Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T16:58:41.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Renaissance Overeating: The Sad Case of Ben Jonson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Bruce Thomas Boehrer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Jonson's relations to the supper table mirror his relations to royal authority. Thus, while his work promotes gastronomic moderation, stoic restraint, temperance, and the plain style, he repeatedly seeks to assimilate those virtues to the social context of the Stuart court, where conspicuous consumption and intemperate behavior reign supreme. In this untenable situation, forced to reconcile contradictory values that typify discrete social circumstances, Jonson generally proceeds by renaming conspicuous consumption temperance and vice versa. This stratagem re-creates him in the image of a court whose abuses he theoretically rejects, and in poems like “Inviting a Friend to Supper” and “To Penshurst,” he emerges as an absolutist figure who sacrifices his stoicism for courtly success. Jonson becomes the embodiment of literary moderation, yet he weighs 280 pounds.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 105 , Issue 5 , October 1990 , pp. 1071 - 1082
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abrams, M.H., et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1968. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Aubrey, John. Aubrey's Brief Lives. Ed. Dick, Oliver Lawson. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1962.Google Scholar
Barish, Jonas. Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960.Google Scholar
Barton, Anne. “The New Inn and the Problem of Jonson's Late Style.” English Literary Renaissance 9 (1979): 395–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Champion, Larry. Ben Jonson's “Dotages”: A Reconsideration of the Late Plays. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1967.Google Scholar
Chute, Marchette. Ben Jonson of Westminster. New York: Dutton, 1953.Google Scholar
Drummond, William. Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Ed. Patterson, R. E. London: Blackie, 1923.Google Scholar
Duncan, Douglas. Ben Jonson and the Lucianic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. “Authors-Readers: Jonson's Community of the Same.” Representations 7 (1984): 26–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Pantheon, 1977.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage, 1980.Google Scholar
Friedberg, Harris. “Ben Jonson's Poetry: Pastoral, Georgic, Epigram.” English Literary Renaissance 4 (1974): 111–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Jonathan. James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, Thomas. “Ben Jonson and the Centered Self.” Studies in English Literature 10 (1970): 325–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harington, John. The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington. Ed. Egbert McClure, Norman. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1930.Google Scholar
Jackson, Gabriele. Vision and Judgment in Ben Jonson's Drama. New Haven: Yale UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson. Ed. C.H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1925–52.Google Scholar
Jonson, Ben. The Complete Poetry of Ben Jonson. Ed. Hunter, William B. Jr. New York: Norton, 1968.Google Scholar
Latham, Jean. The Pleasure of Your Company: A History of Manners and Meals. London: Black, 1972.Google Scholar
Leggatt, Alexander. Ben Jonson: His Vision and His Art. London: Methuen, 1981.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, Joseph. “The Jonsonian Corpulence: Or, The Poet as Mouthpiece.” ELH 53 (1986): 491–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, Leah. The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.Google Scholar
Marotti, Arthur. “All about Jonson's Poetry.” ELH 39 (1972): 208–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martial, . Epigrams. Trans. Ker, Walter C.A. 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1930.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. The Letters of Karl Marx. Trans. Padover, Saul. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1979.Google Scholar
Maus, Katharine. Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Middleton, Thomas. The Selected Plays of Thomas Middleton. Ed. Frost, David L. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Miles, Rosalind. Ben Jonson: His Life and Work. London: Routledge, 1986.Google Scholar
Nichols, J.G.The Poetry of Ben Jonson. New York: Barnes, 1969.Google Scholar
Peterson, Richard S.Imitation and Praise in the Poems of Ben Jonson. New Haven: Yale UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965.Google Scholar
Sweeney, John. Jonson and the Psychology of Public Theater. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Thirsk, Joan, ed. The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume iv (1500–1640). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Trimpi, Wesley. Ben Jonson's Poems: A Study of the Plain Style. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1962.Google Scholar
van den Berg, Sara. The Action of Ben Jonson's Poetry. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1987.Google Scholar
Wayne, Don. Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1984.Google Scholar
Wilson, Edmund. The Iriple Thinkers. New York: Scribner's, 1938.Google Scholar
Winstanley, William. The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets. Ed. Parker, William Riley. Gainesville: Scholars', 1963.Google Scholar
Womack, Peter. Ben Jonson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.Google Scholar
Woods, Susanne. “The Context of Jonson's Formalism.” Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben. Ed. Summers, Claude and Pebworth, Ted-Larry. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1982. 77–89.Google Scholar