This Stage-Play World: Texts and Contexts, 1580-1625 (OPUS)
by Julia Briggs
from Oxford University Press, USA
The later years of Elizabeth and the reign of James I were the age of Shakespeare, but the age also of Sidney, Spenser, and Donne, of fellow dramatists Marlowe, Jonson, and Webster, and of the prose writers Nashe, Bacon, and Burton. This book examines the social conditions that produced this uniquely dazzling array of talent, and relates them closely to the literature of the period. In this extensively revised new edition, Julia Briggs has included two new chapters which examine the role of women, the family, travelers and `outsiders' within the social and literary contexts of the period.
Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works (Penguin Classics)
by Aphra Behn
from Penguin Classics
The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton
by John Rogers
from Cornell University Press
The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
by Margaret Cavendish
from Penguin Classics
The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
by M. Lindsay Kaplan
from Cambridge University Press
Slander constitutes a central social, legal and literary concern of early modern England. M. Lindsay Kaplan reveals it to be an effective, if unstable, means of repudiating one's opposition, and shows how it was deployed by rulers and poets including Spenser, Jonson and Shakespeare. Her study challenges recent claims that the state controlled poets' criticisms by means of censorship, arguing instead that power relations between poets and the state are more accurately described in terms of the reversible charge of slander.
Slander constitutes a central social, legal and literary concern of early modern England. M. Lindsay Kaplan reveals it to be an effective, if unstable, means of repudiating one's opposition, and shows how it was deployed by rulers and poets including Spenser, Jonson and Shakespeare. Her study challenges recent claims that the state controlled poets' criticisms by means of censorship, arguing instead that power relations between poets and the state are more accurately described in terms of the reversible charge of slander.
Form and Reform in Renaissance England: Essays in Honor of Barbara Kiefer Lewalski
from University of Delaware Press
Major Tudor Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook
from Greenwood Press
The Tudor era (1485-1603) was one of the most culturally significant periods in history. Under three generations of Tudor rulers, the era witnessed the advent of humanism, the birth of the Reformation, and the rise of the British Empire. The literature of the period is marked by complexity of thought and form and reflects the political, religious, and cultural changes of the era. Within slightly more than a century, literature in English evolved from late medieval, mostly in Scotland, to high renaissance, mostly in England. Classical myth merged with Christian teaching, continental thinkers influenced English culture, and developments in science fostered the growth of early modern civilization. This reference book is a guide to the rich and diverse literature of Tudor England. Included are entries for nearly 100 people who wrote between 1485 and 1603. The entries are written by expert contributors and are arranged alphabetically to facilitate use. Some of the authors profiled are major canonical figures, such as Shakespeare, Spenser, and Donne. But the volume also includes a significant number of entries for women writers, whose work has been unjustly disregarded until recent years. While most of the authors were from England, the volume contains entries on figures such as Erasmus, who, though born in another country, wrote important works in England, and on writers such as Machiavelli, Calvin, Ariosto, and Tasso, whose works were almost immediately adopted, translated, or otherwise made part of Tudor culture. Each entry provides a brief biography, which is followed by a discussion of major works and themes, a review of the author's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I
from Wayne State University Press
An examination of the writings of James I and VI.
Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's Epitaphs on His Children, and Twelfth Night
by Stephen Booth
from University of California Press
Why do we value literature so? Many would say for the experience it brings us. But what is it about that experience that makes us treasure certain writings above others? Stephen Booth suggests that the greatest appeal of our most valued works may be that they are, in one way or another, nonsensical. He uses three disparate texts--the Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's epitaphs on his children, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night--to demonstrate how poetics triumphs over logic in the invigorating mental activity that enriches our experience of reading. Booth presents his case in a book that is crisply playful while at the same time thoroughly analytical. He demonstrates the lapses in logic and the irrational connections in examples of very different types of literature, showing how they come close to incoherence yet maintain for the reader a reliable order and purpose. Ultimately, Booth argues, literature gives us the capacity to cope effortlessly with, and even to transcend, the complicated and demanding mental experiences it generates for us.
This book is in part a witty critique of the trends--old and new--of literary criticism, written by an accomplished and gifted scholar. But it is also a testimony to the power of the process of reading itself. Precious Nonsense is certain to bring pleasure to anyone interested in language and its beguiling possibilities.
James I and the Politics of Literature
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