Katharine Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199252534
- eISBN:
- 9780191719226
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252534.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication ...
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The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication is married with the outlandish adventures of young lovers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture combined. Fictions of Authorship re-examines these narratives in the light of their creators' developing understanding of the implications of authorship. Christened the ‘University Wits’ by an earlier generation of critics, Lyly, Greene, and Lodge were themselves displaced persons, attempting to shape careers in the new and often despised medium of print. Their attempts to demonstrate their learning while appealing to as wide a readership as possible led them to manufacture multiple authorial personae, and to reflect critically and sometimes outrageously on the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. Their texts are closely interwoven with each other. The authors competed to set new literary trends, often by overgoing the attempts of their peers. Apparently opposed literary modes were mixed, resulting in the placement of a persona like Lyly's Euphues in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Meanwhile the relationship between writer and reader became increasingly complex, as the authors began to tailor their fictions to an ever expanding market. By providing close and comparative readings of these short fictions, Fictions of Authorship charts the authors' increasing disillusionment with the confines of romance, but also their popular success. As they assimilated and domesticated the experiments of writers like Harvey, Sidney and Spenser, they created an irreverent alternative canon of ‘English literature'.Less
The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication is married with the outlandish adventures of young lovers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture combined. Fictions of Authorship re-examines these narratives in the light of their creators' developing understanding of the implications of authorship. Christened the ‘University Wits’ by an earlier generation of critics, Lyly, Greene, and Lodge were themselves displaced persons, attempting to shape careers in the new and often despised medium of print. Their attempts to demonstrate their learning while appealing to as wide a readership as possible led them to manufacture multiple authorial personae, and to reflect critically and sometimes outrageously on the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. Their texts are closely interwoven with each other. The authors competed to set new literary trends, often by overgoing the attempts of their peers. Apparently opposed literary modes were mixed, resulting in the placement of a persona like Lyly's Euphues in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Meanwhile the relationship between writer and reader became increasingly complex, as the authors began to tailor their fictions to an ever expanding market. By providing close and comparative readings of these short fictions, Fictions of Authorship charts the authors' increasing disillusionment with the confines of romance, but also their popular success. As they assimilated and domesticated the experiments of writers like Harvey, Sidney and Spenser, they created an irreverent alternative canon of ‘English literature'.
Robert H. F. Carver
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199217861
- eISBN:
- 9780191712357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217861.003.0011
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter explores Apuleian influences in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Upon his death in 1586, Sidney left behind two versions of Arcadia: the so-called Old Arcadia, a pastoral tragicomedy ‘in ...
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This chapter explores Apuleian influences in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Upon his death in 1586, Sidney left behind two versions of Arcadia: the so-called Old Arcadia, a pastoral tragicomedy ‘in five books or acts’ completed in about 1581; and a so-called New Arcadia, a much revised and expanded version in two and a half books which was abandoned in 1584. It is argued that the revision manifests contradictory impulses — an attempt to Heliodoreanize the work, to render it more serious, edifying, and stable, coupled with a centrifugal tendency to explore more dynamic possibilities of narrative and characterization (including those provided by The Golden Ass). The paradox is that the very qualities — the moral and imaginative dynamics — which invest the New Arcadia with such interest, also account for its formal failure. But that failure was as productive as it was inevitable. The Arcadia is one of the earliest examples of comparative criticism of the ancient novels and it serves as a case study of the sorts of tensions and possibilities facing early-modern writers of fiction.Less
This chapter explores Apuleian influences in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Upon his death in 1586, Sidney left behind two versions of Arcadia: the so-called Old Arcadia, a pastoral tragicomedy ‘in five books or acts’ completed in about 1581; and a so-called New Arcadia, a much revised and expanded version in two and a half books which was abandoned in 1584. It is argued that the revision manifests contradictory impulses — an attempt to Heliodoreanize the work, to render it more serious, edifying, and stable, coupled with a centrifugal tendency to explore more dynamic possibilities of narrative and characterization (including those provided by The Golden Ass). The paradox is that the very qualities — the moral and imaginative dynamics — which invest the New Arcadia with such interest, also account for its formal failure. But that failure was as productive as it was inevitable. The Arcadia is one of the earliest examples of comparative criticism of the ancient novels and it serves as a case study of the sorts of tensions and possibilities facing early-modern writers of fiction.
H. K. Woudhuysen
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129660
- eISBN:
- 9780191671821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Philip Sidney's birth on 30 November 1554 was recorded in two medieval volumes, a Psalter and a Book of Hours. His final illness and last moments were narrated in an anonymous account which survives ...
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Philip Sidney's birth on 30 November 1554 was recorded in two medieval volumes, a Psalter and a Book of Hours. His final illness and last moments were narrated in an anonymous account which survives in two slightly different manuscript versions. During his lifetime, the books and some of the letters he wrote circulated in handwritten copies. Yet with the possible exception of two sonnets, he never saw any of his writings in print. During much of his life, and even more after his death, Sidney was an important heroic and romantic figure. His patronage was widely sought and the evidence strongly suggests that he was generous with his rather short purse. A traveler, a diplomat, and eventually a military leader abroad, where he was received like a prince, he was also a courtier at home, playing his part in fashionable chivalric entertainments and in royal progresses around the kingdom.Less
Philip Sidney's birth on 30 November 1554 was recorded in two medieval volumes, a Psalter and a Book of Hours. His final illness and last moments were narrated in an anonymous account which survives in two slightly different manuscript versions. During his lifetime, the books and some of the letters he wrote circulated in handwritten copies. Yet with the possible exception of two sonnets, he never saw any of his writings in print. During much of his life, and even more after his death, Sidney was an important heroic and romantic figure. His patronage was widely sought and the evidence strongly suggests that he was generous with his rather short purse. A traveler, a diplomat, and eventually a military leader abroad, where he was received like a prince, he was also a courtier at home, playing his part in fashionable chivalric entertainments and in royal progresses around the kingdom.
H. K. Woudhuysen
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129660
- eISBN:
- 9780191671821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Among major literary works of the English Renaissance the composition, circulation, and publication in manuscript and print of the Arcadia are unusually well documented. Although they differ on ...
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Among major literary works of the English Renaissance the composition, circulation, and publication in manuscript and print of the Arcadia are unusually well documented. Although they differ on fundamental points, the textual investigations of Ringler, Robertson, and Skretkowicz point to the care with which Sidney wrote his work and then published it. Above all they reveal what must have been his deliberate decision to allow the Old Arcadia to be copied by professional scribes and others for reading and use among his friends and family. When it comes to the New Arcadia, Sidney's intentions are even harder to fathom, since he left the work unfinished. The fact that the Cambridge Manuscript contains the only extant handwritten text of the New Arcadia could be taken to mean that Sidney did not want it to circulate in manuscript form.Less
Among major literary works of the English Renaissance the composition, circulation, and publication in manuscript and print of the Arcadia are unusually well documented. Although they differ on fundamental points, the textual investigations of Ringler, Robertson, and Skretkowicz point to the care with which Sidney wrote his work and then published it. Above all they reveal what must have been his deliberate decision to allow the Old Arcadia to be copied by professional scribes and others for reading and use among his friends and family. When it comes to the New Arcadia, Sidney's intentions are even harder to fathom, since he left the work unfinished. The fact that the Cambridge Manuscript contains the only extant handwritten text of the New Arcadia could be taken to mean that Sidney did not want it to circulate in manuscript form.
Lorna Hutson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199212439
- eISBN:
- 9780191707209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212439.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter argues that recent critiques of older mimetic approaches to Shakespeare have tended to neglect the contribution of narrative coherence or plot to mimesis. Following Ricoeur's exposition ...
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This chapter argues that recent critiques of older mimetic approaches to Shakespeare have tended to neglect the contribution of narrative coherence or plot to mimesis. Following Ricoeur's exposition of the quasi-equivalence between plot and mimesis proposed by Aristotle's Poetics, it proposes that dramatic mimesis is, more than has been realized, an effect of narrative coherence. It then goes on to show the extent to which the pedagogy of narrative was, in the 16th century, based on classical judicial rhetoric, which emphasized the importance of narrative in constituting the facts as plausible by making them coherent and circumstantially vivid, or ‘evident’. Finally, it offers a number of dramatic examples that show how vivid but questionable narratives of staged and unstaged events contribute powerfully to the mimetic illusion of prose narrative or drama.Less
This chapter argues that recent critiques of older mimetic approaches to Shakespeare have tended to neglect the contribution of narrative coherence or plot to mimesis. Following Ricoeur's exposition of the quasi-equivalence between plot and mimesis proposed by Aristotle's Poetics, it proposes that dramatic mimesis is, more than has been realized, an effect of narrative coherence. It then goes on to show the extent to which the pedagogy of narrative was, in the 16th century, based on classical judicial rhetoric, which emphasized the importance of narrative in constituting the facts as plausible by making them coherent and circumstantially vivid, or ‘evident’. Finally, it offers a number of dramatic examples that show how vivid but questionable narratives of staged and unstaged events contribute powerfully to the mimetic illusion of prose narrative or drama.
Patricia A. Cahill
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199212057
- eISBN:
- 9780191705830
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212057.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter turns from abstraction to the matter of fleshly bodies and traumatic representation. It shows how, long before 19th‐century discourses of shellshock, the Elizabethan theater represented ...
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This chapter turns from abstraction to the matter of fleshly bodies and traumatic representation. It shows how, long before 19th‐century discourses of shellshock, the Elizabethan theater represented the experience of battlefield injury as an occurrence so overwhelming that it could not readily be assimilated or even seen. The chapter explores the staging of repetitive images of trauma in The Trial of Chivalry, an anonymous drama that takes it pseudo‐historical plot from some episodes in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Exploring the play's representation of injury, this chapter shows how the culture's gender politics enable a woman's disfigured face to become legible as a kind of stand‐in for a soldier's injuries.Less
This chapter turns from abstraction to the matter of fleshly bodies and traumatic representation. It shows how, long before 19th‐century discourses of shellshock, the Elizabethan theater represented the experience of battlefield injury as an occurrence so overwhelming that it could not readily be assimilated or even seen. The chapter explores the staging of repetitive images of trauma in The Trial of Chivalry, an anonymous drama that takes it pseudo‐historical plot from some episodes in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Exploring the play's representation of injury, this chapter shows how the culture's gender politics enable a woman's disfigured face to become legible as a kind of stand‐in for a soldier's injuries.
Alice Fox
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129882
- eISBN:
- 9780191671876
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129882.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses various Elizabethan literatures that struck Virginia Woolf as a writer. Woolf's interest in Renaissance literature, as well as her search for the writer's aims and techniques, ...
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This chapter discusses various Elizabethan literatures that struck Virginia Woolf as a writer. Woolf's interest in Renaissance literature, as well as her search for the writer's aims and techniques, are looked upon closely. Among the writers she read and analysed thoroughly are Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Phillip Sidney, Greene, Ford, and several other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Of the several works she read, she took great interest in Sidney's Arcadia, Greville's Life, and those of Harvey, Raleigh, and Bacon, with which she trained her eyes to notice faults, as well as exemplary prose and verse in the techniques of the writers. Also included in the chapter are discussions on Woolf's reactions to drama, prose, and the poetry of the Renaissance period, wherein she measured these Elizabethan plays against her assumption of a good play, prose, and poetry.Less
This chapter discusses various Elizabethan literatures that struck Virginia Woolf as a writer. Woolf's interest in Renaissance literature, as well as her search for the writer's aims and techniques, are looked upon closely. Among the writers she read and analysed thoroughly are Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Phillip Sidney, Greene, Ford, and several other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Of the several works she read, she took great interest in Sidney's Arcadia, Greville's Life, and those of Harvey, Raleigh, and Bacon, with which she trained her eyes to notice faults, as well as exemplary prose and verse in the techniques of the writers. Also included in the chapter are discussions on Woolf's reactions to drama, prose, and the poetry of the Renaissance period, wherein she measured these Elizabethan plays against her assumption of a good play, prose, and poetry.
Joseph E. Skinner
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199793600
- eISBN:
- 9780199979677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199793600.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter leaps backward and forward through imagined space, like the mind of the archetypal well-traveled man in Homer’s Iliad or, perhaps more famously, the mind of Odysseus, who “saw the cities ...
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This chapter leaps backward and forward through imagined space, like the mind of the archetypal well-traveled man in Homer’s Iliad or, perhaps more famously, the mind of Odysseus, who “saw the cities of many men and knew their minds.” Its purpose in doing so is simply to populate the ethnographic imaginaire, highlighting the breadth and diversity of knowledge relating to a variety of foreign peoples in the years prior to the Persian Wars. Taking Homeric imaginings as a starting point (Cyclopes/Phaeacians), it swoops in from the northernmost margins of the oikoumenē, traversing in turn the imagined territories of the Hyperboreans, one-eyed Arimaspians, Scythians, and Amazons, before encountering the many tribes of Thrace From here it turns to western Asia Minor and the Levant (Phoenicians/Lydians) before relocating once more to the sun-scorched realm of the Ethiopians. It then moves on to Egypt, followed by brief excurses on past and present populations variously associated with lands less foreign: the (seemingly ubiquitous) descendants of Pelasgos and the inhabitants of Arcadia. By compiling what is effectively a gazetteer of some of the major categories of foreign peoples of whom knowledge is attested, the chapter paves the way for discussion of the interlocking systems of knowledge and understanding that provided both the material and the means by which groups and individuals were able to “position” selectively either themselves or others.Less
This chapter leaps backward and forward through imagined space, like the mind of the archetypal well-traveled man in Homer’s Iliad or, perhaps more famously, the mind of Odysseus, who “saw the cities of many men and knew their minds.” Its purpose in doing so is simply to populate the ethnographic imaginaire, highlighting the breadth and diversity of knowledge relating to a variety of foreign peoples in the years prior to the Persian Wars. Taking Homeric imaginings as a starting point (Cyclopes/Phaeacians), it swoops in from the northernmost margins of the oikoumenē, traversing in turn the imagined territories of the Hyperboreans, one-eyed Arimaspians, Scythians, and Amazons, before encountering the many tribes of Thrace From here it turns to western Asia Minor and the Levant (Phoenicians/Lydians) before relocating once more to the sun-scorched realm of the Ethiopians. It then moves on to Egypt, followed by brief excurses on past and present populations variously associated with lands less foreign: the (seemingly ubiquitous) descendants of Pelasgos and the inhabitants of Arcadia. By compiling what is effectively a gazetteer of some of the major categories of foreign peoples of whom knowledge is attested, the chapter paves the way for discussion of the interlocking systems of knowledge and understanding that provided both the material and the means by which groups and individuals were able to “position” selectively either themselves or others.
H. K. Woudhuysen
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129660
- eISBN:
- 9780191671821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This is a book about manuscripts; about the men and women who wrote, read, bought, sold, presented, and received them. It is also a book about paper, pen, and ink, and a book about those for whom ...
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This is a book about manuscripts; about the men and women who wrote, read, bought, sold, presented, and received them. It is also a book about paper, pen, and ink, and a book about those for whom writing by hand was a necessary and profitable part of their lives. Much of the writing described here took place at London, in the City and at court. This book began out of an interest in the text of Sir Philip Sidney's works, especially of his poems. The research for this book includes study of the production and circulation of manuscripts in England between the accession of Queen Elizabeth I and the eve of the Civil War. A comparative approach looking at manuscript publication throughout Europe during the Renaissance might provide clues for the student of English manuscripts.Less
This is a book about manuscripts; about the men and women who wrote, read, bought, sold, presented, and received them. It is also a book about paper, pen, and ink, and a book about those for whom writing by hand was a necessary and profitable part of their lives. Much of the writing described here took place at London, in the City and at court. This book began out of an interest in the text of Sir Philip Sidney's works, especially of his poems. The research for this book includes study of the production and circulation of manuscripts in England between the accession of Queen Elizabeth I and the eve of the Civil War. A comparative approach looking at manuscript publication throughout Europe during the Renaissance might provide clues for the student of English manuscripts.
H. K. Woudhuysen
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129660
- eISBN:
- 9780191671821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter concludes the survey of men and women who lived wholly or partly by their pens, who hoped to win patronage through them, or who copied works as part of their researches, or simply for ...
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This chapter concludes the survey of men and women who lived wholly or partly by their pens, who hoped to win patronage through them, or who copied works as part of their researches, or simply for pleasure, by examining what is known and what can be deduced about the business of copying manuscripts for money. The sale of written texts, off the peg and made to measure, by stationers, booksellers, and scriveners provide examples of the practice certainly survive from after the Restoration. With regards to the earlier period, between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Civil War, this chapter considers the question of manuscripts for sale by attempting to address several issues. It also considers the work of the scribes Ralph Crane and Richard Robinson.Less
This chapter concludes the survey of men and women who lived wholly or partly by their pens, who hoped to win patronage through them, or who copied works as part of their researches, or simply for pleasure, by examining what is known and what can be deduced about the business of copying manuscripts for money. The sale of written texts, off the peg and made to measure, by stationers, booksellers, and scriveners provide examples of the practice certainly survive from after the Restoration. With regards to the earlier period, between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Civil War, this chapter considers the question of manuscripts for sale by attempting to address several issues. It also considers the work of the scribes Ralph Crane and Richard Robinson.
Hester Lees-Jeffries
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230785
- eISBN:
- 9780191696473
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230785.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
One of Philip Sidney's most striking additions to his revised Arcadia is his description of a not dissimilar setting to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili's Fountain of Adonis, and his adaptation of ...
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One of Philip Sidney's most striking additions to his revised Arcadia is his description of a not dissimilar setting to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili's Fountain of Adonis, and his adaptation of Colonna's fountain acts as a sophisticated and suggestive frame to the subsequent action and concerns of his romance in ways that have hitherto not been elucidated. The figure of Aeneas and its associations in Sidney's other give garden and gallery, and the ensuing action of the romance, provide a particular moral colour. The qualities Sidney attributes to Aeneas are those desirable in any exemplary ruler and in any epic hero: the appearance of Aeneas so near the beginning of the Arcadia, albeit as a baby, transformed into a fountain in a garden of love that has been taken straight out of a romance, must surely be interpreted with reference to Sidney's treatment of him in the Defence.Less
One of Philip Sidney's most striking additions to his revised Arcadia is his description of a not dissimilar setting to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili's Fountain of Adonis, and his adaptation of Colonna's fountain acts as a sophisticated and suggestive frame to the subsequent action and concerns of his romance in ways that have hitherto not been elucidated. The figure of Aeneas and its associations in Sidney's other give garden and gallery, and the ensuing action of the romance, provide a particular moral colour. The qualities Sidney attributes to Aeneas are those desirable in any exemplary ruler and in any epic hero: the appearance of Aeneas so near the beginning of the Arcadia, albeit as a baby, transformed into a fountain in a garden of love that has been taken straight out of a romance, must surely be interpreted with reference to Sidney's treatment of him in the Defence.
David Norbrook
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247189
- eISBN:
- 9780191697647
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247189.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
Edmund Spenser dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to Sir Philip Sidney, a man who was acclaimed by his contemporaries as the ideal courtier, the embodiment of chivalric magnanimity and gracefulness ...
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Edmund Spenser dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to Sir Philip Sidney, a man who was acclaimed by his contemporaries as the ideal courtier, the embodiment of chivalric magnanimity and gracefulness of speech. It was especially appropriate to dedicate a pastoral work to him because Sidney himself assumed the persona of the ‘shepherd knight’ in tournaments at court and was the author of pastoral poetry. Sidney's major pastoral work, Arcadia, has much in common with the atmosphere of Italian courtly pastoral life. Sidney tells how two heroic princes, Musidorus and Pyrocles, arrive in Arcadia in disguise and fall in love with Pamela and Philoclea, the daughters of Duke Basilius. The princes have to disguise themselves to woo the princesses, for their father, trying to escape the effects of a threatening oracle, has retired to the country and put aside official business.Less
Edmund Spenser dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to Sir Philip Sidney, a man who was acclaimed by his contemporaries as the ideal courtier, the embodiment of chivalric magnanimity and gracefulness of speech. It was especially appropriate to dedicate a pastoral work to him because Sidney himself assumed the persona of the ‘shepherd knight’ in tournaments at court and was the author of pastoral poetry. Sidney's major pastoral work, Arcadia, has much in common with the atmosphere of Italian courtly pastoral life. Sidney tells how two heroic princes, Musidorus and Pyrocles, arrive in Arcadia in disguise and fall in love with Pamela and Philoclea, the daughters of Duke Basilius. The princes have to disguise themselves to woo the princesses, for their father, trying to escape the effects of a threatening oracle, has retired to the country and put aside official business.
David Norbrook
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199247189
- eISBN:
- 9780191697647
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199247189.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
The first part of The Faerie Queene was published in 1590, three years after Philip Sidney's death. Edmund Spenser's heroic poem is the fullest poetic embodiment of the political ideals of Sidney and ...
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The first part of The Faerie Queene was published in 1590, three years after Philip Sidney's death. Edmund Spenser's heroic poem is the fullest poetic embodiment of the political ideals of Sidney and his circle; and it reveals the complexities and contradictions inherent in those ideals. Like Sidney, Spenser argued that poetry could convey political ideas more memorably than abstract philosophy. Spenser's ‘feigned commonwealth’, Faerie Land, is not, however, a precisely imagined political entity like Sidney's Arcadia; it is a cloudier realm, more romanticized and idealized. Spenser's monarchical figures are presented with more reverence than Sidney's Basilius; the poem reveals the influence of the Italian courtly aesthetic. Spenser's Faerie Queen in The Faerie Queene is presented as a mirror or image of Queen Elizabeth who is in turn imaged by other female figures — Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, Medina — all of whom are emanations of the glory of the Virgin Queen.Less
The first part of The Faerie Queene was published in 1590, three years after Philip Sidney's death. Edmund Spenser's heroic poem is the fullest poetic embodiment of the political ideals of Sidney and his circle; and it reveals the complexities and contradictions inherent in those ideals. Like Sidney, Spenser argued that poetry could convey political ideas more memorably than abstract philosophy. Spenser's ‘feigned commonwealth’, Faerie Land, is not, however, a precisely imagined political entity like Sidney's Arcadia; it is a cloudier realm, more romanticized and idealized. Spenser's monarchical figures are presented with more reverence than Sidney's Basilius; the poem reveals the influence of the Italian courtly aesthetic. Spenser's Faerie Queen in The Faerie Queene is presented as a mirror or image of Queen Elizabeth who is in turn imaged by other female figures — Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, Medina — all of whom are emanations of the glory of the Virgin Queen.
H. K. Woudhuysen
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129660
- eISBN:
- 9780191671821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The intimate and revealing nature of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella made the sequence a highly desirable literary property. Although Sidney himself allowed some limited copying of the sequence while ...
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The intimate and revealing nature of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella made the sequence a highly desirable literary property. Although Sidney himself allowed some limited copying of the sequence while it was in manuscript, the evidence appears to be that he kept it fairly close to himself, his family, and his friends. Even so, it had some circulation in handwritten copy form which had an influence on the development of poets such as Harington, Drummond, and Daniel. The web woven around the work's transference from manuscript to print may be difficult to untangle, but it is clear that the circumstances surrounding its printing caused some excitement. Hard on the heels of the ISQO edition of the New Arcadia, the printing of Astrophil and Stella decisively changed the public nature of Sidney's image: he was now not only a heroic Protestant courtier, but a heroic Protestant courtier in print.Less
The intimate and revealing nature of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella made the sequence a highly desirable literary property. Although Sidney himself allowed some limited copying of the sequence while it was in manuscript, the evidence appears to be that he kept it fairly close to himself, his family, and his friends. Even so, it had some circulation in handwritten copy form which had an influence on the development of poets such as Harington, Drummond, and Daniel. The web woven around the work's transference from manuscript to print may be difficult to untangle, but it is clear that the circumstances surrounding its printing caused some excitement. Hard on the heels of the ISQO edition of the New Arcadia, the printing of Astrophil and Stella decisively changed the public nature of Sidney's image: he was now not only a heroic Protestant courtier, but a heroic Protestant courtier in print.
H. K. Woudhuysen
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129660
- eISBN:
- 9780191671821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129660.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The circulation of Sir Philip Sidney's works bears witness to some of the advantages and difficulties of writing within a manuscript culture. His most obviously successful use of the medium was the ...
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The circulation of Sir Philip Sidney's works bears witness to some of the advantages and difficulties of writing within a manuscript culture. His most obviously successful use of the medium was the polemical piece A letter to Queen Elizabeth. Turning to his more imaginative literary works, Sidney seems to have had a conscious appreciation of the possibilities of manuscript publication. There can be little doubt that Sidney gave copies of his poems to his friends. He also appears to have allowed them to see and to copy some of his poems, especially from the Old Arcadia and Certain sonnets. When he had completed the Old Arcadia, he saw the possibility of its reaching a wider audience through letting others transcribe his working copy. The scribe Richard Robinson and the professional scrivener LB were employed in this work.Less
The circulation of Sir Philip Sidney's works bears witness to some of the advantages and difficulties of writing within a manuscript culture. His most obviously successful use of the medium was the polemical piece A letter to Queen Elizabeth. Turning to his more imaginative literary works, Sidney seems to have had a conscious appreciation of the possibilities of manuscript publication. There can be little doubt that Sidney gave copies of his poems to his friends. He also appears to have allowed them to see and to copy some of his poems, especially from the Old Arcadia and Certain sonnets. When he had completed the Old Arcadia, he saw the possibility of its reaching a wider audience through letting others transcribe his working copy. The scribe Richard Robinson and the professional scrivener LB were employed in this work.
Eric Saylor
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041099
- eISBN:
- 9780252099656
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041099.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This book examines the nature and style of pastoralism, one of twentieth-century England’s most widespread and influential musical movements. Long dismissed as provincial, escapist, and reactionary, ...
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This book examines the nature and style of pastoralism, one of twentieth-century England’s most widespread and influential musical movements. Long dismissed as provincial, escapist, and reactionary, pastoral music in fact represents a distinctively English approach to modernist composition during the early twentieth century, adapting and transforming established musical and aesthetic conventions to reflect the experiences of British composers and audiences. Covering a wide expressive range—from songs of praise to symphonies of commemoration, lush Arcadian dramatic scenes to bleak neotonal landscapes—English pastoral music encompasses an array of applications, meanings, and stylistic inflections that oblige us to reassess its cultural and idiomatic significance.
The book opens with a survey of pastoral music’s critical, theoretical, and stylistic foundations before moving on to examine its specific manifestations in the contexts of Arcadia, war, landscape, and the Utopian imagination. Works by well-known figures such as Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Benjamin Britten are considered, as well as pieces by lesser-known composers such as E. J. Moeran, Ivor Gurney, Constant Lambert, and John Ireland, among others. Their diverse approaches to pastoralism not only reveal the breadth of its stylistic influence, but the depth of its philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings.Less
This book examines the nature and style of pastoralism, one of twentieth-century England’s most widespread and influential musical movements. Long dismissed as provincial, escapist, and reactionary, pastoral music in fact represents a distinctively English approach to modernist composition during the early twentieth century, adapting and transforming established musical and aesthetic conventions to reflect the experiences of British composers and audiences. Covering a wide expressive range—from songs of praise to symphonies of commemoration, lush Arcadian dramatic scenes to bleak neotonal landscapes—English pastoral music encompasses an array of applications, meanings, and stylistic inflections that oblige us to reassess its cultural and idiomatic significance.
The book opens with a survey of pastoral music’s critical, theoretical, and stylistic foundations before moving on to examine its specific manifestations in the contexts of Arcadia, war, landscape, and the Utopian imagination. Works by well-known figures such as Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Benjamin Britten are considered, as well as pieces by lesser-known composers such as E. J. Moeran, Ivor Gurney, Constant Lambert, and John Ireland, among others. Their diverse approaches to pastoralism not only reveal the breadth of its stylistic influence, but the depth of its philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings.
JAMES ROY
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199258109
- eISBN:
- 9780191717697
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199258109.003.0018
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines a case study of a democratic regime operating not in a single polis but in a confederacy, that formed by the several communities which shared a common Arcadian identity but were ...
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This chapter examines a case study of a democratic regime operating not in a single polis but in a confederacy, that formed by the several communities which shared a common Arcadian identity but were themselves independent states. The main evidence for democratic tendencies in confederate Arcadia in the 360s is in three elements: the situation in Mantinea and Tegea in 370, when the movement to confederation was launched; the use of the eparitoi to secure democracy; and foreign policy. Not enough is known about the confederate constitution to draw conclusions from it alone; but, if the Myrioi are accepted as a primary assembly, the form of the confederate constitution suits democracy well enough.Less
This chapter examines a case study of a democratic regime operating not in a single polis but in a confederacy, that formed by the several communities which shared a common Arcadian identity but were themselves independent states. The main evidence for democratic tendencies in confederate Arcadia in the 360s is in three elements: the situation in Mantinea and Tegea in 370, when the movement to confederation was launched; the use of the eparitoi to secure democracy; and foreign policy. Not enough is known about the confederate constitution to draw conclusions from it alone; but, if the Myrioi are accepted as a primary assembly, the form of the confederate constitution suits democracy well enough.
Gavin Alexander
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199285471
- eISBN:
- 9780191713941
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285471.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter looks at the relations between Sidney and his best friend Fulke Greville. Greville's works, intended only for posthumous publication, include A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, various ...
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This chapter looks at the relations between Sidney and his best friend Fulke Greville. Greville's works, intended only for posthumous publication, include A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, various verse treatises and closet dramas, and the lyric sequence Caelica, which engages profoundly with Sidney's own poetry. These texts were worked on over many years until Greville's death in 1628, the literary engagement with his dead friend becoming a life-long meditation. Greville is the most philosophically serious poet dealt with in this study, and his ideas complement and interrogate Sidney's theory in The Defence of Poesy as well as his practice in the Arcadia, the intentions of which Greville discusses at length in the Dedication. Greville also develops a line of thought about knowledge, example, and precedent that informs this chapter's account of his relation to Sidney's example; Caelica is examined in detail here. Greville's Sidney lives and evolves in the mind and writings of his friend, and is in many respects the Sidney known to posterity.Less
This chapter looks at the relations between Sidney and his best friend Fulke Greville. Greville's works, intended only for posthumous publication, include A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, various verse treatises and closet dramas, and the lyric sequence Caelica, which engages profoundly with Sidney's own poetry. These texts were worked on over many years until Greville's death in 1628, the literary engagement with his dead friend becoming a life-long meditation. Greville is the most philosophically serious poet dealt with in this study, and his ideas complement and interrogate Sidney's theory in The Defence of Poesy as well as his practice in the Arcadia, the intentions of which Greville discusses at length in the Dedication. Greville also develops a line of thought about knowledge, example, and precedent that informs this chapter's account of his relation to Sidney's example; Caelica is examined in detail here. Greville's Sidney lives and evolves in the mind and writings of his friend, and is in many respects the Sidney known to posterity.
Gavin Alexander
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199285471
- eISBN:
- 9780191713941
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285471.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines Sidney's impact on prose fiction, focusing on works that self-consciously write themselves into Sidney's fictional world. The writings of John Dickenson occupy an Arcadian dream ...
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This chapter examines Sidney's impact on prose fiction, focusing on works that self-consciously write themselves into Sidney's fictional world. The writings of John Dickenson occupy an Arcadian dream space suffused with echoes and memories of Sidney. Gervase Markham, in the two-part English Arcadia, creates a generically knowing, deliberately over-written, second-generation sequel to Sidney's Arcadia, in which the complex of genetic and generic legacies threatens to tie the narrative and its characters in knots. William Alexander, Richard Bellings, and James Johnstoun, write bridging passages and completions of the Arcadia that were incorporated into the text in later editions. These bring Sidney into his own work and commemorate his death. Alexander's brilliantly written text answers Sidney's gaps, incompletions, and aposiopesis with a rhetoric and plotting of anticipation, pre-emption, and prolepsis. These authors show us how to connect the shape of Sidney's life to the shape of his work, and how to read the Arcadia as a text that anticipates and experiences interruption, and which expects continuation, commemoration, and conclusion.Less
This chapter examines Sidney's impact on prose fiction, focusing on works that self-consciously write themselves into Sidney's fictional world. The writings of John Dickenson occupy an Arcadian dream space suffused with echoes and memories of Sidney. Gervase Markham, in the two-part English Arcadia, creates a generically knowing, deliberately over-written, second-generation sequel to Sidney's Arcadia, in which the complex of genetic and generic legacies threatens to tie the narrative and its characters in knots. William Alexander, Richard Bellings, and James Johnstoun, write bridging passages and completions of the Arcadia that were incorporated into the text in later editions. These bring Sidney into his own work and commemorate his death. Alexander's brilliantly written text answers Sidney's gaps, incompletions, and aposiopesis with a rhetoric and plotting of anticipation, pre-emption, and prolepsis. These authors show us how to connect the shape of Sidney's life to the shape of his work, and how to read the Arcadia as a text that anticipates and experiences interruption, and which expects continuation, commemoration, and conclusion.
Daniel Ogden
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198854319
- eISBN:
- 9780191888601
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198854319.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, History of Art: pre-history, BCE to 500CE, ancient and classical, Byzantine
The ancient world already cherished a rich folklore of werewolfism that broadly resembled the one copiously attested for the central medieval period in Europe. Our best access to the sort of ...
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The ancient world already cherished a rich folklore of werewolfism that broadly resembled the one copiously attested for the central medieval period in Europe. Our best access to the sort of narrative that underpinned such folklore comes in the well-known werewolf tale of the Neronian Petronius’ Satyricon, which shares some striking motifs with the equally famous AD 1160-78 Anglo-Norman tale of Bisclavret by Marie de France. It was, accordingly, folklore that determined the ancients’ conception of what a werewolf actually was. Almost all the evidence for werewolfism in antiquity should be regarded either as folkloric in nature or as secondary to and refractive of a folkloric core. The ancients re-deployed, finessed and parlayed this focal conception in distinct ways in diverse cultural contexts. Notions, themes and images were borrowed from this folkloric home and transferred, in as it were a metaphorical fashion, to other realms of human experience and endeavour, be this: aetiological myth, in the case of the material bearing upon Lykaon; rites of passage or of maturation, in the case of the material bearing upon the Lykaia rite; or medicine, in the case of the medical writers’ identification of the disease of ‘lycanthropy.’ It is this that accounts for what initially appears to be the incoherent, chaotic and centrifugal nature of the evidence-field for werewolves that the ancients have bequeathed to us.Less
The ancient world already cherished a rich folklore of werewolfism that broadly resembled the one copiously attested for the central medieval period in Europe. Our best access to the sort of narrative that underpinned such folklore comes in the well-known werewolf tale of the Neronian Petronius’ Satyricon, which shares some striking motifs with the equally famous AD 1160-78 Anglo-Norman tale of Bisclavret by Marie de France. It was, accordingly, folklore that determined the ancients’ conception of what a werewolf actually was. Almost all the evidence for werewolfism in antiquity should be regarded either as folkloric in nature or as secondary to and refractive of a folkloric core. The ancients re-deployed, finessed and parlayed this focal conception in distinct ways in diverse cultural contexts. Notions, themes and images were borrowed from this folkloric home and transferred, in as it were a metaphorical fashion, to other realms of human experience and endeavour, be this: aetiological myth, in the case of the material bearing upon Lykaon; rites of passage or of maturation, in the case of the material bearing upon the Lykaia rite; or medicine, in the case of the medical writers’ identification of the disease of ‘lycanthropy.’ It is this that accounts for what initially appears to be the incoherent, chaotic and centrifugal nature of the evidence-field for werewolves that the ancients have bequeathed to us.
