ABSTRACT
Fervid reformers can attract followers with the sheer energy of their crusades. This chapter complements the previous one on Spenser’s literary contemporaries in Ireland by describing strains of cooperative, heroically pious and Spenserinspired reform in late-late-Tudor and Jacobean Irish literature. While evidence is scant, two examples from the early 1600s do not contradict what many critics have found, a growing “anxiety” of heroic purpose in Spenser’s poetic oeuvre, but rather demonstrate that Spenser’s immediate readers in Ireland may not have considered this his most valuable lesson taught.
