The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (Oxford Handbooks)

This is the first major collection of essays to look at the literature of the entire Tudor period, from the reign of Henry VII to death of Elizabeth I. It pays particularly attention to the years before 1580. Those decades saw, amongst other things, the establishment of print culture and growth of a reading public; the various phases of the English Reformation and process of political centralization that enabled and accompanied them; the increasing emulation of Continental and classical literatures under the of humanism; the self-conscious emergence of English as a literary language and determined creation of a native literary canon; the beginnings of English empire and the consolidation of a sense of nationhood. However, study of Tudor literature prior to 1580 is not only of worth as a context, or foundation, for an Elizabethan 'golden age'. As this much-needed volume will show, it is also of artistic, intellectual, and cultural merit in its own right. Written by experts from Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom, the forty-four chapters in The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature recover some of the distinctive voices of sixteenth-century writing, its energy, variety, and inventiveness. As well as essays on well-known writers, such as Philip Sidney or Thomas Wyatt, the volume contains the first extensive treatment in print of some of the Tudor era's most original voices. Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Acknowledgements 8 Contents 10 List of Illustrations 16 Abbreviations and Conventions 18 List of Contributors 22 Prologue: The Travails of Tudor Literature (Pincombe & Shrank) 30 Part I: 1485-1529 48 Caxton and the Invention of Printing (Gillespie) 50 Dramatic Theory and Lucres' 'Discretion': The Plays of Henry Medwall (Cartwright) 66 Stephen Hawes and Courtly Education (Wakelin) 82 Having the Last Word: Manuscript, Print, and the Envoy in the Poetry of John Skelton (Griffiths) 98 All for Love: Lord Berners and the Enduring, Evolving Romance (Boro) 116 Part II: 1530-1559 132 Thomas More, William Tyndale, and the Printing of Religious Propaganda (King) 134 Rhetoric, Conscience, and the Playful Positions of Sir Thomas More (Simpson) 150 John Bale and Controversy: Readers and Audiences (Happé) 166 Sir Thomas Elyot and the Bonds of Community (Shrank) 183 John Heywood and Court Drama (Betteridge) 199 Thomas Wyatt and Francis Bryan: Plainness and Dissimulation (Powell) 216 Piety and Poetry: English Psalms from Miles Coverdale to Mary Sidney (Hamlin) 232 Katherine Parr and Her Circle (Mueller) 251 John Leland and His Heirs: The Topography of England (Schwyzer) 267 Biblical Allusion and Argument in Luke Shepherd's Verse Satires (Rankin) 283 Reforming the Reformers: Robert Crowley and Nicholas Udall (Warley) 302 William Baldwin and the Tudor Imagination (Maslen) 320 Directions for English: Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, George Puttenham's Art of English Poesy, and the Search for Vernacular Eloquence (Müller) 336 Order and Disorder: John Proctor's History of Wyat's Rebellion (Bryson) 352 Marian Political Allegory: John Heywood's The Spider and the Fly (Hunt) 366 Hall's Chronicle and the Mirror for Magistrates: History and the Tragic Pattern (Lucas) 385 A Place in the Shade: George Cavendish and De Casibus Tragedy (Pincombe) 401 What Is My Nation? Language, Verse, and Politics in Tudor Translations of Virgil's Aeneid (Tudeau-Clayton) 418 Thomas Hoby, William Thomas, and Mid-Tudor Travel to Italy (Woolfson) 433 Popularizing Courtly Poetry: Tottel's Miscellany and Its Progeny (May) 447 Part III: 1560-1579 464 Minerva's Men: Horizontal Nationhood and the Literary Production of Googe, Turbervile, and Gascoigne (Shannon) 466 'For This is True or Els I Do Lye': Thomas Smith, William Bullein, and Mid-Tudor Dialogue (Withington) 484 English Seneca: Heywood to Hamlet (Winston) 501 Political Tragedy in the 1560s: Cambises and Gorboduc (Cavanagh) 517 John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, 1563-1583: Antiquity and the Affect of History (Escobedo) 533 Tragical Histories, Tragical Tales (Gibson) 550 Foresters, Ploughmen, and Shepherds: Versions of Tudor Pastoral (Hadfield) 566 Interludes, Economics, and the Elizabethan Stage (White) 584 Ovidian Reflections in Gascoigne's Steel Glass (Pugh) 600 The Art of War: Martial Poetics from Henry Howard to Philip Sidney (Trim) 616 Thomas Whithorne and First-Person Life-Writing in the Sixteenth Century (Heale) 635 Pageants and Propaganda: Robert Langham's Letter and George Gascoigne's Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth (Dillon) 652 Sir Philip Sidney and the Arcadias (Moore) 666 Part IV: 1580-1603 682 Gabriel Harvey's Choleric Writing (Richards) 684 The Intimacy of Manuscript and the Pleasure of Print: Literary Culture from The Schoolmaster to Euphues (Schurink) 700 Revenge and Romance: George Petti's Palace of Pleasure and Robert Greene's Pandosto (Wilson) 716 Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Nathaniel Woodes's The Conflict of Conscience (Bevington) 733 Fictive Acts: Thomas Nashe and the Mid-Tudor Legacy (Hutson) 747 'Hear my Tale or Kiss my Tail!' The Old Wife's Tale, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and the Popular Cultures of Tudor Comedy (Hiscock) 762 Epilogue: Edmund Spenser and the Passing of Tudor Literature (Cooper) 778 Bibliography 796 Acknowledgements of Sources 838 Index 840 This is the first major collection of essays to look at the literature of the entire Tudor period, from the reign of Henry VII to death of Elizabeth I. It pays particularly attention to the years before 1580. Those decades saw, amongst other things, the establishment of print culture and growth of a reading public; the various phases of the English Reformation and process of political centralization that enabled and accompanied them; the increasing emulation of Continental and classical literatures under the influence of humanism; the self-conscious emergence of English as a literary language and determined creation of a native literary canon; the beginnings of English empire and the consolidation of a sense of nationhood. However, study of Tudor literature prior to 1580 is not only of worth as a context, or foundation, for an Elizabethan'golden age'. As this much-needed volume will show, it is also of artistic, intellectual, and cultural merit in its own right. Written by experts from Europe, North America, and the United Kingdom, the forty-five chapters in The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature recover some of the distinctive voices of sixteenth-century writing, its energy, variety, and inventiveness. As well as essays on well-known writers, such as Philip Sidney or Thomas Wyatt, the volume contains the first extensive treatment in print of some of the Tudor era's most original voices. The literature of the entire Tudor period, from the reign of Henry VII to death of Elizabeth I is covered by this volume. It pays particular attention to the years before 1580, covering the establishment of print culture and growth of a reading public