Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which ...
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This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers worked, to the idiom within which these writers worked, to the individual authors in historical context link to develop a powerful explanation of how and why the epic changed from Homer to Milton. The book shows how the romance hero, whose prime motives are love and pity, emerged from a sequence of reinterpretations of Homer that runs from Virgil's Aeneid and its medieval redactions to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Relating the emergence of the romance hero to the digressive, decentred form of romance, the book explores how later writers sought to control the digressive energies of the romance hero and to create a language and form of heroism more like those of classical epic. This analysis leads to a fresh account of the way in which Renaissance writers responded to, and moved tentatively towards, the writing of the past. Arguing against the view that Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton were engaged in a battle for mastery over their predecessors, the book reveals how they transformed interpretations of past epic in order to draw closer to the narrative forms of their classical forebears.
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This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers worked, to the idiom within which these writers worked, to the individual authors in historical context link to develop a powerful explanation of how and why the epic changed from Homer to Milton. The book shows how the romance hero, whose prime motives are love and pity, emerged from a sequence of reinterpretations of Homer that runs from Virgil's Aeneid and its medieval redactions to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Relating the emergence of the romance hero to the digressive, decentred form of romance, the book explores how later writers sought to control the digressive energies of the romance hero and to create a language and form of heroism more like those of classical epic. This analysis leads to a fresh account of the way in which Renaissance writers responded to, and moved tentatively towards, the writing of the past. Arguing against the view that Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton were engaged in a battle for mastery over their predecessors, the book reveals how they transformed interpretations of past epic in order to draw closer to the narrative forms of their classical forebears.
David Norbrook
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247189
- eISBN:
- 9780191697647
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247189.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
This edition of this text provides an extensive introduction which gives an overview of developments in methodology and research since the first edition of this book was published in ...
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This edition of this text provides an extensive introduction which gives an overview of developments in methodology and research since the first edition of this book was published in 1984, responds to some criticisms, and points the way to further inquiry. Footnotes have been updated to take account of the current state of knowledge, and a chronological table has been provided for ease of reference. The book brings out the range and adventurousness of early modern poets' engagements with the public world. The first part of the book establishes the more radical currents of thought shaping Renaissance poetry: civic humanism and apocalyptic Protestantism. The book also shows how such leading Elizabethan poets as Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, often seen as conservative monarchists, responded powerfully though sometimes ambivalently to more radical ideas. A chapter on Fulke Greville shows how that ambivalence reaches an extreme in some remarkable poetry.
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This edition of this text provides an extensive introduction which gives an overview of developments in methodology and research since the first edition of this book was published in 1984, responds to some criticisms, and points the way to further inquiry. Footnotes have been updated to take account of the current state of knowledge, and a chronological table has been provided for ease of reference. The book brings out the range and adventurousness of early modern poets' engagements with the public world. The first part of the book establishes the more radical currents of thought shaping Renaissance poetry: civic humanism and apocalyptic Protestantism. The book also shows how such leading Elizabethan poets as Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, often seen as conservative monarchists, responded powerfully though sometimes ambivalently to more radical ideas. A chapter on Fulke Greville shows how that ambivalence reaches an extreme in some remarkable poetry.
Tom W. N. Parker
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184430
- eISBN:
- 9780191674259
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184430.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The structure of Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is governed by a distinctive and complex set of proportions, found also in the sonnet sequences of Fulke Greville and Robert Sidney ...
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The structure of Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is governed by a distinctive and complex set of proportions, found also in the sonnet sequences of Fulke Greville and Robert Sidney written under its influence. For all these works to be ordered around the same set of proportions indicates a remarkable degree of careful planning and precise execution, and in turn affects their meaning. The tremendous effort of constructing the sequences according to intricate mathematical patterns suggests that the patterns themselves held a particular significance, one that requires investigation for the light it throws on these authors' intentions in composition. This study reveals cosmological ideas implicit in the form of Astrophil and Stella, ideas which not only undermine much of the romantic and biographically-based criticism of the sequence, but call into question how we should read the sonnet sequences that were influenced by Sidney, both within and beyond his immediate circle. As well as those of Greville and Robert Sidney, the book looks in detail at the sonnet sequences of Giordano Bruno, Mary Wroth, Henry Constable, Barnabe Barnes, and Michael Drayton, to determine the extent to which the sonnet vogue of the 1590s incorporated Sidney's broader cosmological concerns.
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The structure of Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is governed by a distinctive and complex set of proportions, found also in the sonnet sequences of Fulke Greville and Robert Sidney written under its influence. For all these works to be ordered around the same set of proportions indicates a remarkable degree of careful planning and precise execution, and in turn affects their meaning. The tremendous effort of constructing the sequences according to intricate mathematical patterns suggests that the patterns themselves held a particular significance, one that requires investigation for the light it throws on these authors' intentions in composition. This study reveals cosmological ideas implicit in the form of Astrophil and Stella, ideas which not only undermine much of the romantic and biographically-based criticism of the sequence, but call into question how we should read the sonnet sequences that were influenced by Sidney, both within and beyond his immediate circle. As well as those of Greville and Robert Sidney, the book looks in detail at the sonnet sequences of Giordano Bruno, Mary Wroth, Henry Constable, Barnabe Barnes, and Michael Drayton, to determine the extent to which the sonnet vogue of the 1590s incorporated Sidney's broader cosmological concerns.
Chris Stamatakis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199644407
- eISBN:
- 9780191738821
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644407.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
This study reappraises Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1504-1542) as a poetic innovator from the literary avant-garde of early Tudor England. It discusses Wyatt’s self-conscious reflections on the ...
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This study reappraises Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1504-1542) as a poetic innovator from the literary avant-garde of early Tudor England. It discusses Wyatt’s self-conscious reflections on the writing process, and his awareness of how words are turned in new directions over the course of a text’s production, transmission and reception. Where previous studies have aligned Wyatt’s poetry with his courtly biography, this book examines the reading practices of his Tudor audiences and editors, and considers the types of textuality shown by the manuscript collections of his verse. By setting Wyatt’s writings in the context of sixteenth-century theories of language and literary practice, and by drawing on early Tudor educational treatises, rhetorical handbooks, and manuals of courtly behaviour, this monograph examines the rhetoric of rewriting that colours Wyatt’s texts. Repeatedly, his writings invite readers to ‘turn’ or perform the word—to draw out something that lies inert within it. These rescriptive habits often serve to sustain an intimate dialogue between writers and readers. Special attention is paid to the materiality of Wyatt’s texts: the margins around and the interlinear spaces within his poems are regularly filled with new text, supplied by Wyatt himself or by his copyists, editors and readers. Chapters are devoted to the types of rewriting found in each of Wyatt’s main genres: Plutarchian essays; forensic apologias; psalm paraphrases; letters and verse epistles, and lyrics or ‘balets’. Two appendices offer further detail about patterns of manuscript transmission. Throughout, this study argues that reading often shaded into writing (and rewriting) in the early sixteenth century, and that acts of apparent copying often transformed texts inventively.
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This study reappraises Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1504-1542) as a poetic innovator from the literary avant-garde of early Tudor England. It discusses Wyatt’s self-conscious reflections on the writing process, and his awareness of how words are turned in new directions over the course of a text’s production, transmission and reception. Where previous studies have aligned Wyatt’s poetry with his courtly biography, this book examines the reading practices of his Tudor audiences and editors, and considers the types of textuality shown by the manuscript collections of his verse. By setting Wyatt’s writings in the context of sixteenth-century theories of language and literary practice, and by drawing on early Tudor educational treatises, rhetorical handbooks, and manuals of courtly behaviour, this monograph examines the rhetoric of rewriting that colours Wyatt’s texts. Repeatedly, his writings invite readers to ‘turn’ or perform the word—to draw out something that lies inert within it. These rescriptive habits often serve to sustain an intimate dialogue between writers and readers. Special attention is paid to the materiality of Wyatt’s texts: the margins around and the interlinear spaces within his poems are regularly filled with new text, supplied by Wyatt himself or by his copyists, editors and readers. Chapters are devoted to the types of rewriting found in each of Wyatt’s main genres: Plutarchian essays; forensic apologias; psalm paraphrases; letters and verse epistles, and lyrics or ‘balets’. Two appendices offer further detail about patterns of manuscript transmission. Throughout, this study argues that reading often shaded into writing (and rewriting) in the early sixteenth century, and that acts of apparent copying often transformed texts inventively.
Tony Hunt
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159148
- eISBN:
- 9780191673528
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159148.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Villon studies have traditionally emphasized the documentary and didactic value of the Testament, concentrating on problems of historical referentiality. It is assumed that the work has ...
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Villon studies have traditionally emphasized the documentary and didactic value of the Testament, concentrating on problems of historical referentiality. It is assumed that the work has a significant autobiographical element and that it has much to tell us about life in fifteenth-century Paris. The Testament has thus been avidly exploited by historians of the period and its interest as a document is well-established. This study concentrates exclusively on the textual strategies of the Testament, in particular on rhetorical techniques involving dialogue and irony. The book views the Testament as ironic from start to finish, and the main objects of the irony are identified as language and authority. The dissolution of meaning, authority, and even authorial identity are seen to be the principal results of the poet's rhetoric.
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Villon studies have traditionally emphasized the documentary and didactic value of the Testament, concentrating on problems of historical referentiality. It is assumed that the work has a significant autobiographical element and that it has much to tell us about life in fifteenth-century Paris. The Testament has thus been avidly exploited by historians of the period and its interest as a document is well-established. This study concentrates exclusively on the textual strategies of the Testament, in particular on rhetorical techniques involving dialogue and irony. The book views the Testament as ironic from start to finish, and the main objects of the irony are identified as language and authority. The dissolution of meaning, authority, and even authorial identity are seen to be the principal results of the poet's rhetoric.
