David Womersley
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199255641
- eISBN:
- 9780191719615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255641.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Bale's Kynge Johan had created two paradigmatic characters with which to express its religious and political concerns, both embodied successively in John himself: the sanctified monarch and the ...
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Bale's Kynge Johan had created two paradigmatic characters with which to express its religious and political concerns, both embodied successively in John himself: the sanctified monarch and the martyred subject. Chapter 7 considers the first of these, as employed in a series of plays from the early 1590s onwards. It emerges that the sanctified monarch on stage was never an entirely unshadowed figure, and that he or she was the focus of both the hopes and the anxieties of the subject.Less
Bale's Kynge Johan had created two paradigmatic characters with which to express its religious and political concerns, both embodied successively in John himself: the sanctified monarch and the martyred subject. Chapter 7 considers the first of these, as employed in a series of plays from the early 1590s onwards. It emerges that the sanctified monarch on stage was never an entirely unshadowed figure, and that he or she was the focus of both the hopes and the anxieties of the subject.
Patricia A. Cahill
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199212057
- eISBN:
- 9780191705830
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212057.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book argues that the Elizabethan theatrical repertory was enthralled with the era's martial discourses and beset by its blinding visions. Offering a richly historicized account of the theater's ...
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This book argues that the Elizabethan theatrical repertory was enthralled with the era's martial discourses and beset by its blinding visions. Offering a richly historicized account of the theater's engagement with “modern” warfare, the book juxtaposes the new military technologies and new modes of martial abstraction with the performance of war‐suffused dramas by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their contemporaries. Equally important, it shows that even as early modern playwrights engaged cutting edge military practices, they routinely trafficked in phenomena resistant to the new rationalities, conjuring up a domain of eerie sounds, uncanny figures, and haunted temporalities. By going beyond the usual protocols of historicist criticism and emphasizing the complex dynamics of theatrical modes of address, this wide‐ranging study investigates the representation of early modern war trauma and recovers for us a compelling sense of the intimate relationship between affect and intellect on the Renaissance stage. Intervening in ongoing conversations about the drama's role in shaping the cultural imaginary, this study argues that, in an era of escalating militarization, England's first commercial theaters offered their audiences something of incalculable value—namely, a space for the performance and “working through” of what might otherwise remain psychically unbearable in war's violence.Less
This book argues that the Elizabethan theatrical repertory was enthralled with the era's martial discourses and beset by its blinding visions. Offering a richly historicized account of the theater's engagement with “modern” warfare, the book juxtaposes the new military technologies and new modes of martial abstraction with the performance of war‐suffused dramas by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their contemporaries. Equally important, it shows that even as early modern playwrights engaged cutting edge military practices, they routinely trafficked in phenomena resistant to the new rationalities, conjuring up a domain of eerie sounds, uncanny figures, and haunted temporalities. By going beyond the usual protocols of historicist criticism and emphasizing the complex dynamics of theatrical modes of address, this wide‐ranging study investigates the representation of early modern war trauma and recovers for us a compelling sense of the intimate relationship between affect and intellect on the Renaissance stage. Intervening in ongoing conversations about the drama's role in shaping the cultural imaginary, this study argues that, in an era of escalating militarization, England's first commercial theaters offered their audiences something of incalculable value—namely, a space for the performance and “working through” of what might otherwise remain psychically unbearable in war's violence.
Richard Hillman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082764
- eISBN:
- 9781781700044
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082764.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book applies to tragic patterns and practices in early modern England a long-standing critical preoccupation with English-French cultural connections in the period. With primary, though not ...
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This book applies to tragic patterns and practices in early modern England a long-standing critical preoccupation with English-French cultural connections in the period. With primary, though not exclusive, reference on the English side to Shakespeare and Marlowe, and on the French side to a wide range of dramatic and non-dramatic material, it focuses on distinctive elements that emerge within the English tragedy of the 1590s and early 1600s. These include the self-destructive tragic hero, the apparatus of neo-Senecanism (including the Machiavellian villain) and the confrontation between the warrior-hero and the femme fatale. The broad objective is less to ‘discover’ influences—although some specific points of contact are proposed—than at once to enlarge and refine a common cultural space through juxtaposition and intertextual tracing. The conclusion emerges that the powerful, if ambivalent, fascination of the English for their closest Continental neighbours expressed itself not only in, but through, the theatre.Less
This book applies to tragic patterns and practices in early modern England a long-standing critical preoccupation with English-French cultural connections in the period. With primary, though not exclusive, reference on the English side to Shakespeare and Marlowe, and on the French side to a wide range of dramatic and non-dramatic material, it focuses on distinctive elements that emerge within the English tragedy of the 1590s and early 1600s. These include the self-destructive tragic hero, the apparatus of neo-Senecanism (including the Machiavellian villain) and the confrontation between the warrior-hero and the femme fatale. The broad objective is less to ‘discover’ influences—although some specific points of contact are proposed—than at once to enlarge and refine a common cultural space through juxtaposition and intertextual tracing. The conclusion emerges that the powerful, if ambivalent, fascination of the English for their closest Continental neighbours expressed itself not only in, but through, the theatre.
Jane Hwang Degenhardt
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640843
- eISBN:
- 9780748651597
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam ...
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This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both erotic and tragic: as a sexual seduction and a fate worse than death. The book examines the theatre's treatment of the intercourse between the Christian and Islamic faiths to reveal connections between sexuality, race and confessional identity in early modern English drama and culture. In addition, it shows how England's encounter with Islam reanimated post-Reformation debates about the embodiment of Christian faith. As the book compellingly demonstrates, the erotics of conversion added fuel to the fires of controversies over Pauline universalism, Christian martyrdom, the efficacy of relics and rituals and the ideals of the Knights of Malta.Less
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both erotic and tragic: as a sexual seduction and a fate worse than death. The book examines the theatre's treatment of the intercourse between the Christian and Islamic faiths to reveal connections between sexuality, race and confessional identity in early modern English drama and culture. In addition, it shows how England's encounter with Islam reanimated post-Reformation debates about the embodiment of Christian faith. As the book compellingly demonstrates, the erotics of conversion added fuel to the fires of controversies over Pauline universalism, Christian martyrdom, the efficacy of relics and rituals and the ideals of the Knights of Malta.
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/9780199212057.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the status of military science in the playhouse, especially the ways in which the invocation of arithmetical discourses, processional marches, and battle formations displace ...
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This chapter examines the status of military science in the playhouse, especially the ways in which the invocation of arithmetical discourses, processional marches, and battle formations displace cultural fantasies of individual distinction. The chapter focuses on Marlowe's two‐part Tamburlaine, one of the most popular and most explicitly militaristic plays in the Elizabethan repertory and a play that has long been a touchstone for critical discussions of the emergence of the modern subject. This chapter argues that Tamburlaine's preoccupation with military calculation and the organization of bodies in space produces a spectacle not just of overreaching singularity but also of uniform personhood and mathematically rationalized violence. Ultimately, by pointing to the play's sustained attention to visions of men in the aggregate, this chapter revises the usual reading of Marlowe's text so as to tease out its renderings of modern “massifying” practices, which presage a new world of social abstraction.Less
This chapter examines the status of military science in the playhouse, especially the ways in which the invocation of arithmetical discourses, processional marches, and battle formations displace cultural fantasies of individual distinction. The chapter focuses on Marlowe's two‐part Tamburlaine, one of the most popular and most explicitly militaristic plays in the Elizabethan repertory and a play that has long been a touchstone for critical discussions of the emergence of the modern subject. This chapter argues that Tamburlaine's preoccupation with military calculation and the organization of bodies in space produces a spectacle not just of overreaching singularity but also of uniform personhood and mathematically rationalized violence. Ultimately, by pointing to the play's sustained attention to visions of men in the aggregate, this chapter revises the usual reading of Marlowe's text so as to tease out its renderings of modern “massifying” practices, which presage a new world of social abstraction.
David Landreth
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199773299
- eISBN:
- 9780199932665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199773299.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
In Book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the debate between the knight Sir Guyon and the demon Mammon over the value of money is expressed in terms of consumption: money proves to be a value that desires to ...
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In Book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the debate between the knight Sir Guyon and the demon Mammon over the value of money is expressed in terms of consumption: money proves to be a value that desires to consume all other values, cruelly disordering not only the processes of bodily sustenance but the mnemonic relation of past to future and even the metaphysical relation of matter to form. But, as Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Spenser's own reconsideration of these problems in Book 5 of The Faerie Queene both demonstrate, attending to an anti-monetary version of consumption fails to account for the utility of money in the world, the ways in which we continue to depend upon money's instrumentality.Less
In Book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the debate between the knight Sir Guyon and the demon Mammon over the value of money is expressed in terms of consumption: money proves to be a value that desires to consume all other values, cruelly disordering not only the processes of bodily sustenance but the mnemonic relation of past to future and even the metaphysical relation of matter to form. But, as Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Spenser's own reconsideration of these problems in Book 5 of The Faerie Queene both demonstrate, attending to an anti-monetary version of consumption fails to account for the utility of money in the world, the ways in which we continue to depend upon money's instrumentality.
Eric Langley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199541232
- eISBN:
- 9780191716072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541232.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter considers Shakespeare's representation of Roman suicide, considering self-slaughter as a form of self-assertion. The conflict of Christian and Classical becomes apparent in the ...
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This chapter considers Shakespeare's representation of Roman suicide, considering self-slaughter as a form of self-assertion. The conflict of Christian and Classical becomes apparent in the Renaissance appropriation of Seneca's Stoic rhetoric. Analysis of Julius Caesar explores how a Shakespearean sense of individuality relies on the response of a friend or the introspection of self-reflection, and Brutus' suicide is read in relation to Classical depictions and philosophical justifications of suicide.Less
This chapter considers Shakespeare's representation of Roman suicide, considering self-slaughter as a form of self-assertion. The conflict of Christian and Classical becomes apparent in the Renaissance appropriation of Seneca's Stoic rhetoric. Analysis of Julius Caesar explores how a Shakespearean sense of individuality relies on the response of a friend or the introspection of self-reflection, and Brutus' suicide is read in relation to Classical depictions and philosophical justifications of suicide.
Eric Langley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199541232
- eISBN:
- 9780191716072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541232.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter examines Renaissance theories of vision, exploring the impact of scientific and anatomical discoveries on poetic tropes of eyebeam emission and visual reciprocation. Poems from the ...
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This chapter examines Renaissance theories of vision, exploring the impact of scientific and anatomical discoveries on poetic tropes of eyebeam emission and visual reciprocation. Poems from the Renaissance epyllion tradition, including Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis as well as erotic narratives by Marlowe, Chapman, and Lodge, are read in the context of an increasing emphasis upon potentially narcissistic introspection and intromission. The responsivity of an echoing pastoral landscape (dependent upon a conception of natural sympathy repudiated by Lucretius) is seen to be potentially undermined by the preposterous self‐absorption and self‐sufficiency of the early modern visual subject.Less
This chapter examines Renaissance theories of vision, exploring the impact of scientific and anatomical discoveries on poetic tropes of eyebeam emission and visual reciprocation. Poems from the Renaissance epyllion tradition, including Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis as well as erotic narratives by Marlowe, Chapman, and Lodge, are read in the context of an increasing emphasis upon potentially narcissistic introspection and intromission. The responsivity of an echoing pastoral landscape (dependent upon a conception of natural sympathy repudiated by Lucretius) is seen to be potentially undermined by the preposterous self‐absorption and self‐sufficiency of the early modern visual subject.
Joshua Eckhardt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199559503
- eISBN:
- 9780191721397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559503.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The first chapter introduces early modern English verse collectors, their manuscript verse miscellanies, and the methods that they used to produce these anthologies. After surveying a range of their ...
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The first chapter introduces early modern English verse collectors, their manuscript verse miscellanies, and the methods that they used to produce these anthologies. After surveying a range of their favorite texts, it discusses a few of the earliest manuscripts of anti-courtly love poems by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and the anonymous author of an enormously popular female monologue spoken during intercourse and beginning, “Nay, phew nay pish? nay faith and will ye, fie.” Finally, the introductory chapter turns to the poetic libels with which collectors recontextualized these and other anti-courtly love poems.Less
The first chapter introduces early modern English verse collectors, their manuscript verse miscellanies, and the methods that they used to produce these anthologies. After surveying a range of their favorite texts, it discusses a few of the earliest manuscripts of anti-courtly love poems by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and the anonymous author of an enormously popular female monologue spoken during intercourse and beginning, “Nay, phew nay pish? nay faith and will ye, fie.” Finally, the introductory chapter turns to the poetic libels with which collectors recontextualized these and other anti-courtly love poems.
The late A. D. Nuttall
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184621
- eISBN:
- 9780191674327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184621.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, Drama
The Trinity of orthodox Christianity is harmonious. The Trinity for Blake is, conspicuously, not a happy family: the Father and the Son do not get on. It might be thought that so cumbersome a notion ...
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The Trinity of orthodox Christianity is harmonious. The Trinity for Blake is, conspicuously, not a happy family: the Father and the Son do not get on. It might be thought that so cumbersome a notion is inconceivable before the rise of Romanticism but the Ophite Gnostics of the 2nd century AD appear to have thought that God the Father was a jealous tyrant because he forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that the serpent, who led the way to the Tree of Knowledge, was really Christ. This book explores the possibility of an underground ‘perennial heresy’, linking the Ophites to Blake. The ‘alternative Trinity’ is intermittently visible in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and even in Milton's Paradise Lost. Blake's notorious detection of a pro-Satan anti-poem, latent in this ‘theologically patriarchal’ epic is less capricious, better grounded historically and philosophically, than is commonly realised.Less
The Trinity of orthodox Christianity is harmonious. The Trinity for Blake is, conspicuously, not a happy family: the Father and the Son do not get on. It might be thought that so cumbersome a notion is inconceivable before the rise of Romanticism but the Ophite Gnostics of the 2nd century AD appear to have thought that God the Father was a jealous tyrant because he forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that the serpent, who led the way to the Tree of Knowledge, was really Christ. This book explores the possibility of an underground ‘perennial heresy’, linking the Ophites to Blake. The ‘alternative Trinity’ is intermittently visible in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and even in Milton's Paradise Lost. Blake's notorious detection of a pro-Satan anti-poem, latent in this ‘theologically patriarchal’ epic is less capricious, better grounded historically and philosophically, than is commonly realised.
Hugh Grady
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198130048
- eISBN:
- 9780191671906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198130048.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
On the London stages of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, a major theme emerged: exploration of the possibilities of a completely secular, ...
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On the London stages of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, a major theme emerged: exploration of the possibilities of a completely secular, desacralized culture. Of course, the culture of Renaissance England was permeated with religious beliefs, even though the London stage was secular and commercial, far different in tone and spirit from the explicitly religious drama still produced elsewhere well into the sixteenth century. And these obvious and established fac tend to cancel each other rather than solve a critical debate which goes back at least to the nineteenth century: a debate over an implied or assumed religiosity within the secular drama of the English Renaissance. This chapter examines reification in early and late modernity, the relationship between theatre and religion, secularism, Renaissance reification in contemporary literary criticism, French structuralism/post-structuralism, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory.Less
On the London stages of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, a major theme emerged: exploration of the possibilities of a completely secular, desacralized culture. Of course, the culture of Renaissance England was permeated with religious beliefs, even though the London stage was secular and commercial, far different in tone and spirit from the explicitly religious drama still produced elsewhere well into the sixteenth century. And these obvious and established fac tend to cancel each other rather than solve a critical debate which goes back at least to the nineteenth century: a debate over an implied or assumed religiosity within the secular drama of the English Renaissance. This chapter examines reification in early and late modernity, the relationship between theatre and religion, secularism, Renaissance reification in contemporary literary criticism, French structuralism/post-structuralism, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory.
Martin Wiggins
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112280
- eISBN:
- 9780191670749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112280.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
From the first two-thirds of Elizabeth's reign, Cambises and Fedele and Fortunio are the only surviving plays for the popular stage that include assassins. In the years after The Spanish Tragedy, ...
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From the first two-thirds of Elizabeth's reign, Cambises and Fedele and Fortunio are the only surviving plays for the popular stage that include assassins. In the years after The Spanish Tragedy, however, the type mushroomed: we have no fewer than seventeen plays with assassins from the period 1587–1592. No narrative source is known for The Spanish Tragedy, and the same is true of Mucedorus. For a third play, The Massacre at Paris, the source material we have is probably incomplete. Christopher Marlowe drew the events from recent French history. A play requires more detail from moment to moment than the sources were able to supply. Both the account of the murder of Thomas Ardern in Holinshed's Chronicles and Cinthio's novella about King Astatio, staged as Arden of Faversham and James IV respectively, include series of failed murder attempts, and assassins who doggedly persist until they fulfil their contracts.Less
From the first two-thirds of Elizabeth's reign, Cambises and Fedele and Fortunio are the only surviving plays for the popular stage that include assassins. In the years after The Spanish Tragedy, however, the type mushroomed: we have no fewer than seventeen plays with assassins from the period 1587–1592. No narrative source is known for The Spanish Tragedy, and the same is true of Mucedorus. For a third play, The Massacre at Paris, the source material we have is probably incomplete. Christopher Marlowe drew the events from recent French history. A play requires more detail from moment to moment than the sources were able to supply. Both the account of the murder of Thomas Ardern in Holinshed's Chronicles and Cinthio's novella about King Astatio, staged as Arden of Faversham and James IV respectively, include series of failed murder attempts, and assassins who doggedly persist until they fulfil their contracts.
Maggie Kilgour
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199589432
- eISBN:
- 9780191738500
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199589432.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, ...
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The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, it demonstrates that the young Milton has a surprisingly keen grasp also of the broader patterns and concerns of Ovid's works. It suggests further, moreover, that Milton became increasingly attentive to revisions of Ovid by earlier writers. Beginning with some of the Ovidian elements in the early Latin works it turns to Milton's first English poem, ‘On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough’, and ends with a discussion of his masque Comus. As he moves into English, Milton's reading of Ovid responds also to the adaptations of the Elizabethans, most notably Spenser and Shakespeare, but also the epyllion writers and Marlowe who are especially drawn to the stories of Daphne and Venus and Adonis.Less
The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, it demonstrates that the young Milton has a surprisingly keen grasp also of the broader patterns and concerns of Ovid's works. It suggests further, moreover, that Milton became increasingly attentive to revisions of Ovid by earlier writers. Beginning with some of the Ovidian elements in the early Latin works it turns to Milton's first English poem, ‘On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough’, and ends with a discussion of his masque Comus. As he moves into English, Milton's reading of Ovid responds also to the adaptations of the Elizabethans, most notably Spenser and Shakespeare, but also the epyllion writers and Marlowe who are especially drawn to the stories of Daphne and Venus and Adonis.
Rachel Eisendrath
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226516585
- eISBN:
- 9780226516752
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226516752.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and ...
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We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as “things in themselves”—things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance “discovery” of the observable world. This book explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a form that resisted this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted artful descriptions that provided a home for the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This book reclaims subjectivity as an irreplaceable way of grasping the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.Less
We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as “things in themselves”—things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance “discovery” of the observable world. This book explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a form that resisted this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted artful descriptions that provided a home for the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This book reclaims subjectivity as an irreplaceable way of grasping the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.
Howard Felperin
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122654.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines an essay by Stephen Greenblatt entitled ‘Marlowe and the Will to Absolute Play’, a strong reading of Christopher Marlowe's plays ...
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This chapter examines an essay by Stephen Greenblatt entitled ‘Marlowe and the Will to Absolute Play’, a strong reading of Christopher Marlowe's plays and a strong showing in the current struggle for the repossession of Renaissance literature in the name of a new historicism. It takes issue with Greenblatt's reading and with the new historicist understanding that supports it. It is not meant as a corrective to Greenblatt's, either at the level of interpretation or at that of theory. The purpose is not to invalidate Greenblatt's new historicism or its application to Marlowe but to deprivilege it; or more precisely to dispute its own covert claim to interpretive privilege by revealing the repressions necessary to enable that claim to be made. The particular reading of Marlowe this chapter addresses is entitled ‘Marlowe and the Will to Authentic Being’.Less
This chapter examines an essay by Stephen Greenblatt entitled ‘Marlowe and the Will to Absolute Play’, a strong reading of Christopher Marlowe's plays and a strong showing in the current struggle for the repossession of Renaissance literature in the name of a new historicism. It takes issue with Greenblatt's reading and with the new historicist understanding that supports it. It is not meant as a corrective to Greenblatt's, either at the level of interpretation or at that of theory. The purpose is not to invalidate Greenblatt's new historicism or its application to Marlowe but to deprivilege it; or more precisely to dispute its own covert claim to interpretive privilege by revealing the repressions necessary to enable that claim to be made. The particular reading of Marlowe this chapter addresses is entitled ‘Marlowe and the Will to Authentic Being’.
A. D. Nuttall
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184621
- eISBN:
- 9780191674327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184621.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, Drama
This chapter looks at a strange tragedy by the Elizabethan Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe's Dr Faustus — the story of the magician who sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge and power — looks at ...
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This chapter looks at a strange tragedy by the Elizabethan Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe's Dr Faustus — the story of the magician who sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge and power — looks at first sight like the text for the Old Historicist. Much of the drama of the period is nervous about theology, too conscious of its own secular frivolity to engage with the deepest elements in the Christian world-view; but Marlowe's play is frankly — thunderously — theological. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a clearer case of a theocratic drama than this, in which the hero is taught the folly and wickedness of his presumption by being cast at the end into the fire of hell. Gnosticism and its connection with Marlowe's play are also discussed.Less
This chapter looks at a strange tragedy by the Elizabethan Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe's Dr Faustus — the story of the magician who sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge and power — looks at first sight like the text for the Old Historicist. Much of the drama of the period is nervous about theology, too conscious of its own secular frivolity to engage with the deepest elements in the Christian world-view; but Marlowe's play is frankly — thunderously — theological. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a clearer case of a theocratic drama than this, in which the hero is taught the folly and wickedness of his presumption by being cast at the end into the fire of hell. Gnosticism and its connection with Marlowe's play are also discussed.
Robin Sowerby
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199286126
- eISBN:
- 9780191713873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199286126.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter examines the effect that the English Augustan aesthetic — embodied in the example of the Roman Augustan Virgil — had on the translation those silver Latin poets who reacted against the ...
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This chapter examines the effect that the English Augustan aesthetic — embodied in the example of the Roman Augustan Virgil — had on the translation those silver Latin poets who reacted against the artistic ideals of the Roman Augustans. All the various translations examined — Dryden's Persius and Juvenal, Rowe's Lucan and Pope's Statius, all Latin poets of the silver age — are shown to embody the hard won Augustan virtues of clearness, purity, and ease that are the hallmarks of the Augustan achievement of Dryden's language and style. The strength and limitations of Rowe's Lucan, hailed by Dr Johnson as one of the greatest productions of English poetry, are brought out in a comparison with Marlowe's earlier version. Pope's vigorous version of Statius, it is argued, proved to be a promising apprenticeship for the translation of Homer.Less
This chapter examines the effect that the English Augustan aesthetic — embodied in the example of the Roman Augustan Virgil — had on the translation those silver Latin poets who reacted against the artistic ideals of the Roman Augustans. All the various translations examined — Dryden's Persius and Juvenal, Rowe's Lucan and Pope's Statius, all Latin poets of the silver age — are shown to embody the hard won Augustan virtues of clearness, purity, and ease that are the hallmarks of the Augustan achievement of Dryden's language and style. The strength and limitations of Rowe's Lucan, hailed by Dr Johnson as one of the greatest productions of English poetry, are brought out in a comparison with Marlowe's earlier version. Pope's vigorous version of Statius, it is argued, proved to be a promising apprenticeship for the translation of Homer.
Philip Edwards
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853235125
- eISBN:
- 9781846317415
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317415
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This study explores the many different functions of the voyage metaphor in the work of major writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William ...
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This study explores the many different functions of the voyage metaphor in the work of major writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Francis Bacon, and John Milton in particular. Concentrating on the way voyage metaphors work, this book offers reinterpretations of well-known texts, such as Shakespeare's Othello and Bacon's essay Adversity. A continuing theme of this study is the debate on the ethics of voyaging itself, and how far the sea-search for empire and wealth was of value as an image of the life of the spirit. It makes clear that a writer such as Bacon, for whom the adventure of the human spirit most naturally expresses itself in sea-going imagery, hesitates in his acceptance, while in Marlowe and Donne, enthusiasm for the voyage as a symbol of intellectual liberation and spiritual effort is in continuous and creative conflict with misgivings about the greed motivating voyages of exploration and trade. This text also tackles the central issue of the metaphorical voyage, which is the issue of what control one has over one's life — the issue of ‘navigation’ as it is worked out in chapters on The Faerie Queene and Macbeth. This study puts forward the view that the underlying uncertainty displayed by so many writers in their use of the metaphor indicates fundamental but often concealed uncertainties in their attitude to life itself.Less
This study explores the many different functions of the voyage metaphor in the work of major writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Francis Bacon, and John Milton in particular. Concentrating on the way voyage metaphors work, this book offers reinterpretations of well-known texts, such as Shakespeare's Othello and Bacon's essay Adversity. A continuing theme of this study is the debate on the ethics of voyaging itself, and how far the sea-search for empire and wealth was of value as an image of the life of the spirit. It makes clear that a writer such as Bacon, for whom the adventure of the human spirit most naturally expresses itself in sea-going imagery, hesitates in his acceptance, while in Marlowe and Donne, enthusiasm for the voyage as a symbol of intellectual liberation and spiritual effort is in continuous and creative conflict with misgivings about the greed motivating voyages of exploration and trade. This text also tackles the central issue of the metaphorical voyage, which is the issue of what control one has over one's life — the issue of ‘navigation’ as it is worked out in chapters on The Faerie Queene and Macbeth. This study puts forward the view that the underlying uncertainty displayed by so many writers in their use of the metaphor indicates fundamental but often concealed uncertainties in their attitude to life itself.
Seth Lerer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226582405
- eISBN:
- 9780226582689
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226582689.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter argues for a new understanding of Henry VIII as a play consciously concerned with the theatricality of rule and the language of the stage. It begins with Henry Wotton’s famous account of ...
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This chapter argues for a new understanding of Henry VIII as a play consciously concerned with the theatricality of rule and the language of the stage. It begins with Henry Wotton’s famous account of the burning of the Globe theater, during a performance of the play, as not just a historical but also a critical and imaginative template for understanding the meta-theatricality of Henry VIII. In addition, the chapter explores the figure of Wolsey as a tragic figure out of older dramatic traditions (Marlowe, as well as earlier Shakespeare), and it addresses Queen Katherine’s call for Orphic music as an attempt to turn to performed artistry in the face of political and personal loss.Less
This chapter argues for a new understanding of Henry VIII as a play consciously concerned with the theatricality of rule and the language of the stage. It begins with Henry Wotton’s famous account of the burning of the Globe theater, during a performance of the play, as not just a historical but also a critical and imaginative template for understanding the meta-theatricality of Henry VIII. In addition, the chapter explores the figure of Wolsey as a tragic figure out of older dramatic traditions (Marlowe, as well as earlier Shakespeare), and it addresses Queen Katherine’s call for Orphic music as an attempt to turn to performed artistry in the face of political and personal loss.
J. B. Lethbridge
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079627
- eISBN:
- 9781781701058
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079627.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introductory chapter discusses the influence Edmund Spenser had on William Shakespeare, showing how Shakespeare read Spenser and addressing the question of the relations between the them. It ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the influence Edmund Spenser had on William Shakespeare, showing how Shakespeare read Spenser and addressing the question of the relations between the them. It explores some distinctions between borrowing and allusion, and also clarifies the definition of the term ‘influence’, furthermore examining the poetry of Spenser and Christopher Marlowe, and identifying the differences between them. The chapter also looks at some of Marlowe's obvious and popular linguistic borrowings, as well as several of Shakespeare's more subtle ones, from Spenser's The Faerie Queene.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the influence Edmund Spenser had on William Shakespeare, showing how Shakespeare read Spenser and addressing the question of the relations between the them. It explores some distinctions between borrowing and allusion, and also clarifies the definition of the term ‘influence’, furthermore examining the poetry of Spenser and Christopher Marlowe, and identifying the differences between them. The chapter also looks at some of Marlowe's obvious and popular linguistic borrowings, as well as several of Shakespeare's more subtle ones, from Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
