Writing under Tyranny English Literature and the Henrician Reformation

by Walker, Greg

• ISBN13: 9780199283330
• ISBN10: 0199283338
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Spanning the boundaries between literature and history, Writing Under Tyranny charts the profound effects that Henry VIII's increasingly tyrannical regime had on the literary production of the early sixteenth century, and shows how English writers strove to mitigate, redirect, and finally resist oppressive royal demands. The result was the destruction of a number of venerable literary forms and the collapse of a literary culture that dominated the late-medieval period, but also the birth of many modes of writing now seen as characteristic of the English literary renaissance. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Greg Walker is Professor of Early-Modern Literature and Culture and Director of the Medieval Research Centre at the University of Leicester.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(4)
The Long Divorce of Steel	5	(24)
Poetry and the Culture of Counsel: The 1532 Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newly Printed and John Heywood's Play of the Weather
A Gift for King Henry VIII	29	(7)
The Signs of the World	36	(20)
Reading Chaucer in 1532	56	(17)
Thynne and Tuke's Apocrypha	73	(27)
Mocking the Thunder	100	(23)
`To Virtue Persuaded'?: The Persistent Counsels of Sir Thomas Elyot
Sir Thomas Elyot and the King's Great Matter	123	(18)
The Book Named the Governor	141	(40)
Tyranny and the Conscience of Man	181	(44)
From Supremacy to Tyranny, 1533--40	225	(15)
The Apotheosis of Sir Thomas Elyot	240	(39)
The Death of Counsel: Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Sir Thomas Wyatt: Poetry and Politics	279	(17)
Tyranny Condemned	296	(39)
Wyatt's Embassy, Treason, and `The Defence'	335	(16)
Pleading with Power	351	(26)
`Wyatt Resteth Here'	377	(37)
Writing Under Tyranny	414	(19)
Notes	433	(106)
Index	539