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/9780199247189.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
Before King James had been long on the English throne there had emerged a group of poets who were alienated from the court and sometimes used the traditional symbolism of Protestant pastoral to voice ...
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Before King James had been long on the English throne there had emerged a group of poets who were alienated from the court and sometimes used the traditional symbolism of Protestant pastoral to voice their discontent. They could almost be described as constituting a poetic ‘opposition’. In this period, of course, it is misleading to speak of a formal ‘opposition’ based on a coherent ideology. Analysis of the poetic ‘opposition’ raises similar difficulties. The poets who are described in this chapter as ‘Spenserians’ — Fulke Greville, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, the Fletchers, and the younger pastoralists, William Browne and George Wither — were in varying degrees critical of dominant tendencies at court. However, they were by no means a monolithic, ideologically coherent group.Less
Before King James had been long on the English throne there had emerged a group of poets who were alienated from the court and sometimes used the traditional symbolism of Protestant pastoral to voice their discontent. They could almost be described as constituting a poetic ‘opposition’. In this period, of course, it is misleading to speak of a formal ‘opposition’ based on a coherent ideology. Analysis of the poetic ‘opposition’ raises similar difficulties. The poets who are described in this chapter as ‘Spenserians’ — Fulke Greville, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, the Fletchers, and the younger pastoralists, William Browne and George Wither — were in varying degrees critical of dominant tendencies at court. However, they were by no means a monolithic, ideologically coherent group.
