to careful study of the poet's habits as translator and transformer of the work of his predecessors. The editors of the forthcoming edition of The Complete Works Of Edmund Spenser (Complete Works) from Oxford University Press have made the transcriptions for the poems from A Theatre For Voluptuous Wordlings and Complaints included in this site. Alongside the print edition of the Complete Works, the editors are assembling a digital archive of Spenser's prose pieces and poetry for use by students and scholars.
As noted in the Searchable Texts section of this site, the XML-encoded transcriptions of A Theatre and Complaints in their entirety are based on the SGML-encoded transcriptions created by the Early English Books Online project. The transcriptions of the "Canzone of Visions" derive from Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparsa and Other Lyrics translated and edited by Robert M. Durling and published by Harvard U P: Cambridge in 1976. The transcriptions of Du Bellay's "Songe" derive from Les Antiquites De Rome; Les Regrets edited by F. Joukovsky and published by Garnier-Flammarion in 1971. Finally, the transcripts of Marot's poems are from Œuvres complètes de Clément Marot published by Garnier frères in 1921 and edited by Abel Grenier.