Introduction Ruin or Monument? Cultivating Optimism in Early Modern Ireland

To judge from the vandalized and obscure state of his castle ruins at Kilcolman, in northern County Cork, Ireland, proper attention to the material history of Edmund Spenser’s colonial life has yet to catch up with the energy put into theorizing about the same [Figure 1.1]. A more pastoral yet tragic, brutal yet optimistic, romantic and complicated place does not exist for those who admire renaissance literature.