Redefining Elizabethan Literature
Redefining Elizabethan Literature
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Redefining Elizabethan Literature examines the new definitions of literature and authorship that emerged in one of the most remarkable decades in English literary history, the 1590s. Georgia Brown analyses the period's obsession with shame as both a literary theme and a conscious authorial position. She explores the related obsession of this generation of authors with fragmentary and marginal forms of expression, such as the epyllion, paradoxical encomium, sonnet sequence, and complaint. Combining developments in literary theory with close readings of a wide range of Elizabethan texts, Brown casts light on the wholesale eroticisation of Elizabethan literary culture, the form and meaning of Englishness, the function of gender and sexuality in establishing literary authority, and the contexts of the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and Sidney. This study will be of great interest to scholars of Renaissance literature as well as cultural history and gender studies.
- A thorough study of how definitions of 'literature' were developed in the 1590s
- A comprehensive examination of the generation of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Donne and Jonson and their attitudes to authorship
- Brown studies marginal forms and the theme of shame to illuminate the period and its works
Reviews & endorsements
"The bibliography is substantial, and the thorough notes appear as footnotes rather than as endnotes, which is a delight." CHOICE
"Engages energetically--and sometimes impressively--with both the primary and secondary literatures of the last decade of the sixteenth century." -Gordon Braden, University of Virginia
"Brown has written an admirably intelligent and sensitive book that should be of great interest to anyone studying or teaching Elizabethan literature and culture." Renaissance Quarterly Judith Haber, Tufts University
"Brown's complex, smart analytical prose and the discussion's internal cohesiveness result in a provocative new reading of late Elizabethan culture and the Elizabethans' own definition -- or if Brown is correct, redefinition--of literary value." - Wayne A. Chandler, Northwest Missouri State University
Product details
December 2004Hardback
9780521831239
270 pages
229 × 152 × 19 mm
0.57kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Generating waste: Thomas Nashe and the production of professional authorship
- 3. Literature as fetish
- 4. Shame and the subject of history
- Epilogue
- Bibliography.
