Early Modern English Poetry A Critical Companion

by Cheney, Patrick; Hadfield, Andrew; Sullivan, Garrett A.

• ISBN13: 9780195153873
• ISBN10: 0195153871
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-08-31
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion presents twenty-eight original essays on the major poems of the English Renaissance. Each essay is written by a leading scholar and examines a poem in the context of an important topic in early modern culture. The selections provide groundbreaking scholarship on subjects ranging from the invention of English verse, Petrarchism, pastoral, elegy, and satire to women's religious verse, the politics of town, the place of homoeroticism, and Cavalier poetry. An ideal supplement to both primary texts and anthologies of Renaissance literature, Early Modern English Poetry offers fresh approaches to poems by Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, John Milton, and many others. The first three chapters set the rest of the volume in context with coverage of the sixteenth-century invention of verse, print and manuscript culture in early modern England, and Renaissance treatises on the art of poetry. The remaining chapters are structured around authors and their works--which are each related to a specific issue in early modern culture--and organized chronologically according to the dates of composition or publication of the poems discussed. This innovative and flexible design corresponds perfectly with courses in which students first read a primary text and then expand their understanding of the work with detailed critical commentary. The book is enhanced by a general introduction, recommended reading lists at the end of each chapter, and a chronology of Renaissance poetry tailored to the book's contents. Early Modern English Poetry provides an accessible introduction both to a key selection of canonical poetic works in English and to historical and cultural topics that illuminate them.

Table of Contents

Contents: Thematic and Generic	vii
Preface	xi
Select Chronology, 1503--1681	xiv
Introduction: Reading Renaissance Poetry	xix
Inventing English Verse	1	(14)
Susanne Woods
Print, Manuscripts, and Miscellanies	15	(12)
Arthur F. Marotti
Tudor and Stuart Defenses of Poetry	27	(11)
Peter C. Herman
Wyatt, Surrey, and the Henrician Court	38	(10)
Catherine Bates
Spenser's May Eclogue and Mid-Tudor Religious Poetry	48	(12)
John N. King
Early Courtier Verse: Oxford, Dyer, and Gascoigne	60	(10)
Steven May
Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Petrarchism	70	(9)
William J. Kennedy
Spenserian Pastoral	79	(11)
Bart van Es
Spenser's Poetry and the Apocalypse	90	(12)
John Watkins
Spenser, Virginity, and Sexuality	102	(11)
Elizabeth D. Harvey
Raleigh, the Queen, and Elizabethan Court Poetry	113	(12)
William A. Oram
Marlowe's Erotic Verse	125	(11)
Alan Sinfield
Literary Criticism, Literary History, and the Place of Homoeroticism	136	(11)
Jonathan Goldberg
``The Phoenix and the Turtle,'' Renaissance Elegies, and the Language of Grief	147	(13)
Lynn Enterline
Shakespeare's Literary Career and Narrative Poetry	160	(12)
Patrick Cheney
Shakespeare's Sonnets and English Sonnet Sequences	172	(12)
Sasha Roberts
Mary Sidney Herbert and Women's Religious Verse	184	(11)
Danielle Clarke
Lady Mary Wroth and Women's Love Poetry	195	(11)
Naomi J. Miller
Donne's Songs and Sonets and Artistic Identity	206	(11)
Andrew Hadfield
Satire and the Politics of Town	217	(12)
Andrew McRae
Donne's Religious Poetry and the Trauma of Grace	229	(11)
Achsah Guibbory
Lanyer and the Poetry of Land and Devotion	240	(13)
Helen Wilcox
Jonson, King, and Court	253	(11)
Julie Sanders
George Herbert, God, and King	264	(14)
Michael Schoenfeldt
Crashaw and Religious Bias in the Literary Canon	278	(11)
Lowell Gallagher
Cavalier Poetry and Civil War	289	(13)
Laura Lunger Knoppers
Marvell and Pastoral	302	(13)
Thomas Healy
Milton, the Nativity Ode, the Companion Poems, and Lycidas	315	(16)
Barbara K. Lewalski
Notes on Contributors	331	(4)
Index	335