The Oxford History of Poetry in English : Volume 4. Sixteenth-Century British Poetry

The Oxford History of Poetry in English is designed to offer a fresh, multi-voiced, and comprehensive analysis of 'poetry': from Anglo-Saxon culture through contemporary British, Irish, American, and Global culture, including English, Scottish, and Welsh poetry, Anglo-American colonial and post-colonial poetry, and poetry in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Asia, and other international locales. The series both synthesises existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge research, employing a global team of expert contributors for each of the volumes. Sixteenth-Century British Poetry features a history of the birth moment of modern 'English' poetry in greater detail than previous studies. It examines the literary transitions, institutional contexts, artistic practices, and literary genres within which poets compose their works. Each chapter combines an orientation to its topic and a contribution to the field. Specifically, the volume introduces a narrative about the advent of modern English poetry from Skelton to Spenser, attending to the events that underwrite the poets' achievements: Humanism; Reformation; monarchism and republicanism; colonization; print and manuscript; theatre; science; and companionate marriage. Featured are metre and form, figuration and allusiveness, and literary career, as well as a wide range of poets, from Wyatt, Surrey, and Isabella Whitney to Ralegh, Drayton, and Mary Herbert. Major works discussed include Sidney's Astrophil and Stella , Spenser's Faerie Queene , Marlowe's Hero and Leander , and Shakespeare's Sonnets . Cover 1 The Oxford History of Poetry in English: Sixteenth-Century British Poetry: Volume 4 6 Copyright 7 Dedication 8 General Editor’s Preface 10 Acknowledgements 14 Contents 16 List of Illustrations 20 List of Contributors 22 Editorial Note 24 1: Introduction 26 Transitions and Contexts 28 Practices 29 Forms 30 Poets 32 Transitions 35 A Case Study: Spenser’s Temple of Venus and Sixteenth-Century Poetry 35 PART I: TRANSITIONS AND CONTEXTS 42 2: Transitions 44 Pyramus and Thisbe at Home 47 Morpheus in the Margins 49 Midas in the Database 53 The Transitions of Nick Bottom 56 3: Social Contexts 59 Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry 59 Religion 67 Politics and Government 75 4: Professional Contexts 82 PART II: PRACTICES 106 5: Poetics 108 Humanist Theories of Poetry: Sixteenth Century 110 Modern Theories of Poetry: Humanist and Post-Humanist 117 A Sublime Poetics of Literary Freedom 120 6: Style 126 Wyatt’s Rhythms 127 Gascoigne’s Long Lines 130 Stanyhurst’s Quantities 133 Marlowe’s Mighty Couplets 136 Spenser’s Archaisms 139 Drayton’s Hexameters 142 Donne Himself 144 7: Allusiveness 147 Imitation and Allusion 148 Type 1: Allusion to Authorial Names 152 Type 2: Repurposing of Texts 154 Type 3: Allusions to Proverbs 156 Type 4: Allusion to Verbal Style 157 Type 5: Formal Allusion 159 Type 6: Self-Allusion 161 Type 7: Parody and Plagiarism 163 A History of Sixteenth-Century Poetry? 166 8: Figuration 168 Metaphor 172 Metonymy 174 Synecdoche 177 Irony 179 Conclusion 182 9: Career 184 PART III: FORMS 200 10: Miscellany 202 Tottel’s Miscellany 203 The Mirror for Magistrates 207 England’s Helicon 212 11: Lyric 216 Lyric Theory, Modern and Early Modern 216 Lyric Poetry, Short and Sweet 223 12: Sonnet 236 Labouring for Invention 236 Labouring for Copia 242 Labouring for Renewal 250 13: Satire 254 Early Tudor Satire 256 Elizabethan Satire 260 14: Pastoral 269 Vernacular Music 273 Anglicising the Eclogue 276 Lyrical Pastoral 282 15: Epic 287 Models and Theories 287 Translations 289 Spenser, Shakespeare, and the Tears of Calliope 301 16: Minor Epic 310 The Minor Epic Canon and Prevalent Critical Approaches 312 Associative Emulation and the Poet’s Self-Pronouncement 317 Dissociative Emulation and the Evolving Poetic Career 319 17: History 326 The Medieval Inheritance: Metrical Chronicles 326 Sidney and the Conflict between Poetry and History 328 Briton Moniments 330 Drayton’s Historical Poetry 334 18: Elegy 341 Elegy Amongst the Genres 341 The Origins of Elegy 342 Ovidian Elegy in the Sixteenth Century 343 Funeral Elegy 345 ‘Astrophel’ and The Shepheardes Calender 348 Elegy, Subjection, and Subversion in the 1590s 351 Donne’s Elegies 355 19: Complaint 359 Complaints Against the Times 362 The Mirror for Magistrates 363 Spenser’s Complaints 364 Personal Complaint 366 Love Complaints 366 Tottel’s Miscellany 368 Female Complaint 370 Spiritual Complaints 373 Conclusion 374 20: Devotional Poetry 376 PART IV: POETS 396 21: Skelton 398 Conspicuous Experiment: The Skeltonic 398 Inconspicuous Experiment: Skelton’s Rhyme Royal 401 Practical Experiment and Experimental Poetics 408 22: Scots Poetry 414 Lyrical Writing from James V Onwards 424 23: Wyatt and Surrey 430 ‘The first reformers and polishers of our vulgar poesy’ 430 ‘Imitating very naturally and studiously theirmaster Francis Petrarch’ 438 24: Mid-Tudor Poetry 447 Forms 449 Form: Printed Anthologies 451 Printed Anthologies: Thomas Howell 451 Printed Anthologies: George Turberville 452 Format 454 Formulation: The Discourses of Poetry—Gascoigne 456 Formulation: Structuring Ideologies—Whitney and the City 459 Conclusions 463 25: Philip Sidney 464 26: Spenser: Shorter Poetry 481 The New Poet: From the Theatre to the Calender 483 Styles of Complaint: Spenser’s Poetic Bildung 489 Beyond Epic: Spenser as Love Poet 495 27: Spenser: The Faerie Queene 502 Form, Mode, and Content 502 The Faerie Queene (1590) 505 The Faerie Queene (1596) 511 Two Cantos of Mutabilitie (1609) 517 28: Daniel, Drayton, Chapman 520 Daniel 521 Drayton 527 Chapman 535 29: Marlowe 542 Translation 1, Anti-Epic Model 1: Power That Crushes, Lucan’s First Book 545 Translation 2, Anti-Epic Model 2: A Poetry of Wanton Toys, All Ovid’s Elegies 547 A Poetry That Invites: ‘The Passionate Shepherd To His Love’ 549 A Poetry of Dallying: Hero and Leander 552 A Poetry of Sociability: Plays That Play With Me 557 30: Shakespeare 560 The Sonnets 561 Venus and Adonis 568 The Rape of Lucrece 573 ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ 576 A Lover’s Complaint 578 31: Ralegh 580 Poetics and Reading Strategies 582 ‘The Ocean’s Love to Cynthia’ 589 Concluding Thoughts 592 32: Mary Sidney Herbert 594 Sidney Herbert In Print 595 Sidney Herbert’s Psalms 599 Sidney Herbert Beyond the Psalms: The Commendatory Poems and The Triumph of Death 604 Sidney Herbert the Poet 608 PART V: TRANSITIONS 610 33: The Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century 612 Complete Bibliography 624 Index 668 "Sixteenth-Century British Poetry features a history of the birth moment of modern 'English' poetry in greater detail than previous studies. It examines the literary transitions, institutional contexts, artistic practices, and literary genres within which poets compose their works. Each chapter combines an orientation to its topic and a contribution to the field. Specifically, the volume introduces a narrative about the advent of modern English poetry from Skelton to Spenser, attending to the events that underwrite the poets' achievements: Humanism; Reformation; monarchism and republicanism; colonization; print and manuscript; theatre; science; and companionate marriage. Featured are metre and form, figuration and allusiveness, and literary career, as well as a wide range of poets, from Wyatt, Surrey, and Isabella Whitney to Ralegh, Drayton, and Mary Herbert. Major works discussed include Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Hero and Leander, and Shakespeare's Sonnets."--Publisher's description