　No single poem gives a better insight into the Elizabethan world of ceremony and passion than Spenser's Epithalamion. This is a text of pivotal importance historically, as well as of high human value. One is glad, therefore, to see it interpreted for Japanese readers with such care and attention to detail. Not the least of the virtues of the present edition is that it deals throughout with the problems of local meaning in a meticulously thorough way. One may hope that it will have a wide readership, not only among students approaching the poem for the first time but also among experienced Spenserians.

*Professor Fowler is a professor emeritus of the Edinburgh University. He is the author of Milton: Paradise Lost. Longman Annotated English Poets (1988) and many other books.