Quoting Death in Early Modern England The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb

by Newstok, Scott L.

• ISBN13: 9780230203259
• ISBN10: 0230203256
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts.

Author Biography

SCOTT L. NEWSTOK teaches courses in Shakespeare and his Renaissance contemporaries, as well as more recent appropriations and adaptations of their works; other interests include lyric poetry, the history of rhetoric, and film studies. He joined the Rhodes College Faculty in 2007 after earning his doctorate from Harvard University and teaching at Oberlin College, Amherst College, Gustavus Adolphus College, and Yale University. He has edited Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare, and is co-editor of a collection of essays on Macbeth in African-American culture.

Table of Contents

Contents List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Reciting "Epitaph" and "Genre" in Early Modern England

"Here lies": Pointing to the "Graue Forme"

"Turn Thy Tombe Into a Throne": Elizabeth I's Death Rehearsal

"In good stead of an epitaph": Verifying History

"Killing rhetorick": The Poetics ofMovere

"An theater of mortality": In Sincerity, Onstage

"Lapping-up of Matter": Epitaphic Closure in Elegies

Epilogue: "Epitaph" for Epitaph

Bibliography

Index

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